Jun 24 (last full day near Munich)

Yesterday, Ash and I took the Tesla in for servicing and got a loaner P85+ which was interesting to drive.  The differences?  This one is the + package which includes a different suspension, brakes and 21 inch rims.  It also included some auto pilot functions.  All in all, just a bit different.  We talked to a  few car dealerships in UK already about selling our Tesla in August.  The going price seems decent, we’ll probably put it with one of the dealers and do a cruise to end the trip (a cruise around either the British Isles or Scandinavia) rather than spend it in Airbnbs.  Ideally we can sell the car in August and get one in the US for Cayman.

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After dropping off the car, we then made our way into Munich for a little night out and ended up buying a few apple watches. I’ll probably only wear mine during work outs or market hours as a way to keep track of the market/alerts without having to pull my phone out and/or being distracted at my computer. Will be a bit of a game changer for that.  I’ve got it setup to display the RUT on my watch face 🙂

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After that, we went and found a few beer gardens to enjoy some TapX and also some Augustiner beer (my personal favourite).  You can’t export that beer, it’s got no preservatives and is brewed according to the purity law in Munich. Munich beer is just different. I don’t know how to explain it. The Augustiner beer history dates back to 1328 when the Augustinian brotherhood of monks brewed the beer in the Munich (which means monk by the way and so does Monaco).

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Today, we will go back to pick up the car and I’ll probably get a haircut and stop at a Vegan restaurant we found.  Tomorrow we depart for Wurzburg with a stop in Uln along the way.  We spend four days in Wurzburg then will make our way to Berlin for a week followed by Copenhagen for another week. After that, who knows!

 

 

Jun 23 – Trade Plan

The RUT has been on a tear breaking to all time highs (1293) while we entered at 1210-1220. This has put pressure on our RUT MIC trade and it’s sitting at break-even right now. I’ve been very diligent removing call spreads as we move up and I am happy we’re at break-even given the large move up which this trade hates. We’re in only 2/3rds unit as I couldn’t get a good entry for the rest.   We’ve got about half the call spreads off now. We still have some upside pressure but I expect the RUT to cool off around 1295-1300. I don’t doubt that by the end of the year, we’ll hit 1350 but not right now.  The big up move is likely due to the negative headlines and increased short pressure which tends to fuel these V recoveries.

The SPX has been lagging while the RUT is leading.  The SPX MIC trade is doing well up about 2.5%. As with the RUT MIC, we’re only 2/3rds entered this month.  I just couldn’t find good entries after that fantastic last month.

Overall both trades combined are sitting at about 1.5% with 14-20 days left in the trade. I wouldn’t expect much more than 4% for this month.

The protector alpha portfolio is doing fantastic due to some great picks in the healthcare/insurance sector. There’s been buyout rumours which have fueled huge runs in AET, CI etc.  I held CI which had a 30% run (just sold) and I currently hold AET and UNH.  The protector is up about 5% for the year vs SPY up 2.6% and we are fully hedged! I leverage this at about 6-7x because of its low risk fully hedged nature.  So for that, I am up 30-35% on equity less whatever the margin costs are.

So far the year is going very well, my account is at all time highs and I am expanding my options education. I never thought I could be so challenged w/ options as I am with the new material I’ve been learning via John Locke (M3, Bearish Butterfly, Rock and specifically the M21 trade). These are all non-directional theta based trades that are more or less based around the same concepts the MIC is but quite a bit more complicated.  Looking forward to implementing these strategies in the fall as a nice diversification to the MIC and protector alpha.

 

Germany (Pictures)

Ravensburg (Where they make those puzzles!)IMG_3808

Landsberg am Lech locksIMG_3800

Landsberg Am Lech during a hikeIMG_3781

Andech Monastery beers! Kingston is admiring them.IMG_3790

landsberg Am lech
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U-boat revealed
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Ravensburg poseIMG_3759Munich (Marienplatz) The start of the beer hall Putsch
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U-boat control room
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Landsberg Am Lech guard towerIMG_3770

Landsberg am Lech Umbrella crewIMG_3783

Landsberg Am Lech log pose #1IMG_3777

A beer in TurkheimIMG_3827

Trying on hats in Ravensburg museum
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Marienplatz, Munich
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RavensburgIMG_3823

There we go. Nice HatIMG_3816

Deutches Museum, Munich (Awesome!)IMG_3839

Entering Marienplatz
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Roar
IMG_3867More U-boat cut outs
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Jun 23 – Rammingen (near Munich)

We’ve been in Rammingen for the past 3 days and are staying in a fantastic airbnb that I’d recommend to anyone.  The drive took a bit longer than expected (8 hrs) and probably will be our longest of the trip.  It was relatively uneventful though fun to drive 160+ on the autobahn.  We stopped to charge in Ljubljana, Villach and just outside Munich.

