12 Comments
Member
111 October 21, 2023 7:18 am
Thanks Travis, great write up as usual. I noticed Bitcoin is moving up again. Any thoughts on increasing your exposure to this to complement your gold buys?
Member 22353October 23, 2023 2:25 pmI haven't been interested in increasing my Bitcoin allocation recently, mostly just because it has so actively traded in sympathy with the Nasdaq 100... but I am somewhat sympathetic with the notion that Bitcoin has gradually grown to be accepted as something akin to "digital gold"- Member 352October 23, 2023 6:34 pmMost folks don't understand what Crytos actually are doing with the tech. Keep an eye on LINK the highest leveraged crypto tech in the industry. Up over 42% during the past month.
- Member 22353October 23, 2023 8:07 pmI don't even know what "highest leveraged crypto tech" means... but then, I don't understand the business case or logical value of almost any crypto project I've looked at.
Member
66 October 23, 2023 2:29 pm
The percentage of portfolio for each holding says "loading" again.
- Member 22353October 23, 2023 2:40 pmThanks, will try to fix that.
- Member 22353October 23, 2023 3:25 pmFixed now, and I added today's trades to the portfolio, too (and updated the prices). https://www.stockgumshoe.com/personal-portfolio-irregulars-only/
Member
22353 October 23, 2023 2:39 pm
Trade Note:I don't generally post Trade Notes or send emails out to readers when I make options trades, unless I happen to be writing about the topic for some other reason, but I thought I'd note that as we head into our key "big tech" earnings season, I did boost my hedging a bit -- to complement my S&P 500 put options for next June, I also bought some Nasdaq 100 put options for the end of the year.I already hold a position in S&P 500 puts that's enough to protect my portfolio from a drop below $370 for the most popular S&P 500 ETF (SPY), so at this point, with the SPY at $423, that would mean I'm only exposed to a drop of about 12-13%, any drop further than that would effectively be covered. As long as it comes before June.Because of all that's riding on the tech stocks this earnings season, and because that's a pretty large part of my portfolio, I put on a similar put option using the Nasdaq 100 ETF (QQQ). The QQQ is currently at $357, and I bought some relatively cheap put options (about $100 per contract) to protect against the QQQ dropping below $285 in that short period of time -- so that's essentially protection against anything greater than a 20% drop in the Nasdaq 100 before December 29. Most likely, this hedge will turn out to be unnecessary, that would be a shocking drop during what is typically a seasonally strong period in the market... but it's fairly inexpensive, and it will keep me calm and hopefully mean I'm not tempted to overreact during the next few weeks of important earnings announcements, so for me that cost (this position is roughly 0.25% of my equity portfolio), it's worthwhile to me. That will show up in the Real Money Portfolio update, in the shorts/hedges section.And as you may have noted in my email and new article earlier today, I also put on a small speculation in BioArctic shares (BIOA-B.ST BRCTF), largely as a levered play on the potential for surprisingly strong sales of Leqembi over the next few years (BioArctic developed the drug initially before partnering it to Eisia and later also Biogen for advancement and eventual commercialization, and holds a "high single digits" royalty on sales).
- Member 4October 27, 2023 3:17 amHi Travis, thanks for your trade note. I have a question on the way how you can simulate/calculate the possible gains when the option becomes more profitable (in the money)?I followed you by buying the same QQQ put 285 and currently I'm already on a kind of 'paper' profit but want like to know if there is something link a tool/model you can use to assess your gains when the market/QQQ keeps lowering (towards 285 and even lower).Do you know if this is possible or is this just market driven (demand/supply)? Thx!
- Member 22353October 27, 2023 8:17 amYou can use the options "greeks" to monitor the time decay of the option (theta) and the changes to the forecasted volatility (vega) which help to define the value of the option (particularly if it's out of the money).But I don't worry about trying to maximize the value of these options positions that I use for hedging -- I'm likely to take some profits (or losses) as the time value decays, but I mostly leave these positions in place as protection. You can get really sucked into the greeks and believe that the math is somehow predictive, but in the short period of time before expiration for these QQQ puts, for example, it's really about whether there's a big shift in sentiment -- and at this point, that probably depends quite a bit on what NVIDIA says about their earnings and outlook in a couple weeks.
