Go For Broke

Friday, December 31, 2021 -- $91,124.28 (-$1,640.54, -1.77%) Well, I guess I was not due for an up day.  The losing streak continues into the new year!  My Dogecoin position is down just a little ($41,11) and I moved out of CCL and into NCLH and this helped me a little bit.  So, after some wild and crazy swings, the portfolio is down just about 3% since inception.  If I was planning on retiring soon, these wild swings might have given me a heart attack. With the Nasdaq flat and the S&P500 and Dow up just about 1% in the past week this has got to be one of the wimpiest Santa Claus rally's on record.  The portfolio fared much worse this past week, dropping 9.83%.  Maybe next year things will get better?  Omicron seems to be looking more and more like the vaccination for the anti-vaxxers.  Perhaps the pandemic will move down to endemic status soon!  Happy New Year!

Thursday, December 30, 2021 -- $92,764.82 (-$571.72, -0.61%) Another up day for the market and another down day for the portfolio.  Does this sound familiar?  Although this is the fourth consecutive down day for the portfolio, at least it was down less than one percent today.  I think I am due for an up day tomorrow, so I am going to take a small, around $10,000, position in Dogecoin.  While I think Dogecoin's intrinsic value is very close to zero, this is a short term momentum play.  The nice, and simultaneously not-so-nice, thing about this blog is that I get an immediate report card indicating how I am doing with my trades. Tomorrow is the final trading day of the year and while the portfolio is down, the broad markets are experiencing the Santa Claus rally.  We will see if it holds out through the close of trading for the year!

Wednesday, December 29, 2021 -- $93,336.54 (-$2,463.53,  -2.57%) Another up day for the market and another down day for the porfolio.  While, for hedging purposes, it is often good to have a portion of your portfolio negatively correlated with the market, it still kinda sucks when your entire portfolio is negatively correlated with the market when the market goes up.  The portfolio is now back down below its original starting value.

Tuesday, December 28, 2021 -- $95,800.07 (-$3,141.69, -3.18%) The market closed mixed today and the jury it is still very unclear on whether this will be a Santa Claus rally year.  Unfortunately the portfolio suffered because cryptocurrencies plummeted.  CCL held up well--it was don't only slightly--despite news reports of COVID cases being found on 89 cruise ships and calls to suspend cruise ship sailings.

Monday, December 27, 2021 -- $98,941.76 (-$2,120.29, -2.10%) The market was closed on Friday and today marked the start of what could be a Santa Claus rally--since 1950 the market has been up between Christmas and the end of the year almost 80 percent of the time.  Unfortunately, though the broad market was up my positions were down.  Perhaps I was not a good person this year and this is my lump of coal.

Thursday, December 23, 2021 -- $101,062.05 (+$772.34, +0.77%) For the first time in over a week, the portfolio value changed by less than one percent today.  Mostly it was CCL dropping and Ethereum rising a little bit more than needed to offset the CCL loss.  We are now at the Christmas break--tomorrow is a holiday and we will see if there will be a Santa Claus rally this year.

Wednesday, December 22, 2021 -- $100,289.71 (+$3,612.88, +3.74%) The market continued its upward trajectory, as did the portfolio, now having risen for four consecutive days and it back over $100,000!  Yay!  You may notice that I have sold the one share of HL that was Robinhood's account opening gift.  So now I just have three positions in the portfolio, one stock, CCL, and two cryptocurrencies, ETH and ETC.  The porfolio is up over 23% over the last four days.  If only I could figure out how to avoid the down days, I would be doing fantastic!

Tuesday, December 21, 2021 -- $96,676.83 (+$7,148.13, +7.98%) The market went up in a big way today with the DJI up over 500 points.  While Omicron seems to be spreading extremely rapidly--now comprising over 70% of new cases in the US, up from less than 1% just three weeks ago, it appears that it may be more mild, and, for vaccinated/boosted individuals, have a very low risk of serious complications.  It could be that Omicron is what "ends" the pandemic early by infecting nearly everyone and effectively vaccinating the significant percentage of the population that are anti vaxxers.  If so, COVID could move from being something we are fearful of to just being just like the flu where we accept it is a small risk and get a vaccination each year. CCL and Ethereum followed the broad market up and the portfolio jumped almost 8% today and is back up to above the level at which this blog was started just about two months ago.  So, using a 20% decline as a measure of a bear ...

  Monday, December 20, 2021 -- $89,528.70  (+$5,655.62, +6.74%) The portfolio had a nice recovery today with CCL and Ethereum both recovering nicely.  However, if you are seeing daily gains of over 6%, then you are also likely experiencing similar sized daily losses and this can be stress inducing and not good for your portfolio's health nor your own health.

Friday, December 17, 2021 -- $83,873.08 (+$2,793.24, +3.45%) The portfolio came back a little, mostly on the strength of CCL recovering a bit.  People are finally starting to realize that Omicron really is super contagious so it will be interesting to see how this plays out.  With so much pandemic fatigue, it seems like people are reaching the point of saying, "if I get it, I get it" and dealing with the consequences.  If omicron is as infectious as it appears to be, then there is a good chance that most people in the country will be infected in next few months.  If true, this bodes well for the market since it would likely hasten the perception that we will be exiting the worst of the pandemic restrictions.

  Thursday, December 16, 2021 -- $81,079.84 (-$3,354.99, -3.97%) Perhaps Omicron's stickiness or the Fed's hawking tone has set the market spiraling downward today, and the portfolio took it on the chin, down almost 4%!  The talking heads will constantly make up explanations for why that market did what it did.  It kinda seems like they look at what the market did and then come up with an explanation that justifies what the market did, even though it really may have nothing to do with it.  I wish CNNfn or CNBC would simply say, "The market went up today and we really have no idea why" or, "The market, as usual, behaved in a mostly random manner today."

