TIB: Today I Bought (and Sold) - An Investors Journal #273 - Fixed Interest, Europe Steel, Altcoins (BAT)
A surprise move on EU-US trade cheers markets. Facebook scares tech stocks after hours. I face a challenging choice to replace a maturing fixed interest position. Changes afoot in the crpyto bot trial.
Portfolio News
Market Jitters - Tariff Tantrum US-EU announced a program of talks to work toward zero tariffs from non-auto industrial goods.
The market took heart and lifted. The encouraging part of the lifted mood was a rise in a number of emerging markets (Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Mexico, Turkey, Taiwan, Indonesia). It is not all good news for my portfolio stocks as both US Steel (X) and AK Steel (AKS) fell in after hours markets. Also in after hours markets Facebook (FB) was smashed down 20% on earnings - this will hit my technology ETF's tomorrow (XLK and SOCL).
Not a word mentioned about automotive tariffs but results from US producers (Ford, GM, Fiat Chrysler all reporting) indicated that tariffs on steel and aluminium are affecting costs and China actions are affecting sales in China. Department of Agriculture took action to help farmers affected by tariffs and EU agreed to take more US soy beans.
Meanwhile the interest rate moves get back on track with US Treasury yields rising for a 2nd day.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/25/us-bonds-and-fixed-income-fresh-economic-data-in-focus.html
Beach Energy (BPT.AX): Australian Oil Producer. My research house sent out a sell signal after the quarterly operations results were announced. I thought the results looked great with 30% uptick in volumes and 20% uptick in net price achieved for oil and gas in the Australian markets. They have also increased reserve estimates and paid down a large slice of debt to bring long term debt to equity to a low 26%. Capital expenditures were also lower. I am choosing to ignore the sell signal and will hold for a while longer with a reduced take profit target.
Qualcomm (QCOM): US mobile chip producer presented strong results and announced that they would not be following up on their acquisition of NXP Semiconductors even though the deadline for the deal closing had not been reached (July 26).
They cited the trade dispute as having changed the playing field totally. Earnings were more than 30% better than estimates suggested. They also announced a massive stock buyback. Share price jumped 6.2% in after hours trading. My last trade was predicated on the Chinese approving the NXP deal - what now? Bail or Pray? A worrying feature of earnings was the possibility that Apple would not use Qualcomm modems on the iPhoneX.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/25/qualcomm-earnings-q3-2018.html
Sold
Asian Development Bank 3.5% BDS 25/07/18 (AU0000ATBHM9): Maturity for fixed income security bought by prior fund manager. 3.3% capital loss from initial purchase in May 2015 - just less than one year's interest payments. Given my current view that interest rates are set to rise in the near to medium term it is challenging to find a replacement that will not also incur a capital loss. My normal instinct would be to shift the capital into some dividend paying opportunity (this is in my pension fund) but the talking heads are beginning to suggest that bond yields at the shorter duration are beginning to look more attractive than dividend yields (and less risky).
Income Trades
With steel tariffs holding back European steel stocks, I am not expecting big things to flow from European Steel in the short to medium term. I added my 2nd Europe Steel stock to the Income trades club. I am happy to sell if price moves 5% in a month. Equally, I am inclined to hold the stock for the longer term in the event that price drops somewhat more than it has already.
ThyssenKrupp (TKA.DE): Europe Steel. Sold August 2018 strike 24.5 calls for 1.78% premium (1.77% to purchase price). Closing price €23.19 (new trade). Price needs to move another 5.6% to reach the sold strike (new trade). Should price pass the sold strike I book a 6.4% capital gain.
I already have covered calls on Arcelor Mittal (MT.AS) the other big European steel producer.
Cryptocurency
Bitcoin (BTCUSD): Price range for the day was $426 (5.0% of the high). Price took a break and held off at the $8400 resistance level I drew in yesterday - it is just not ready to clear $8500 making an inside bar again
Ethereum (ETHUSD): Price range for the day was $22 (4.5% of the high). Price mirrored what BTC did in stopping short of making a new high and respecting the $475 resistance level and an inside bar. Volatility was again lower than BTC.
CryptoBots
Outsourced Bot No closed trades. (213 closed trades). Problem children stayed at 18 coins. (>10% down) - ETH (-44%), ZEC (-48%), DASH (-60%), LTC, BTS, ICX (-64%), ADA (-47%), PPT (-72%), DGD (-63%), GAS (-74%), SNT, STRAT (-59%), NEO (-69%), ETC (-43%), QTUM (-62%), BTG (-66%), XMR, OMG (-46%).
