Go For Broke

Tuesday, November 30, 2021 -- $87,332.28 (-$7,150.70, -7.57%) Ouch!  Between the omicron variant spooking everyone and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell admitting that the inflation spike is going to be of sufficient duration that it should no longer be described as "transitory" the markets continued their downward trend.  CCL and ZM both went down and the portfolio suffered a substantial loss today.

  Monday, November 29, 2021 -- $94,482.98 (+$257.95, +0.27%) Finally, a day of relative calm.  ZM went down a little and so my ZM call options also went down, but this was made up for my CCL going up a little.  I did not make any portfolio moves today.   The market still seems scared of the omicron variant and its potential to wreck havoc and possibly motivate future shutdowns.

Friday, November 26, 2021 -- $94,225.03 (+$18,326.86, +24.14%) My gamble on ZM paid off, though not how I expected.  With news about a potential "super variant" COVID virus (B.1.1.529) roiling the markets, people went back to ZM as a potential beneficiary of bad news because further lockdowns would, again, increase the need for video conferencing.  Most of my ZM options expired today and I sold them, but I still have 5 remaining contracts that expire next Friday.  It will be interesting to see how ZM performs in the next week. At the same time, the portfolio was hit hard by CCL dropping $2.21/share today because the potential lockdowns could throw an enormous wrench into CCL's plans for restarting its cruise operations.  Fortunately, the gain from ZM more than made up for the loss on CCL on the day. So, over the course of the last six weeks, or so, since this investment blog was started, the portfolio has been up 20%, down 20% and is now back to just above even....

  Wednesday, November 24, 2021 -- $75,898.17 (-$4,956.62, -6.13%) This was a good news/bad news day.  CCL finally swung out of its last-30-years, record-typing losing streak of 12 consecutive daily losses to eke at a $0.01/share gain today.  Unfortunately, because I had loaded up on short-term options, the "juice" (or "premium") of those options was heavily reduced today as nearly at the expiration dates of the options. So, the bad news is that, despite CCL and ZM both not having down days, the portfolio plummeted almost $5,000 today.  At this point I am $38,824.40  (-33.84%) off of my high hit on November 5th.  In order to recover to those highs my portfolio would need to increase in value by 51.15%.

Tuesday, November 23, 2021 -- $80,854.79 (+$86.14, +0.11%) Yay! The portfolio value losing streak has been temporarily abated, if you can call a gain of a mere 0.11% an abatement.  It was not because CCL finally broke its fall, but because I made another rather crazy move into ZM, which announced earnings yesterday and a more moderate future forecast than watchers had hoped. To help give you some perspective on just how bad my timing is ... I increased my exposure to CCL on November 5th by keeping the shares purchased by the exercise of the option contracts.  Since that time, CCL has gone down in price on 12 consecutive days.  Prior to today, in the past 30 years, CCL's longest (and only) consecutive day losing streak was 12 days ending on 4/4/94.  As humans we frequently g et irrationally optimistic or pessimistic--in short we are often irrational.  Additionally, my purchasing $8,100 (almost 10% of my portfolio) of CCL call options last Friday that expire this ...

  Monday, November 22, 2021 -- $80,768.65 (-3,516.96, -4.17%) CCL has now suffered through 11 down days in a row.  My large bet on CCL  $20 call options that expire this Friday is getting crushed!  On the bright side CCL only fell by $0.16/share today to $20.33/share, so, maybe, it will have the legs to begin climbing soo.

Friday, November 19, 2021 -- $84,285.61 (-$2,882.18, -3.31%) I am, once again, attempting the rather foolhardy act of trying to catch this falling knife!  Although CCL dipped below $20/share, I did not actually pull the trigger until it had recovered to $20.48/share.  I purchased 100 CCL $20 call options that expire next week for $0.81/share for a total cost of $8,100.  If CCL closes next week below $20/share then I will have lost everything.