Wednesday, December 15, 2021 -- $84,434.83 (+$1,906.74, +2.31%) For most of the day the market and particularly my two portfolio mainstays, CCL and Ethereum, were down a lot, but both came back and CCL ended down a little while Ethereum went up enough to push the position into a net profit.  Even the Fed announcing an accelerated schedule of rate increases and pulling back on buying bonds did not seem to deter the market.

Tuesday, December 14, 2021 -- $82,528.09 (-$665.41, -0.90%) I picked up another 3 Ethereum coins to bring my total exposure up to 12 Ethereum.  With CCL drifting lower and the portfolio lost a little less than 1% today.  The Fed is meeting this week and with the high inflation readings, the general expectation is that they are going to signal a tightening of monetary policy. One of the primary ways the Fed fights inflation is through the money supply.  The growth of the money supply is fairly closely linked to inflation so if the growth of the money supply can be slowed down or reversed, inflation will likely follow.  Yet, even though there is the general expectation that the Fed will begin tightening, the exact wording they use will determine whether they are meeting the overall market expectation.  If so, then their action will have been priced in, and if not, we can expect the market to move in response to their announcement.

Monday, December 13, 2021 -- $83,193.50 (-$ 7,643.30, -8.41%) Another crushing Monday!  I am now back to more than $10,000 down since I started this keep-me-honest blog.  If you take away anything from this blog, please let it be that you understand with great risk often comes great loss.  Neuroscience suggests that the most powerful rewards are those that come somewhat randomly because a more consistent reward is simply adapted to by your brain and your dopamine releases are tempered over time by the consistency of hte reward and the expectation that it will come.  This why people often choose to gamble, despite knowing that they are, for the most part, donating money to the casino, that infrequent somewhat random reward of winning brings greater joy than the steady and slow loss of money hurts. To compound CCL crashing yet again, I upped my crypto exposure by purchasing another 6 Ethereum and, well, you can see how well that went--in a mere couple of days I am down...

   Friday, December 10, 2021 -- $90,836.80 (+$772.70, +0.86%) Well, I just pull the trigger on a small trade--I purchased three Ethereum "coins", and by the end of the day was up $153.77.  This should be an interesting upcoming week.  Omicron is starting to flex, though mostly in case numbers and not in fatalities.  It appears that it may be a somewhat weak cousin of Delta from a virulence perspective.  However, it was just announced today that inflation is not at 6.8% year-over-year, which is the highest rate in more than four decades.  Will this cause the Fed to tighten up to reduce the money supply--which, the theory says, will reduce inflation?  Only time will tell.  Stay tuned next week!

Thursday, December 9, 2021 -- $90,064.10 (+$3,656.32, +4.23%) It appears that the portfolio had a pretty decent up day.  Appearances can be deceiving!  I actually had a very good up day yesterday but did not get around to doing a portfolio snapshot and blog post, so the change in today is relative to two days ago.  Today was actually a down day with CCL, the largest position, down $0.33.  I feel like I should be a little more active so I will make a trade tomorrow!

Tuesday, December 7, 2021 -- $86,407.78 (-$1,094.53, -1.25%) The day started off well with CCL up almost $0.60 but things settled down by the end of the day and CCL closed down $0.09 at $18.50/share.  I wanted to reduce my CCL exposure a bit so I sold 18 CCL $19 Put options, and because CCL went down, I am up over $400 on that position.  But, even with that gain, I ended the day down a little more than $1,000.  Well, for my nerves at least, I needed a rather calm day for the portfolios

Monday, December 6, 2021 -- $87,502.31 (+$9,564.66, +12.27%) The Omicron variant is showing just how fickle the market is.  Today it appears that Omicron may not be as virulent as the Delta variant and the market is responding with resounding cheer.  The portfolio was up more than 10% for the day!

Friday, December 3, 2021 -- $77,937.65 (-$2,956.59, -3.65%) Omicron is spreading rapidly all around the world and the markets are spooked.  I really don't understand why, from day to day, it often seems like the markets vacillate between confidence  and fear.  Truly there is not much that is known today about Omicron that could not have been predicted yesterday.  And yet, the markets always seem surprised by such things.  If have a gut feeling that if I were a little bit (or a lot) brighter I could figure out how to make money from these semi-predictable not entirely rational, swings. My ZM options expired worthless and CCL sank so it was yet another down day.  As the world digests more information coming out about the Omicron variant, it should be interesting to see what Monday brings.

Thursday, December 2, 2021 -- $80,894.24 (+$5,560.77, +7.38%) Finally, CCL seems to have hit bottom and bounced up!  Unfortunately ZM is still free-falling.  Because I purchased put options to sell ZM for $200 that expire tomorrow, it is likely I will lose the full $5,300 that I purchased them for.  When "they" say you can lose everything by investing in options, "they" really mean it! Between CCL recovering and ZM crashing, I was still able to eke out a decent gain for the day!

  Wednesday, December 1, 2021 -- $75,333.47 (-$11,998.81, -13.74%) Yet another painful day.  The Omicron variant has now been found in San Francisco and the markets continue to be spooked by it.  Needless to say, CCL which relies upon the pandemic ending before it runs out of cash, took it on the chin yet again.  ZM also continued its freefall, which seems somewhat counterintuitive.  After all, if the pandemic is showing no signs of ending, then shouldn't a pandemic stock such as ZM show some strength?  What seems rational to me does not appear to sway the market.  So, guess who wins?  Well, it clearly isn't me. For those keeping score, the portfolio is down 19.82% in the month-and-a-half since I started this blog.  Painful yes, but I rest easier knowing that I am providing a record of why high-risk investing should, in most cases, be avoided.  Most people, and even companies, will go out of their way to cover up their failures, but fail...