An ugly week of choppiness. This is the week to stay away from markets. Tough too to see crypto join the selloff - not a problem if you are not selling - I was not
Portfolio News
In a week where S&P 500 dropped another 1.21%, my pension portfolio dropped 3.25% dragged down by drops of over 10% in De Grey Mining (DEG.AX) and Uranium and Solar stocks. European financials did bounce after the selloff the week before.
The market chopped up and down all week with fear about the Omnicron variant and the fear was topped up with a weaker than expected jobs report.
Big movers of the week were eSports Mogul (ESH.AX) (+16.7%), Providence Resources (PVR.L) (+12%), Gazprom (OGZD.IL) (+8%)
The conspiracy theorist in me is beginning to question what is happening in the alternative energy space with solar and uranium stocks taking a bashing in the weeks since the Glasgow COP26 summit ended. It feels more than rising interest rates, blocked supply chains and chip shortages that are driving the selling. With New World Order conspiracists touting a global population cut to 500 million, we will not be needing all the alternative energy capacity that is building.
Crypto booms
Bitcoin price pushed higher to start the week and started pushing up to test $60,000 a few times and then fell over 27% when stock markets collapsed in Friday trade. Price did recover some of the losses finishing the week 10% lower than the open.
All the altcoins followed the market down but mostly recovered some of the losses. HIVE did make something of a recovery and then the selling came back over the weekend with price 34% down from the December 3 open. A lot of profit taking after the huge run last week.
GALA also dropped 34% in the selloff - sure pleased I saw the peak when I did.
Bought
Huntington Bancshares Inc (HBAN): US Regional Bank. Replaced stock assigned in October 2021 at 4.3% premium to assigned price. The trade idea is to ride rising interest rates.
JSC National Atomic Company Kazatomprom (KAP.IL): Uranium. Uranium has been a strong market since the March 2020 lows but has pulled back appreciably in recent weeks. KAP is the leading world producer of uranium - it is 2nd in the holdings of the Global X Uranium ETF (URA).
I am always looking for laggards inside the ETF's. I am already invested in Cameco (CCJ) and Centrus Energy (LEU) in the pension portfolio and in Paladin (PDN.AX) in another portfolio. I added KAP as it is number 2 and based on the recent pullback in price.
The better way to analyse is to do price comparatives of the Global X Uranium ETF (URA - the bars in this chart - which has risen 224% since the March 2020 lows). Of note, of the top 10 holdings in the ETF, only two are doing worse than the ETF. These top 10 account for 67% of the holdings that tells me the laggards are in the bottom 23% and that might be where the opportunity lies.
Now I do know a little about the leader - Paladin Resources (PDN.AX). Paladin has two uranium mines which have been mothballed. They are in the process of doing a restart project with a 17 year life of mine for the Langer Heinrich mine in Namibia - i.e., not even producing and committing $81 million to restart. This suggests a walk through other mines in this restart situation and build a small holding
I have run the price comparatives back to more recent cycle highs and lows. The June 2021 cycle offers up UEC and NXE and underperformers out of the top 10.
https://etfdb.com/etf/URA/#holdings
PayPal Holdings, Inc (PYPL): Payment Services. Averaged down my entry price - this is a contrarian call following the earnings guidance which knocked the price. PayPal has a few challenges and has done some strange things - like closing off business in Thailand - but they are still the largest online payments provider in a world doing more and more online shopping.
Sold
No sales
Shorts
iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT): US Treasuries. Get back from a day away and see that my broker has closed my short Treasury position citing margin violation for a loss of 5% since October 15. I figure they worked out that the account may not hold short positions and they should have settled the assigned short put as a cash settlement on October 15. I thought I had enough USD to fund the buyback but I did do a pension transfer in the week which reduced US Dollar balance - they sold Euros and British Pounds to fund the shortfall.
I am going to stay away from trying to use this stock to trade rising interest rates. Inflation numbers are ticking higher, the Fed is committed to accelerating the bond purchase taper (which takes out a net buyer of bonds in the market) yet investors head back to buy Treasuries when they get scared = message => when markets are scared do not go short US Treasuries
Cryptocurrency
LeoFinance (LEOHIVE): Leofinance.io is a blogging platform sitting in front of the Hive blockchain. It has its own token (LEO) in addition to the HIVE token. Price has been languishing for a while - I took the chance of a high HIVE price to sell some HIVE and buy LEO. I will power the LEO up to increase my staking and curating rewards on LeoFinance.
Currency of the Internet (COTIBTC). COTI are building a next generation payments system - fast and scalable based on proof of stake. Price has broken through the downtrend and MACD divergence is evident. I bought a standard $200 holding as part of New Rising 10 portfolio.
Gala Games (GALABTC). GALA is the coin used for payments within the Gala Games infrastructure. I bought a small parcel a few months ago as a friend is a keen gamer and said this was a strong environment - he did offer me the chance to buy into operating a node at the time. I felt that was a bridge too far but I did buy some coins. Price has been on a tear - I sold half the stake and went back to BTC for 844% profit in 77 days = happy with that.
With half of the remaining stake I have added this to a Gala/USDT liquidity pool on Binance which promises a 35% APY. So far it is working - I was providing one third of the pool liquidity when I started.
Loopring (LRCETH): With the big sell off in Ethereum and Bitcoin on Friday, some altcoins sold off even harder. Loopring was one such with price dropping below the previous cycle low - I have been looking at entering this as part of the new Rising 10 Portfolio - got a chance at the weekend with the fall against Ethereum bigger than Bitcoin - so I sold ETH
Income Trades
A quiet week for income trades with 4 covered calls (2 US 2 Europe) and 2 naked puts written (both US)
With the unexpected buyback of the TLT short position, I will have to manage the naked put exposure in my pension portfolio as I do not have enough cash holdings to cover a full slate of assignments. It would be good if the market could step up a little.
Currency Trades
Australian Dollar (AUDUSD): Sold US Dollars to raise funds for pension payments. I did not pick the timing but the rate was not a bad one for buying AUD - just as price dropped below the previous lows.
Cautions: This is not financial advice. You need to consider your own financial position and take your own advice before you follow any of my ideas
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November 29-December 3, 2021