Global Macro Trading Journal

Daal said:
This GBTC spread trade strikes me as a very good trade. The premium went twice to 100%, both times it imploded. I dont think it will be going there any longer, people have been burned. Right now its around 55%, maybe the most it goes to is 70-75%, but it can easily drop back down to 20% or even lower. I plan to put more of this trade on monday, if the spread doesnt move too much. Its a way to play the bursting of the bubble with more limited risk than other plays
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The action in GBTC on Friday was incredible.
Thursday December 21 close: $1,772

Friday December 22 open: $1,349
Intraday low: $1,155
Intraday high: $2,015
Friday December 22 close: $1,990 (up 12.3% for the day)

So a nice 12.3% gain on a day when Bitcoin declined in the 24 hours from 4pm Thursday to 4pm on Friday.

An even better 72% gain from the intraday low to the close. And a 74% gain from the intraday low to the intraday high.

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Daal said:
Right now I got a small short on BTC on kraken and a small GBTC short with long BTC as hedge (same $ amount). My assumption is that this is a dead cryptokittie bounce (the move from 10k to 14k), but hey, I'm not too attached to this view. If BTC goes through 15K/16K and holds there (trades there for more than 1 day) then the bubble is back on
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The level(s) I am watching are from the quasi double tops at:
(1) About 10am ET on Saturday December 23
(2) About 1.30am ET on Tuesday December 26

Bitstamp reached $15,756 at (1) and $15,592 at (2)
Bitfinex reached $14,999 at (1) and $15,399 at (2)
GDAX reached $16,261 at (1) and $15,710 at (2)
Worldcoinindex has a level of $15,484 for (2)

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Here is a little convexity tip worth huge money: analyze and don't underestimate ICOs. This is a mistake I made in 2017, I saw too many frauds and ridiculous ideas that I just stopped following them. I was wrong in doing that, since them I have seen some investors share some ideas/methods on how to pick them as well as their results and they have been stellar (no pun intended). You can make huge money in these things, regardless of the frauds and hypes. Netflix IPO'ed in 2002, GOOG in 2004, FB in 2012. This was well AFTER everybody knew the internet was going to change the world and tech was a great thing to invest on. It didn't matter, anyone who bought those IPOs made big profits. I can guarantee that there is some usages of decentralized blockchain technology that have not been thought of yet, one day someone will think of that and try out an ICO, if you invest in them you can get some ridiculous 100-1000x returns (I think the best ICO of all time is a 1000x and its still going)

Even in my simple alt coin strategy I already have some 3-5xs and all I did was to buy coins that were already 'old' and up huge already. In ICOs you are buying stuff bascially at the cost of creating them, no market premium or anything. But of course, you got to have a strategy, fraud filters, methods, etc. I cant share mine as its proprietary but developing an ICO strategy and continuing to look at them is probably the most profitable strategy one can develop right now in their trading/investing. Its like angel investing except without huge minimums, the need for connections, and all that bs
Even $100 invested in these things can turn into huge money
 
The ICO strategy and to some extent the Alt coin strategy, are way better than holding BTC and hoping it will triple again from here (which is what most people are doing). BTC will be lucky to have another 50% rally in it, a double or triple to me are extremely unlikely. In an ICO, a triple is like nothing
 
Daal said:
The ICO strategy and to some extent the Alt coin strategy, are way better than holding BTC and hoping it will triple again from here (which is what most people are doing). BTC will be lucky to have another 50% rally in it, a double or triple to me are extremely unlikely. In an ICO, a triple is like nothing
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I agree about it being difficult for Bitcoin to triple again from here. It might be running into the problem of the 'law of large numbers' at a market capitalization of $250 billion (or about $330 billion at the peak near $20,000).

Whereas even Ripple and Ethereum still are less than half of that. Then there's all the other coins outside the top 3. Coinmarketcap says TRON is now the number 9 coin, up over 100% in the last 24 hours, and I hadn't heard of it two days ago. Cardano did not exist one year ago, and it's now the number 5 coin. Just amazing.