Altcoins did a little better today with a few coins improving 2 or 3 points. GAS (-74%) remains the worst.
Profit Trailer Bot Seven closed trades (1.97% loss) bringing the position on the account to 0.92% profit (was 1.01%) (not accounting for open trades). As expected BAT hit its stop loss.
Because of the double down DCA strategy, the losses were uncomfortable. These stop losses arrived after 56 consecutive winning trades at an average 1.59% profit. I have changed the DCA strategy to remove the doubling down and to change the entry strategy for DCA purchases. I have set the bot to trail entries only if price moves outside the lower Bollinger Bands and retrace. I have done a quick check to confirm that the bands are more often than not inside the 10% stop loss level. Here is a chart on a coin that came out of DCA (ZRX)
Timeframe is 15 minutes. Dotted green line was entry price. Dotted pink line is DCA buy level. Bot will trail from there and find an entry once price bounces. Dotted red line is stop loss (-10%). Bollinger bands are set at 40 bars. New test is to trail a buy one level of DCA when price is 2% below the lower band. The two arrows show possible entry points which are inside the stop loss distance. As it happens this trade would have entered at the same point under both strategies (the middle blue arrow)
There are no coins on the Dollar Cost Average (DCA) list with ZRX moving off and onto profit after one level of DCA and BAT stopping out.
There are currently no trades open. The possible buy list shows how altcoins have had a strong 24 hours with only 3 coins down compared to ETH. They will most likely be the next trades made as they recover.
Pending list remains at 10 coins with 7 coins improving, 1 coin trading flat and 1 worse. Worst coin was EOS after a big day the day before and best was AION letting go of -70%. This list shows how the cycle of crypto goes. BTC up, altcoins go down and lag a few days. Then the buyers return for altcoins if BTC keeps ahead.
New Trading Bot Positions dropped 1/2 point to -47.5% (was -47.0%)
NEO and LTC traded flat and ETH and BTC dropped a little.
Currency Trades
Forex Robot did not close any trades and is trading at a negative equity level of 3.9% (higher than prior day's 3.6%). This has been a long spell of no closed trades. I did check that the robot was running and the VPS was alive.
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. Yields image comes from CNBC.com. 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
Crypto Trading: get 6 months free trades with Bitmex for leveraged crypto trading. http://mymark.mx/Bitmex
Bitcoin: Get started with mining Bitcoin for as little as $25 http://mymark.mx/Galaxy
July 25, 2018
Grear approach on fixed income as most of the high dividend yield stocks are subject to risk that could impact future cash flows and this the dividend. Inflation is a risk to consumer staples and financials could get hit due to yield curve flattening. Oil could remain strong given price action which could help maintain the yields but I would say fixed income is better, potentially quaility names that need to issue debt now as rates rise.
Small complication is I am looking at AUD fixed income. There is a solid market of so called Kangaroo bonds of US corporate borrowers with low credit risk. They are doing a carry trade model relying on no strong rise in AUD. i will have to find a broker that offers access to those.
We are a way off rissing rates in Australia - that reduces my capital risk.
hallo @carrinm
I want to ask approximately how much the prediction of Steem Dollar prices later this year
I do not make price predictions
thank you @carrinm
good luck always with you :)
I really want to be a successful person like you,
but very few rewards that I get from each of my posts.
let me ask for just one key to your success because of more experience in steemit.
After nearly two years here I have posted almost every day on two topics. Investing (bitcoin) and Photography. I tell stories and I write new material all the time. Keep posting is step 1.
Tags are really important - write about topics in the leading tags. Photography is a big one. And tags that are relevant to your audience.
Commenting with added value helps build followers. Example: you asked me about a Steem price prediction. A better way is to make your own prediction with some evidence (a chart) and then ask "what do you think?"
Harder advice: audience is mostly English speaking. Post in Indonesian and also in English. Use Google translate to translate for you BUT check what it suggests. That way your English gets better.
Stop upvoting your own comments. Use your voting power to support other people whose posts you like. The minute I see personal upvotes, I go away.
Summary: make great content. Add value to great content. Use English too.
Thank you very much @carrinm
This is very useful advice for me ..
i will try to make the content better. and if one day my content value is greater, I will keep in mind that you are in that success.
And really look forward to your support.
Great works,a very useful program,i really support once the program,thanks for sharing,@carrinm
Thanks for sharing...
good information and notifications @carrinm, thanks for sharing.