The following day we checked out landberg am Lech and an the Andech monastery for some much looked forward to Monk beer.  The day after that we checked out Ravensburg and visited a museum there and bought some memory match games from the Ravensburger museum store. Ravensburg is a small town in Germany where all those puzzles/games you see at book stores are made (IE Camana Bays). The day after that we went into Munich and visited the Deutches museum which was awesome. They had a u-boat cut in half and that alone made the museum worth while to me. The kids loved it.

Jun 19 – About Koper

Koper is a little town about 25 mins from where we were staying. It was located at the bottom of the mountain that had really windy roads. For the most part we had no problem driving the Tesla up and down these roads. There were a few spots that were really thin and if there was another car coming we’d have to pull to the side but that only happened a few times.

Koper itself was a beautiful little town. We parked our car in the parking lot down by the port and it only cost us a few euro for a couple of hours parking. The port area is where a lot of the restaurants, bars, market and parks were located. They have 3 parks along the waterfront for children and, for the most part, the whole area is closed off to cars so we didn’t have to worry about our kids scootering around.

I was amazed at how clean the city was. There were garbage bins everywhere and I dont remember seeing a single piece of trash on the ground. Walking along the waterfront we came to a beach area. There were quite a few people there with their children just hanging out on the grass, playing in the playground or sandbox and a few brave ones were swimming in the cordoned off swimming area. It was a rocky beach with no sand but that might be normal for this area. Coming from Cayman Islands, this wasn’t really our type of beach 🙂

As always, we looked at Trip Advisor to see where we should eat lunch. There were about 70 restaurants listed in Koper and we were happy to see that two of the top ten places to eat where vegetarian! We headed to a little tiny place called Hisa De Rin. It had 3 (tiny) tables and it was packed. All the tables were taken and there were about 5 people ahead of us in line. The selection of food was quite small but the special of the day, or the Workmens meal as they call it, was Vegan. We ordered the special all around and it was a Vegan Moussaka. It was delicious! The portion size was huge and it only cost 5 euros. We visited that restaurant 2 times during or stay.

The old city part of Koper was quite small with one walkway through it that was lined with little cafes, shops and a few bars. We stopped at one of the cafes for a coffee and were happy that they had Rice milk. We saw that they had quite a few craft beers so we decided that we would head back there at some point for a beer.  Oh yah, for the beer drinkers out there, there is a cool app called Untappd which lets you track your beers, cheers friends, and find the coolest beers in whatever location you’re in.

Koper is quite a small little town but its definitely a nice one and, if driving by it, one should stop to check it out. The people are friendly, the waterfront is beautiful and you can get a great Vegan meal there too!

We rented a place on airbnb and it was located up a smaller mountain in a little town called Kostabona, just outside of Koper. The town only has about 50 homes, one restaurant and two churches. Our navigation stopped working as we went further up the mountain and we did get a little lost. Funny enough, after driving up a really tiny road, we turned around in a driveway and went back down the hill. It turned out, the driveway we turned around in was the place we were staying in.

The views from the house were pretty nice. Being out in the countryside meant there were a lot of bugs. For the most part we weren’t bothered by this but the girls weren’t too happy about the 3 scorpions that we came across. We all survived and all managed to get away, sting free.

Jun 18 – Last Day in Slovenia

This is our last day in Slovenia. This country was a huge surprise for us as we didn’t know much about it.  Koper and Ljubljana (pronounced L-yoo-ub-lee-anna) were some of the top small cities I’ve seen in Europe in my life this far. I am a pretty well traveled dude (I think) but this has made me realize I know very little I know even about European countries/cities. We went out in Koper last night and I was in awe at just how well put together and just how nice it was.  It was so clean, developed and “fine”.  Who would have thunk that Slovenia was like this? I didn’t. Pure ignorance.  Ljubljana was the same way, perfectly clean, pastel, serene and beautiful. We will definitely return to Slovenia.

We’ve got a lot of the itinerary complete now for Leg 2

1. Rammingen (Near Munich)

2. Wurzburg, Germany

3. Neudstadt, Germany

4. Cologne, Germany

5. Berlin, Germany

6. Copenhagen, Denmark

7. Stockholm, Sweden

8. Gothenburg, Sweden

9. Bergen, Norway

After that, it’s back down into mainland Europe and over towards UK/France. We depart back to Cayman on Aug 31.

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Jun 12 – travel

We depart tomorrow for Slovenia.  Verona was great, today we found some vegan burgers and craft beer with pretty awesome off-the-beaten path ambience.  During the day I had to get a slot machine ready for release.  It’s a new concept that is quite complicated and getting all the pieces to fall in place is proving difficult.  Lots of catch up today and I ended up falling asleep with my laptop on me and subsequently missed my Friday call :/.