TIB: Today I Bought (and Sold) - An Investors Journal #215 - US Regional Banks, Bulk Shipping
US Markets quake ahead of a potential trade war. Bids go in to protect profits in Shipping. Bids on US Regional Banks options trades are accepted.
Portfolio News
Tariff Tantrum All the talk from the talking heads is about the $100 billion tariff tantrum round 2. Markets certainly reacted strongly on Friday and quietly smacked 2% off the US markets to make a down week by the end of it all. Maybe it is just a big game of bluff. Who will blink first?
Time to put some numbers on this all. The table below is 2017 cumulative trade data with the US by country. The top 15 countries account for 75% of the trade.
https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/highlights/top/top1712yr.html
China exports about 4 times more than it imports from the US. This suggests that China needs to buckle first. They cannot afford not to. Of note for other trading partners accounting for more than 5% of trade with the US, two are trading at double deficits (viz, Germany and Japan). Canadian and Mexican trade is roughly in balance which is ultimately what Donald Trump wants to achieve overall = ROUGHLY in balance.
Bought
Huntington Bancshares Inc (HBAN): US Regional Bank. My bid for January 2020 15/22 bull call spread was taken up for a $1.61 net premium (10.7% of strike). How does this look on the chart which shows the bought call (15) and 200% profit as blue rays and the sold call (22) as a red ray with the expiry date the dotted green line on the right margin?
Price has been working steadily from the 2012 lows and then corrected in the flash crash in 2016 with two consolidation phases showing. I fully expect price to consolidate for a period and then to resume its upward trajectory when the Federal Reserve raises rates again. I have modelled two of those consolidations and cloned them across to now. If we get the pink arrows, the trade will make 200% profit only. The blue arrows will make breakeven. My thinking is that we will see more rate rises in the next 21 months than we have seen in the prior 10 years, which should give the price moves a steeper and a longer run. That could then deliver a maximum profit trade.
A quick reminder from TIB214 of the investing thesis - HBAN is underperforming some of the leading regional banks. Another way to look at the chart is to put one of those other banks - Suntrust (STI - orange line) and see where price ends up if the gap is closed. Price will comfortably make the blue arrow run just by closing the gap (i.e., without any move in the STI price).
Sold
Bulk Shipping I put in sale orders on Star Bulkers (SBLK) and Safe Bulkers (SB) for Friday trade - they were not taken up. Down days are never good days to be selling - I am figuring the bids will be taken up when the market relaxes a little from the panic.
Cryptocurency
Bitcoin (BTCUSD): Price range for the weekend was $594 (8.4% of the high) with price respecting the low from Friday at $6510 and trading 3 days with higher highs.
CryptoBots
Outsourced Bot No closed trades on this account. Problem children (>10% down) list was unchanged - ETH, ZEC, DASH, NEO, ENG, EOS, STRAT, ETC, XLM, ADA, QTUM, BTG, ARK, GAS, OMG.
OMG did make a strong move on a deal in South Korea - not enough to get it off the list.
Profit Trailer Bot No trades.
Dollar Cost Average (DCA) list was unchanged with 3 coins worse, 2 better and 3 unchanged. I will switch this over teh trading ETH pairs this week.
New Trading Bot No change as this is now under buy and hold management and the bot is not trading. Overall loss average is improved to -44% (was -46%) with NEO still the worst performer at -60%. Best performer is BTC at -30%
Currency Trades
Forex Robot did not close any trades and is trading at a negative equity level of 12.4% (higher than prior day's 11.3%).
Outsourced MAM account Outsourced forex trading account with Actions to Wealth closed out 2 trades for 0.18% profits for the day.
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 Bloomberg.com and Google Search. Trade data is credited below the image. 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 http://mymark.mx/Galaxy
April 6, 2018
I am amazed by the scale of your work on market analysis and news. This is so much understandable. Your articles definitely deserve more than 42 cents! This is the best analyst I've ever seen here. Thank you for doing this job and sharing with us.
Thanks. The good news is I create more the $0.42 worth of value by trading and investing better each time I discipline myself to write it down.
And for sure, I do not make the same mistake twice.
thank you for sharing @carrinm, a very good investment. always success