A quiet trading week befitting what turned out to be a volatile week and a few days off.
<h3>Portfolio News</h3>
In a week where S&P 500 rose 0.86% including the 2.2% drop on March 4, my pension portfolio dropped 1.8% driven by sharp falls in solar and marijuana stocks and some commodity areas.
The headlines tell the story of another spike in yields though the market did pull that back yet again. More about Tesla further down.
Big movers of the week were BP PLC (BP.L) (+17%), SPDR Oil Producers ETF (XOP) (+16%) North Pacific Bank (8524.T) (+13%). Quite a few European banks rose in excess of 10% on the back of rising yields.
The big fallers of the week were in solar power (MAXN - down 31%, RUN - down 23%, JKS - down 15%), marijuana (HVT.V - down 28%, CRON - down 23%, TLRY - down 19%), and alternate energy (LTHM - down 17%, DNN - down 17%). My portfolios are currently light on tech stocks with CRM down 14% - just as well
Most notable faller of the week was the naked put sold on TSLA last week - with price closing at $597.95, my trade is still out-the-money.
**Crypto booms**
Bitcoin ground out the week higher finishing the week 6.8% higher than the open after peaking at +13%.
In my top 10 crypto portfolio, biggest mover was NEM (XEMUSD) pushing up 43% in a pump before falling back
<h3>Bought</h3>
**Eli Lilly and Company** (LLY): US Pharmaceuticals. First position taken - Jim Cramer idea.
**Invesco Agriculture ETF** (DBA): Agriculture. Replaced stock assigned in February expiries at only 0.7% premium to assigned price.
<h3>Sold</h3>
**MasterCard Incorporated** (MA): Payment Services. Trimmed position for 24.5% profit since October 2020 - Jim Cramer idea to add and trim.
**De Grey Mining Limited** (DEG.AX): Gold Exploration. Sold a small parcel to fund cash account (making up for failure by my broker to transfer funds timeously). Tidy blended profit of 1,343% since July/August 2016. De Grey holds the most valuable unexplored gold resource worldwide in the Pilbara region of Western Australia - no gold produced yet other than the nuggets found by geologists.
<h3>Shorts</h3>
**Invesco QQQ Trust** (QQQ): Nasdaq Index. Markets have become very nervous about inflation expectations which are pushing yields up. Tech sector is being sold down because of indebtedness concerns. Put in place a hedge trade in pension portfolio - I did the hedges in my personal portfolios the week before. With price around $309, bought a 295/283 ratio put spread for a just cash neutral trade. This gives downward price protection of between 4.7% and 9.2% from the closing level of $309.16 - now this is already down 8% from the February highs.
Means: Ratio Spread. Sell more options than one buys with sold premium funding bought premium.
The chart shows the bought put (295) as a red ray and the sold put (282) as a blue ray. The blue arrows are two similar price scenarios from 2020.
Price can finish anywhere above 282 for the hedge to work - it does not matter if it stays above the sold put as the trade is cash neutral. Finishing below 283 would mean I have to buy QQQ at $283 - that is fine if price does make a recovery and a game of patience if it does not. There is a trade management task if price moves back up again from current levels - close out the sold puts and replace at a higher strike to tighten the spread - and to capture the profits on the ratio
For reference, I did a 306/292 ratio put spread the week before also with March expiry in one of my other portfolios. The pink ray shows the bought put (306). This fits in a little better with the price scenarios.
<h3>Cryptocurrency</h3>
I looked to reduce my position in Cardano (ADA) in its pump and dump on March 1 but missed the falling knife as price collapsed. That will have to sit as a pending order. Plan was to sell ADA for ETH and redploy to AAVE and LTC. I did make those purchases even though the ADA did not sell.
The chart shows the principle - switch once the price relative shows a reversal - the reversal on AAVE did not hold for many days.
NEM (XEMBTC) (XEMETH). Reduced holdings in NEM in two tranches - one for ETH (159% profit in 29 days - March 4) and one for BTC (effective 71% profit - March 1). Chart shows March 4 exit for ETH.
**Uniswap** (UNIBTC). Added to my holdings of Uniswap when price showed a willingness to move up - looks mightily like a pump happening with price 46% higher from the 2nd entry point.
<h3>Income Trades</h3>
**Covered Calls**
Only one US covered call written on NAT
<h3>Currency Trades</h3>
I continued testing the new swing trading currency tool. Volatile weeks are not the time to test new tools - of 6 trades made 5 stopped out for losses and one remains open and is ugly (short palladium). I will review again from Tuesday trades adding in tests of trend trading tool I was using previously.
Cautions: This is not financial advice. You need to consider your own financial position and take your own advice before you follow any of my ideas
Images: I own the rights to use and edit the Buy Sell image. News headlines come from Google Search. All other images are created using my various trading and charting platforms. They are all my own work
Tickers: I monitor my portfolios using Yahoo Finance. The ticker symbols used are Yahoo Finance tickers
Charts: http://mymark.mx/TradingView - this is a free charting package. I have a Pro subscription to get access to real time forex prices
Bitcoin: Get started with mining Bitcoin for as little as $25 https://mymark.mx/Galaxy
Trading: Binance offers a wide range of coins to trade, tight spreads and low fees if you use BNB to pay https://mymark.mx/Binance
Tracking: Keeping track of your crypto trades is a whole lot easier with CoinTracking.info. Get 10% off all your account upgrades https://mymark.mx/CoinTracking
March 1 - 5, 2021
ps Not sure what is going on with image uploads - I had to upload to Amazon S3.
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