May 22 (Trade Plan)

Busted the tournament in Day 2 (200th out of 529). Ran into another damn 3 outer that crushed my stack and that was the start of the end. Exiting main hurts bad every time. I had managed to get my stack up 50% for the day. Felt good, near average. I had AQspades SB vs BTN. He raised PF in the BTN, I three bet in the SB and he called mandatory with K7s. the flop had a K on it with two spades. Check/Bet turn is an Ace, he checks I shove..he calls and hits a 7 on the river. If I had won that I’d have been above average and ready to compete for the end. I’m always super emotional after a tournament (When I bust to these ridiculous hands) after having put in hours and hours of concentration. The good side is that my game has never been better, I’ve been playing really well, I have confidence in the game I am playing and I guess eventually it’ll work out. I guess I got two day 2’s out of the trip. I busted the 1k with a BS hand as well as I previously wrote. That was 240 or so out of 1540…..One of these have to damn well connect. It’s never about the money, its all about the competition 🙂

When you’re early in the tournament you’re usually not at risk re your entire stack. It’s the day 2/3 when you need a few 80-90% EV hands to not run bad on you! I get it in with the best of it and just get run out of. I am running bad. I haven’t been able to get it in positive more than 1 time in a row deep in a tournament. Unfortunately, you need 2-3 good hands in a row to chip up and if I don’t get these I can’t win. I mean AA vs AK in 2018 vs Ryan Reiss, I had KQ on KQ8 in the barcelona to exit to 88. Or A8s vs A2o in the Barcelona main only for him to hit the 2. Blah. Any one of those 5-10% go the other way, I’d be deep running.

My trading account is hitting about 19% today which is the only positive thing today 🙂 I removed most of my Aug trades today and have dry powder. I was able to get 60 short puts sold for my factory but I wasn’t able to get on more STTs today which is annoying, well maybe not, there’s 10 min left in the day, maybe my orders will fill.

Off to Ottawa tomorrow for a comedian show and some meetings. Then I am making my way to Toronto and over to Moab for a wedding. The next tournaments will be Vegas WSOP. Let’s see how those go.

May 21 2019 (STT+BSH Trade Plan)

I just hit 18.5% for the year which puts me right on target for my expectations. I am hoping to hit 20% for H1 2019 (roughly 3.4% a month). I can compound monthly (and will) and after 3 years (36 months of compounding @ 3.5%) which should double money every 21 months..and 7x every 5 years 🙂 Let’s see how it goes with diligence and trade plan following. So far so good. Within the next 7 days I’ll close off Aug and probably Sep and I may start removing Oct as I’ve already got some good profit in there. Then I’ll just wait for another vol event and rinse repeat.

I am in MTL right now for a few tournaments, I got 240/1535 on the first one which was a speedy tournament with very quick blind levels. Busted TT vs AJ right relatively close to the bubble. I didn’t cash but was damn close. By far the best I’ve ever played, it’s not even close it’s a different level then even the last round of play and all due to the coaching arrangement I have setup w/ Ryan Laplante and CLC coaching. I’ve learned a ton and confidence is through the roof. Getting next level in the game and ready to get cracking and finally get a final table within the next year or two. If I can get some good runs near the end of a tournament that would set me up. I got deep yet again here (240 out of 1535!) but just had a cold few hours and the blinds were way to quick. The main event is 3x less speed and the WSOP events are like 10x slower. So I should have some good opportunities with the WSOP main events, MTL main and marathons.

Jun 23 – In Europe and trading update (HS3/STT)

I just arrived in Europe on the 12th (Hamburg) and made my way to Copenhagen to board a 24 day northern Europe cruise on the 27th. We’re here in Europe till the 31st of Aug and will probably hit up Poland, Southern Germany and Italy again.

There’s been a lot of trade evolution in the PMTT group. We’re moving at an exponential pace in simplification of the HS3 and STT trades via almost synthetically identical structures into a much more manageable and executable way. We’ve also added in methodology for campaign style execution which is relevant for me re size. The new evolution of the STT now includes built in BSH which is necessary while the new HS3 is now executable with ease in SPX. All in all, I think they’ll totally replace the originals. We’re solving for drawdowns, margin issues, risk, and increasing potential returns but first and foremost the key thing everyone seems focused on is how these things will react in a crash and exactly how can we minimise the stress of reacting in that type of environment. Crashes are emotional events and we need trades that react positively and don’t require high stress adjustments.

The last crash had challenged certain assumptions and I think has led to a solving of hopefully every potential issue that could come up with margin, margin expansion, broker calculations of said margin and draw downs. I Learned a lot. It’s changed my goal and mindset. I think it has for other people in the group as well. We’re now naturally and entirely focused on risk managements, draw downs, and ease of execution and management during crashes. The one question I always ask myself w/ a trade is how would this react in a crash, how can I neutralise the risk or lock in profits during said crash and what is the likelihood I’d need to react in such a way that would be stressful or against the market. I want to be happy and relieved during a crash and not stressed. The situation I found myself in Feb — can’t happen again

I feel like the last year or two has been a grand experiment in creating a complex option position that sucks premium out of the market in a fairly riskless way thats both scalable and profitable while maintaining all of the secondary requirements of margin, margin expansion, broker calculations etc. We’re in one of the toughest most complex games in the world and it’s no surprise perhaps that it’s taken this long to develop something. It is what it is. It’s a journey.

The recovery since Feb has been nothing short of breathless which is nice.

I’ve got about 180 units of HS3 @ EDF&man, 100 units of SPX HS3, 20 units of campaign style STT, 30 or so units of X4V14, 20 units or so of the new style STT. Ready to rock.