Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Tuesday, January 30, 2018

At the Opening Bell...

Symbol     Qty    Asset    Price    Cost       Mkt Value
NFLX        2     Equity   277.20   503.31     554.60
MCD         3     Equity   176.80   530.76     529.50

CASH                                           418.73

                                 TOTAL VALUE: 1502.83

Today looks to be a rough ride. I set my stop limits using 0.5% rather than the 1% I've been using. I had a pretty good run with Netflix so there's no need to be greedy. As for McDonald's, its just hasn't done much and -- though it was up yesterday -- it's back to middling-to-poor this morning.

On the bright side, VelocityShares VIX Short Term ETN (VIIX) is moving up and looks to be a good place to park my money for the week. My positioning spreadsheet says 40 shares ought to do it.


A Quick Morning Update

Indeed, things looked quite bloody in the first 30 minutes and despite my rule about not making any trades the first 2 hours of the day, I switched my stop limit orders to limit orders and sold both Netflix and McDonald's. By the time they sold (it took a minute or two) and factoring in the commission fees, I was down $50.

However, I also had two candidates ready to take their place:

  • VIIX -- VelocityShares VIX Short Term ETN
  • VXX -- Barclays Bank PLC iPath S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures ETN

My reasoning was today, tomorrow, and maybe the rest of the week might be bumpy so a volatility fund should do pretty good. I picked a handful, reviewed their stats, and selected these two.

Within 20 minutes of purchasing these, I had made back my $50, was in the black, and moving upward. We'll see how this pans out for me over the next few days.

At the Closing Bell...

Symbol     Qty    Asset    Price    Cost       Mkt Value
VIIX       39     ETF      12.89    502.71     503.49
VXX        16     ETF      30.52    491.52     488.64

CASH                                           482.83

                                 TOTAL VALUE: 1474.96

Yikes. But, it couldn't been much, much worse. Today, portfolio down $46.19 (3.04%). If we take out the commissions (4 * $6.95 = $27.80) then we'd have ended up down only 1.8% or $27.87. But, we can't so we won't.

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