TIB: Today I Bought (and Sold) - An Investors Journal #379 - Italian Insurance, Europe Banks

Markets continue to perk up despite the Boeing news. Italy surprises again with an insurance stock hitting a profit target - I roll it over into Dutch bank, ING.

Portfolio News

Market Rally

Markets continued to move higher on higher January US retail sales.

The Federal Reserve is kept at bay by modest CPI numbers. Big index news is continued smashing of Boeing share price taking Dow Jones down for the day.

Pressure is building on the FAA to do something (hard to do without the flight data recorder data analysed) and accusations are beginning to fly about vested interests (Boeing (BA), South West Airlines (LUV) and American Airlines (AAL)) holding sway.

Brexit Bumbles

United Kingdom lurches deeper into a hole with Parliament rejecting the revised EU withdrawal deal.

British Pound gives up its gains. The economics of a no deal exit are a disaster for the country and its economy as Europe will shut its trade doors and everything will revert to one-by-one discussions. Financial services will migrate to European centres pell mell. There are a bunch of vested interests that are voting this down. Jeremy Corbyn wants to be Prime Minister. Keep rejecting stuff and there is a chance Labour Party wins an election. The Remainers want to stay and the best way to do that is run a 2nd referendum and hope this time the people vote to stay. They are confident they will get that vote as they sense British people have seen what a mess is coming along. So they voted down the deal. Lastly, the EU are being intransigent because they want UK to stay.

Of course, the whole thing is classic British Bumbles. Kick the can down the road until 17 days to go and then kick it down the road again. It'll be alright, mate - yeah right

Bought

ING Groep N.V. (INGA.AS): Europe Bank. Switched from Italian insurance to one of Europe's most successful banks. I have been a customer for years. What I like is the way the bank has set up challenger banks in attractive markets and operates at very low cost income ratios.

When I ran stock screens two weeks ago, ING was on the top of the list. Given the opportunity to exit Italian insurance I opted to add ING as a less risky way to run European interest rates, than the futures markets. Wait the time out and collect the dividend - if the bank has been able to generate returns in a low rate environment things can only get better (credit risk aside).

ING has outperformed all the other European banks I am invested in - I ran the charts (not shown)

Looking back since the depths of the European debt crisis in 2012 ING (black bars) has handsomely outperformed an index of European banks (represented by the Amundi Banks ETF (CB5.PA - blue line) by nearly 3 times. Of note is how strongly ING has bounced off the selloff lows compared to its peers.

Now I do have call options on ING. Here is an updated chart on the most recent trade - January 2020 strike 14 call options.

The price scenario was modelled in when I made the trade (left end of the blue rays). Price has done exactly what I feared it might - follow the red arrow scenario and turn almost exactly on to the blue arrow scenario. There is a way to go yet but there is still time to expiry (right margin)

Key statistics: price to Book 0.85 = a 15% discount to value of assets which have been stress tested and written down. Price Earnings of 8.75 compared to current 20.56 for S&P 500. Dividend yield of 8% - yes 8%

Sold

UnipolSai Assicurazioni S.p.A Italian Insurance. 12.2% blended profit since December 2016 and June/July 2017. Best return from averaging down was 15.4% (July 2017)

Who would have dreamed of making a profit in Italy in December 2016?

Cryptocurency

Bitcoin (BTCUSD): Price range for the day was $86 (2.2% of the high). Price tested lower in the middle of "no mans land" but did make a higher low = inching upwards.

Ethereum (ETHUSD): Price range for the day was $7 (5.2% of the high). Price pushed lower to take out prior day low but retreated at the short term support at $127 and closed exactly on the support level at $132. I have now extended that short term level (the purple ray). We do need to see a new high after 6 consecutive lower highs if this is to break higher - otherwise it is tickets to holding onto $132.

CryptoBots

Profit Trailer Bot Seven closed trades including one closing trade from PT Defender (3.54% profit) bringing the position on the account to 6.61% profit (was 6.27%) (not accounting for open trades). Not shown is XLM closing trade at a big profit which distorts the averages.

Dollar Cost Average (DCA) list grows to 5 coins with KNC and ZEC coming on. I failed to take KNC off the whitelist after the successful defence and was caught in a new trade which went straight to DCA. ZEC also completed PT Defence - this is a residual holding which needs sorting out. Average costs have become miscalculated.

Pending list drops to 9 coins with ZEC and XLM completing defences. Of the rest 7 coins improving, 1 coin trading flat and 1 worse.

PT Defender is defending 9 coins after completing defence of ZEC and XLM. I checked the overall ZEC trade flow in detail - some errors by the bot in calculating average costs - back into defence it goes to recover lost profits.

New Trading Bot Trading out using Crypto Prophecy. No closed trades.

Currency Trades

Outsourced MAM account Actions to Wealth closed out 1 trade for 0.25% profits for the day. Trades open on AUDCAD (0.09% negative)

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. Boeing logo is in the public domain from Boeing.com.au

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

CryptoTrading: Binance offers a wide range of crypto markets - pay by credit card - and low fees. https://mymark.mx/Binance

Bitcoin: Get started with mining Bitcoin for as little as $25 http://mymark.mx/Galaxy

March 12, 2019