Just letting stuff go. I’m letting HOOD, PLTR, TOST, and SHOP go today. All of them are because earnings are coming up and I don’t want to hold them for that. I’ll have to wait and get exact numbers but its going to be close to $2150 in profit altogether. I do have some same day rollouts set to get a little bit more money but I’m not sure if any of them will hit or not. I flipped through my lists but nothing really jumped out as something I wanted to get into that wasn’t in front of earnings. But I did sell puts on LVS and NUE today as well as roll HUT and TGT. I’m considering doing a rescue attempt on HUT. I was looking at it, but its not quite ready yet. I am thinking of sell 3 puts on it, and if nothing pops up for next week that’s what I’ll do. MACD is still Chug-a lugging along. $160.72 (2.82%) from 12 trades this week. The whole account is up somewhere in the neighborhood of $550 (9.60%) since Dec. 30th. It’s still running behind about $350 from where it needs to be to operate fully without running out of capital but it hasn’t affected it yet. I’m constantly considering just going with MACD for all of Robinhood. I’ve looked at the software to do it and the cost isn’t terrible. I have my whole record keeping sorted out, I’m still not sure though. 2 positions triggered about 80 trades this month. I setup a paper account at one of the companies to test it out, I think I have it set correctly, we’ll see.
January is in the bag and while I’m not quite as well off as I was mid January I still came away with profits. Schab ended with $370.77 (0.59%). NVDA was a big loser for me, down around $1300. I could have stayed with it and grind it out until it was positive again but I think I could do better waiting for a setup and jumping in again rather than grinding it out. I think i’ll end up better off in the long run. Anyway, the real winners of January were the Robinhood accounts. The Taxable as up $1428.48 (10.11%) and the MACD account is up $466.04 (8.19%) Again, I’m going from Dec. 30th so the numbers in image YTD are not the same as I am using. The starting balances I am using are $14,116.42 and $5687.46. Taxable is higher than 2024’s ending balance because I added money to it. Combined options trading is up $1799.25 (2.33%) and MACD brings it up to $2265.29 (2.73%). This is based on starting balances of $77,164.93 and $82,852.39 respectively. Those are also adjusted up to account for the money added. So far so good. There are some things I would like to change or at least work on changing going forward. I think I am going to try and keep trading HOOD.The main reason is simplicity, everytime I switch to a new symbol it adds sheets to my spreadsheet. I’ve got it down to a quick process now, but the more symbols the messier it gets. So I’m going to try it. The Taxable account where I have been trading it is the strongest performer so giving up a month or two to try this isn’t going to hurt too much. I’m also not happy about TGT I thought it would be a nice opportunity to scoop up some dividends, and it has only been dropping. I didn’t follow my strategy at all, I thought since MACD was crossing zero it would get a nice bump and continue its run and so far that hasn’t happened. If I wanted to trade it I should have established a position back in Dec. when it actually had a setup I want to trade. You can see where I started (cross) and my breakeven (dotted line). I wanted to replace NVDA but this was not a good position to start. To be fair, I think the other position I was looking at was PG and it is down a bit since Jan. 29th. Just not as bad. It’s MACD looks was better though. I just thought I could do better with a dividend payment. Cross is an estimated entry based on time of day I usually trade, I’m not sure what time I actually took TGT trade. Contradicting what I said about HOOD and wanting fewer symbols I did add to my list of possible trading symbols. I now have a list of about 100 between $25 and $270 with about 27 I’m actively watching for entries. The reason is I am looking for a specific setup that may only happen a few times a year on any one symbol. So I am casting a wide net for potential trades even though I want to try and keep my basket of actual trades smaller. I’m also watching an additional 10 between $20 and $25 to potentially add to MACD as it grows. Speaking of MACD, I am paper trading on I think TraderPost. I have a week free trial to get it set up and running to see if it works as I expect it to. I did get an entry Friday but the webhook wasn’t setup properly so it didn't go through. That was my fault, I completely skipped that step. I’ll keep you posted how that goes and what I think about the service. Looking through it it has the ability to trade just on my Robinhood IRA, which I liked. I’m not sure the monthly costs yet because I didn’t look too deeply into what tier I will need, but the prices are reasonable for the first few tiers. So far, getting it set up was simple enough, if I have it right this time. If I do get MACD automated it would be nice. That’s all I can think of saying. I am sitting on a lot of cash right now, over 50%. So I’ll definitely be looking to add positions Wednesday, but I don’t have any particular positions in mind.