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When I posted about the alt coin strategy I purchased this POE token. I put in something like $60 in it, I didnt check for 1 month. Now today I found out that the whole thing its worth over $1,200, and thats AFTER HitBTC robbed me 15% (and I`m never using them ever again). 20x in like a month, try that with BTC
Do yourself a favor and keep learning and finding plays in the tiny coin space, the fact that there is a bubble going on is irrelevant. As I mentioned, NFLX GOOG FB and many others ipoed well AFTER the bubble burst and people still made fortunes
 
m22au said:
I agree about it being difficult for Bitcoin to triple again from here. It might be running into the problem of the 'law of large numbers' at a market capitalization of $250 billion (or about $330 billion at the peak near $20,000).

Whereas even Ripple and Ethereum still are less than half of that. Then there's all the other coins outside the top 3. Coinmarketcap says TRON is now the number 9 coin, up over 100% in the last 24 hours, and I hadn't heard of it two days ago. Cardano did not exist one year ago, and it's now the number 5 coin. Just amazing.

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My post above is kind of funny - Bitcoin had a nice breakout roughly 12 hours ago at $15,500, and now it's at a high not seen for over a week, and (for today at least) money seems to be flowing out of Ripple and Ethereum and back into Bitcoin.

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I did the accounting for my last year results, it was a pretty good year. What I report in this journal tends to be my investing+macro results, so, backing out gains from day and swing trading. Its not easy to do the accounting because they are all mixed up in my brokers. But to be fair, I used a few tricks in order not to spend days working on it. If I take all my investing positions gains and then consider 1/2 of my crypto gains 'investing' and 1/2 short-term trading (so they would be removed from the results), my final return last year cames out at ~11%

Of that most of it came from:

Cryptos 2.9%
EWZ EWZS +2.7%
BRKB 2.3%
VWO 1.9%
BRL interest from futures (already subtracting the domestic inflation rate) and dividends from Brazilian REITs 1.9%

The biggest drags on return were:
-1% VRX
-0.9% PSH
-0.5% NYRT

I have an advantage because throught the year I will accumulate cash from trading gains, which usually I will reinvest in other things, generating from investing returns. I dont know how much extra returns I get from that but maybe it was 1% last year. So 10%, not bad for a part time macro trader
 
Daal said:
I did the accounting for my last year results, it was a pretty good year. What I report in this journal tends to be my investing+macro results, so, backing out gains from day and swing trading. Its not easy to do the accounting because they are all mixed up in my brokers. But to be fair, I used a few tricks in order not to spend days working on it. If I take all my investing positions gains and then consider 1/2 of my crypto gains 'investing' and 1/2 short-term trading (so they would be removed from the results), my final return last year cames out at ~11%

Of that most of it came from:

Cryptos 2.9%
EWZ EWZS +2.7%
BRKB 2.3%
VWO 1.9%
BRL interest from futures (already subtracting the domestic inflation rate) and dividends from Brazilian REITs 1.9%

The biggest drags on return were:
-1% VRX
-0.9% PSH
-0.5% NYRT

I have an advantage because throught the year I will accumulate cash from trading gains, which usually I will reinvest in other things, generating from investing returns. I dont know how much extra returns I get from that but maybe it was 1% last year. So 10%, not bad for a part time macro trader
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Just to clarify, does the 11% return relate only to your investing+macro transactions? Or does it include your "trading" gains as well?
 
m22au said:
Just to clarify, does the 11% return relate only to your investing+macro transactions? Or does it include your "trading" gains as well?
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I backout daytrading and swing trading results. In the case of crypto, its sorta investing, sorta day/swing trading, so I'm considering 1/2 of them investing, half of them day/swing trading. So half is not counted

The Dalio portfolio returned 12% last year, I'm not sure about the other default AA portfolios, havent had the time to check. So I lagged a bit that benchmark (which I consider more important than the S&P500 in itself, I'm not risking 50% drawdowns here), probably as a result of my put buying+shorting SPY tatically (which I lost around -0.75% in last year) and my unforced errors in stock picking. But I cant complain about that return
 
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