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.
