Stop #2 – Krakow, Poland

We flew into Vienna, spent 7 days and rented a car and made our way to Krakow, Poland. The rental car place told us we couldn’t go through Czech and possibly Poland (but they had to confirm). I told them don’t worry about it, we weren’t going there anyways lol. We did. Those types of small things give me pleasure.

The drive took I think about 4-5 hours. Krakow was one of my favourite stops this trip. Not what I expected. Everything was super cheap, people were friendly and it felt less touristy then other stops. I’ll be going back. We checked out the salt mines but not Auschwitz (next time). The vodka was like $1euro a shot for premium stuff. Delicious. of course we got Perogies several times. I am half Polish so on Christmas Eve, we eat Perogies and Cabbage rolls as a tradition.


The Salt Mines


Enjoying a big beer on a patio. Good times


The kids hanging out next to some sites


Kingstons face as I tell him about Ron Bertino’s Space Trip Trade


Looking Cool as Fuck

This summers Road Trip – Intro and Stop 1: Vienna

This past summer we did a 7 week road trip that started in Vienna and ended in Salzburg. Might be wondering how we pulled off 7 weeks of road trip and only ended up 3 hrs away, well we did one huge ass loop.

1. Vienna, Austria
2. Krakow, Poland
3. Lower Silesia, Poland
4. Dresden, Germany
5. Hanover, Germany
6. Frankfurt, Germany
7. Heidelberg, Germany
8. Aschaffenburg, Germany
9. Freiburg, Germany
10. Tuttlingen, Germany
11. Como, Italy
12. Ranco, Italy
13. Arona, Italy
14. Turin, Italy
15. Lyon, France
16. Milan, Italy
17. Strasbourg, France
18. Nuremburg, Germany
19. Salzburg, Austria (dropped car off)
20. Munich, Germany (By train rom Salzburg)

We always airbnb it except in one area (Arona) where we stay at an amazing B&B (it’s our 5th time)–>Cascina Incocco–>Which I’d highly recommend to anyone. It’s one of my favourite spots.

Some pics from the first stop on the trip:


On the way there!

Vienna – First Stop! Augustiner Yep.

A painting in Emma’s memory match. We’re ticking them off while we travel. Egon Schiele


On to Krakow!

Dec 16 – March Rhino M3 Trade Entry

Not much going on. Trades gained some value today. Nice little down day in the SPX and flat for the RUT.

I entered some March Rhinos

50 x RUT:1290/1340/380 @ 2.19
75 x SPX 2120/2200/2260 @ 4.00

A bit far out but I do like to enter around 88DTE anyways.

I’ve converted most of my Jan trades into more M3 like structures today with the drop. I worry about a slow grind up for the rest of the holidays so figured I’d jump in front of that with some calls and futures hedge. Low volume rarely gets sold into. I do expect some January weakness though.

Post Fed – Dec 15

Yesterdays downward bias post Fed was very welcomed but it seems the momentum is gone and we’re probably melting up to the 2300/2320 area for end of year. This may mark the top of the market short term (through H1 2017). My guess is RUT tops at 1395 area (perfect yearly pivot), SPX at about 2320 and DJIA at about 20030. This means there will be more strength in the large caps vs the small caps and then we should putter out into inauguration and be met with probably some unknown volatility causing events which should be reasonable given the tweet storms and world economical issues present already and not to mention issues (potential china devalue?) from a rising dollar + rate rise.

But who knows re any of those calls, this is an interesting time re metals, bonds and currencies and anything could happen (China devalue?). The insanely strong USD can cause many issues and the rate rise yesterday caused a big dump of china bond futures. US is really the first to break away and raise rates and no matter how you slice it, this will cause the unraveling and pain in other countries who haven’t followed suit. That can and probably will cause contagion and come right back around full circle. The 2nd largest economy in the world is directly affected by a US rate rise, rising(exploding) USD and this probably will have consequences on the equities market eventually.