Still working on getting TraderPost going. Part of the long setup is due to not being able to work on it until last night. I had to start paying to get auto-submit, and then I still didn’t have the webhooks right, when I copied it I missed a bracket. I went through it last night and I think it's ready now. While I was working on it I did find https://www.pinescriptwizard.com/ which is a ChatGPT for pine script code. It lets you demo a few things and I managed a few queries before it said I was done for the week. It wasn’t perfect but with it and my limited pinescript knowledge I was able to rewrite my strategy so at least it doesn't look like a hacked up mess. I’m going to keep the link and mess around with it some more and try to get the strategy to do a few things that I want it to do but not sure how. Like don’t add shares if I have 100. I’m sure there is something I can do, like adding a count and resetting the count. I’ll have to play around with it. So far I just have it set up on the Robinhood IRA, so I’m just on the $49 a month plan. Once I get it worked out and actually working I will probably switch to a yearly plan to save a little money. I’m not sure if I can stay on that plan and add the other Robinhood Accounts or if I need to go up a tier. I just says I’m allowed 1 broker but I don’t know how they count the different accounts inside a broker. It doesn’t matter right now, as I’m using one account, but I might add more in the future. Especially if Schwab ever allows automated services. Anyway, I exited my NUE Put and replaced it with a HOOD Put yesterday. Today I decided HOOD was getting too expensive for the Robinhood Account and Switched it to one of the Schwabs. I replaced that Put with a Put on HIMS, which got too expensive for the MACD account so I swapped in VFC. Along with HOOD I also added Puts for DKNG and TOST in Schwab. All these puts were conservative around 0.5% to 1% and all the swapping around was for a profit, but I’m talking 10’s of dollars so nothing much. MACD is still performing, 4 closed trades for Feb. $49.73 (0.87%) so far. RKLB is currently at 100 shares so its paused. If they are all still open Friday I will start selling options on it. VFC was just swapped in today so no signals from it yet. Returns on the strategy tester look good though. That’s it, just coasting right now waiting for a better setup. Update: Still not getting signals from TradingView…went through and check everything again and tests go through, if this keeps up I’ll probably need to reach out and get some support. Oh, well I’ll work on it more this weekend.
Update 2: I think I solved the problem, in the webhook URL I had traderpost instead of traderspost. I only check the sequence number at the end and made sure it was the same. So now hopefully that solves my problem and the signals should go through. I missed 2 entries on VFC that I had to enter manually. I think it should them if I let it run but i’ll continue to watch it. RKLB is falling today so I took the opportunity to just go ahead and start selling calls on it. Average price is $29.89. Adjusted price is $29.61 Profit target is $30.11 ($50)
Schwab seems to be going the wrong way. The Roth account is up 1.95% while the Traditional IRA is down 2.16%. Altogether slightly negative $76 (0.12%). The Traditional has almost all the negative positions: NVDA, TGT, LVS. Only HUT is in the Roth. It is discouraging to see progress getting eaten away like that. I even considered dumping Schwab into Robinhood and putting it on the MACD strategy (more on that later). I am looking at it as a consequence of having funds spread over multiple accounts though. What I pencil-whipped before the market opened was that all accounts are up somewhere around $1870 (2.25%) for the year. That’s in line with my trading goals. Today I am just working through everything, rolled everything out as well as added some puts to existing trades. TGT was assigned overnight so now I’m selling calls. LVS I also kept on the put side. I would have had to switch it over today if I wanted to get the dividend, but it was going to cost me more than the $25 in dividends to do that so I decided not to go after them. Since TGT was assigned I will be getting those dividends. I checked on PG today, it’s up about $2 from when picked it over TGT while TGT is down $10. So that’s a lesson for me that I should go after the better setup and not dividends. MACD is up and running by itself not…mostly. It opened 3 trades in VFC and closed 1, but that put me at 100 shares and VFC is falling. So signals are now paused and I am selling options on them both. RKLB is close to breakeven with an adjusted price of $28.41 and the $29 Call will give me $51 in profit. VFC is at $24.65 and its $25 Call will give me $35 in profit. It's ironic that when I start paying for automation I have to stop the automation. Going over the logs the 2 open trades Traderspost took are okay. One is the same strike between the signal and order and one the signal was at $24.76 and the order came in at $24.84. That shaves about 2 dollars off the profit if there is not slippage on the sell side. Thats in line with the closed trade that made $10.59 ($12.50 would be zero slippage). So there is going to be some slippage from the delay between signal and entry. Manually I just set the sell limits based on entry price so any difference from signal entry was avoided. Like I said earlier I considered pulling money out of Schwab and putting it into the MACD strategy. Maybe that’s something for the future (Schwab isn’t available in Traderpost, or anywhere that I’m aware). Right now I’m still considering the whole thing in testing. Even with the newer code it still has losing trades, and I’m not sure why that is. It's usually near larger than average wins as well so maybe its a result of FIFO selling. I’d still like to run through more rounds to see how TraderPost works for me. So far to get up and running I am on the $49 monthly plan, I also have the Essential Plan on TradingView for $15 a month. After talking to TradersPost they count each sub account as 1 broker so just moving my accounts from Schwab to Robinhood I’d have to bump up to the $99 plan for 2 accounts, or $199 for all three accounts. As it sits I’d also need to bump up to a higher tier in TradingView. My current workaround to get it to stop at 100 shares is to set a new strategy for each symbol and then manually adjust the pyramiding setting until it has 4 open spots. If I can get a count figured out I might be able to get rid of that. Or if I could adjust the start date on the strategy. But, as far as I can tell that would still need a custom strategy for each symbol. Another possibility that I considered is doubling the amount of money per symbol. That would allow it to get 200 shares and I could sell options after the first 100 and still let the automation run. That will halve my total returns and have money sitting on the sidelines when things are running well. It also only helps the costs of TraderView which isn’t expensive. I’m not interested in consolidating accounts down either; 401ks, IRAs, ROTH IRAs, and Taxable accounts all serve different purposes. That’s why I wouldn’t dumped all of Schwab into the MACD account, but use both retirement accounts Robinhood has. Even then, using three accounts in Robinhood and upgrading Tradingview so I can have more strategies running Its only $250 a month. It’s not a bad price if the returns continue in line with January’s numbers. Okay, I’m done for today. I’ll be back sometime this weekend for performance stats.
Still backsliding some, Schwab is down -$338.94 (-0.54%) Taxable is flat at $1437.12 (10.18%) and the MACD account slipped as well to $356.70 (6.27%). Options trading as a whole is still up $1098.18 (1.42%) and total account performance comes in at $1454.88 (1.75%). Numbers are from Dec. 30th so Robinhood numbers are off in picture. Mostly being dragged down by the three stepchildren: TGT : -$691.65 (-4.91%) HUT : -$434.62 (-15.58%) LVS : -$92.98 (-2.09%) Looking at the charts TGT looks like it is in the worst position MACD wise. It looks like I might have bought in at the top of a cycle and have to ride it out for a while. I’m going to hold on to it for now. It’s near its 52 week low and its Dividend Coverage and Payout Ratios look fine. It might actually become a good pick after I get out in front of it. Or it could continue to fall, who knows. HUT I’m still considering some kind of rescue, just waiting for a setup for entry. The other positions HOOD, DKNG, TOST, and HIMS are all fine. Over in MACD for the first week in February it closed 6 trades, and I closed one option trade on RKLB for a total of $80.26 (1.41%). Currently selling options on both positions and I’m curious to see what that does to my ROI. VFC options are not as high as RKLB so it's going to be interesting to see how long it takes to recover. On a final note, I was able to add a start date input and get it working properly in the strategy so now I can more effectively manage them. I considered publishing it on TradingView, but without an explanation and the understanding of what the strategy is supposed to do I am not sure very many people will find it useful. I also have it locked into a quantity of 25 so you can’t change it in the settings, I’d have to fix that.
I added a put on TOST in the Schwab account. DKING and HOOD have earnings this week so I didn’t add anything to them. LVS and HUT are moving lower this week so not much to do with them besides keep picking away at them and lowering my breakeven. TGT I moved to a one month strike. I’m just going to wait it out. I was able to get a decent premium at my buy-in price of $141 so if it happens to jump before expiration I won’t lose any premium. I looked at LVS and HUT to move to a 1 month strike but the premium wasn’t there. Over in Robinhood I bought back my Puts on HIMS and opened one for the rest of the week. I’m going lighter on it because it has earnings coming up too. VFC and RKLB in the MACD account are close to their strike prices but I might be selling calls on them again friday. I’m debating selling off the positions and restarting the automation if they get above breaken.
LVS was assigned overnight, its down less than 1% from its adjusted price so I’m okay with it. I put in a call at $45.50 which is what it was assigned to me for. HIMS has been rising and I felt it was getting too expensive for the Robinhood account so I swapped it for TOST. Everything was in Puts so it wasn’t a big deal. TOST has earnings next week so I decided to buy in and sell a call and a put out wide to see what happens. Maybe it will end up biting me, we’ll see. HUT I switched to a 1 month strike; $28 is above buy in so I’m fine with just setting it and forgetting it there. Everything else was just rolled out. MACD is sort of getting back into the automated side. I sold VFC off, I wasn’t quite fast enough this morning so I ended up losing $3.85. I was trying to get out slightly above breakeven. I turned on the strategy but had to pause it after 1 trade. The upside of going to a cash account in Robinhood is you don’t have to worry about PDT rules. The bad side is you have to wait a day or 2 for funds to settle. So I only had enough funds for one trade. I’ll unpause it after today and it should be fine. RKLB I’m still selling options on, breakeven is $27.41 and I sold the $28 strike. So far options selling hasn’t affected profits. MACD is up $194.33 (3.42%) for Feb. and it averaged around $100 a week in January. I’m still treading water waiting for setups, around 40% of my capital is in cash. Without a pullback soon in DKNG, HIMS, and HOOD I’m going to have to change positions. They are just getting outside of the range I want to be in. Update: I wrote all that and then I decided to try and rescue LVS and get out of it. Sold 2 40P at a 1 month strike. Brings my breakeven for my current position down to $42.71. LVS is higher than that today, MACD has a cross that signals a buy so it might get a bump in price that I can use to exit. If this works a similar setup is shaping up on HUT and I might go after it the same way next week.
Schwab is coming back around, I got it at -$296.49 (-0.47%) the Summary page has a lower account balance than the picture (which is from the Performance page) so I am going with the lower number. The Taxable account is up to $1768.86 (12.53%) and the MACD is up to $572.00 (10.05%) Combined options trading is $1472.37(1.90%) and adding MACD I’m at $2044.37 (2.46%). Positions: TGT: -$793.97 (-5.63%) HUT: -$443.94 (-15.92%) LVS: $66.03 (1.48%) TOST: $202.62 (5.06%) Biggest changes last week were bumping HUT and TGT to 1 month strikes. I mostly do weekly strikes because I like being able to sit down every week and make trades. I don’t know if that actually helps me be any better off when I am chasing a stock down though. We’ll have to see how it goes. My position in TOST is a gamble. I looked at AFRM, UPST, and HOOD jumping on better than expected earnings. They are all financial type stocks, not the same as TOST but I thought maybe it would rub off on it some. I’m not worried about getting stuck with my position at $40 since TOST is one of the stocks I want to focus on for the rest of the year. I took 2 HOOD puts, but looking at them I think I should have just did 1. Its gained a lot and I am not sure how much farther it will go. And the puts are too close together, 61 and 62. I think that’s all my thoughts about last week for options, in MACD everything is working as I thought it would. I was able to reset VFC, it's going to be cooking next week. RKLB is currently above its strike so maybe it’ll be running again soon too. Profits didn’t dip with options, but that was because RKLB has large premiums. RKLB’s option this week had a premium of $110 which isn’t counted in the $194.33 (3.42%) return for Feb. (I am only counting closed trades) so its already going to be close to the $100 a week performance before VFC even closes a trade next week. MACD isn’t outperforming the Taxable account, but it is close.
If you have a Schwab account, you can use their real time trading platform TOS (Thinkorswim) to paper trade. It is free and unless you do fast (seconds) trades, it is very realistic. If you have questions, their TOS tech support is very good and responsive.