I’ve got some ES futures on as upside hedges but if we truly do melt up, there’s no profit to be had until some sort of pull back. I hope that things don’t continue to follow the script (Santa rally) but it probably will. As is usual, any trades that I started before the last rally are now 7% above its starting point and are essentially fighting for a break-even result. When will this market environment end. We’ve had massive up moves on Brexit, Trump election and now the standard impending Santa rally. Sick and tired of 7% up cycles each and very time. When we have any period that’s 5% or less on the upside, I’ll be rejoicing as will my P/L. Until then, patience and smart trading knowing that volatility shall soon return and HOPING that perhaps this marks a major market top soon and we have many years of bearish volatility 🙂

Any new trades I start now (pricing is bad, so probably not) would then have another 5% before too much trouble on the upside. The problem is, in this type of environment, pricing is shitty all across the board, you pay more, which means you have more upside risk AND if the market does fall apart, vol increases and those same positions get relatively cheaper. Lose-Lose. Fighting two issues (Vol and negative delta). So not only are the current trades crap until we sit below 2250, but pricing may be weak to start new ones. Any dips or increased vol would be welcome both for existing trades and for starting new ones.

Market Calls

Back in Sept or Oct I posted this:

“My guess if I had to state one is that we’d see some more weakness into October and probably touch 2040 and rebound up to 2300/2400 into the end of the year.”

This is like 10/10 on specific longer term market calls that I’ve gotten and recorded in the blog but I’ve never actually followed or traded accordingly. I am running hot and made no money from it lol. Like many of you, I read tons of sources, follow technical indicators, information galore, and I generate a pretty decent read on the market more longer term etc etc but it’s more out of interest and little changes are made on my non-directional trades. If I really thought it’d touch 2040 in Oct and blast to 2300 by Dec, I wouldn’t even be in any BWB trades, I’d just go long. I should apparently swing trade longer term directional. Ah I hate these uber bull markets. Looking forward to the days markets don’t go up 47% in 7 months or have +7% cycles 🙂

Dec 13 – Where have I been!?

Hi everyone,

Been a very long time since my last post. I go in these ruts (no pun intended) usually when I am traveling which is antithesis to the point of this blog. What happens when I travel? I get way behind in every aspect of my life. I have a business that I still have obligations to and I have to manage the trades of which at some points I have 13-14 different ones on. I have to find a way to keep this active while traveling. I have a 3rd kid on the way so I think I’ll have less traveling in my short term future and more at-home time 🙂

The market hit a historical RSI on the DOW of 89 and is just short of the 20k target. What a damn move. What’s been going on with trading since I last posted? I didn’t hit any of the expected targets I had 🙂 The way I trade means that any upside move of about 5%+ in a 45 day cycle effectively neuters and kills my trades. We’ve had that since October and then some. But I’ll go through some of what I did

On election night, I had entered with a more M3 like structure, flat to the upside with calls and futures that I bought right before. Expecting a Hilary win and a subsequent rally. Then on election night it was clear DT was going to win and the futures limited down at -5% (-7% from the futures high that night). On the bounce to about 2070 I decided to remove the futures upside hedges thinking we’d have volatility and to help protect the downside. Big mistake. The market never looked back and we have now hit 2275 in a month. Somewhere around 2150 I added future hedges again to help with the upside after reviewing all the sources I have..they helped but again I removed them too early at 2215/2220 with expectation to normalize the trades and get them back to a traditional structure. Right now all my expirations have been blown through on the upside (Jan and Feb). I had some reprise and recovery about a week ago when RUT and SPX had a down move and I got out of things or adjusted but it wasn’t enough. The last upside move completely took out the upper end. Likely that my Oct-Jan are dead months re P/L (but I guess that’s not too bad given the historic size of the moves eh?). I mean the RUT is up 47% from its Feb low and up 22-23% since Trump? WTF!

Here are how they look for January:

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screen-shot-2016-12-13-at-2-09-52-pm

I need to add more upside hedges to the one trade and add some more theta closer to the money as I am now entering the sea of death. I want to wait until after the FOMC tomorrow. We are insanely over-heated, at historic levels on all aspects (why is this a common theme the past 12 months?) so I am being a bit more patient. My guess, we probably hit 2300/2315 area before putting in a major top. The Russel already hits its yearly pivot and hasn’t had strength to match the SPX, DOW and Nasdaq. Let all of them hit their targets and we probably start moving down as the Trump honeymoon starts to damper into his inauguration.

When RUT hit 1393, I sold call credit spreads and I am doing the same with SPX at 2172 on every large push up. Looking at Feb 2425/2400s and Mar 2450/2425s. Not convinced that we blow by all the yearly pivots and continue up past Trumps inauguration this overheated nor do I think his economics will come to fruition. Rallies are built on hope and this is just what it is. The guy is a firehose on twitter and I don’t think everything is just roses and pink elephants through his inauguration and into March. My stop will be around 2340 which is 15-20 points above where I think we top out. On any large dips I’ll likely remove risk and take profits.

More to come on Feb trades soon…