Revival of The Laughing Man's challenge account and other stuff ~~The beginning and end of The Laughing Man’s trading journal~~

Trading Journals
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This is the beginning and possibly the end of my trading journal for the challenge account. The images below should be sufficient in explaining why. I have completely failed.

Account peaked on this day:

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Account after RSX puts expired:

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After the boom from the Russia-Ukraine war plays in late Feb - early March, I made a series of bad trades (along with the expiry of RSX puts) which snowballed into destructive losses. My account value is currently $71 and holds 5x HMHC 25c May 20.

The following are the losing trades which occurred in March:
8x WEAT 11c Mar 18: -$587.68
3x CORN 26c Mar 18: -$144.10
5x VALE 23c Apr 14: -$110.50
5x UVXY 15c Apr 1: -$9.79
5x UUUU 12c Apr 14: -$37.00
2x UNG 20c Mar 18: -$49.36
1x SPY 445p Apr 1: -$100.08
4x AMC 13p Mar 25: -$185.01
1x SPY 435p Mar 25: -$253.04
3x SNDL 0.5c Jan 20 2023: -$32.70 (Yes I sold so I could have cash to enter other plays)
1x HYMC 1.0p Apr 14: -$11.04
1x GME 380c Apr 1: -$29.50
1x GME 510c Apr 14: -$139.03

and of course, my worthless RSX puts:
3x RSX 5.5p Mar 18: -$547.29

At this point, I’m tempted to throw in another $1000 to try to regain everything I lost, but that’s asking for a 2x in account value. It also seems like throwing more money into the account without any plans is just gambling. What upsets me the most is I’m not even sure if I learned anything. I understand that importance of timing your entry and that it’s necessary to average down when trading options, but saying and doing both of these things is so different.

The only thing stopping me from putting more money into my account right now is that I’m having trouble with the 2-factor authentication needed when making a deposit that I plan to resolve in the coming Monday. After my account issue is resolved, it’ll probably take a week for the funds to transfer over, meaning I probably can’t trade for the entirety of next week (which is probably a blessing in disguise).

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Best advice I can offer as someone who has destroyed his account before: throw in $200. Play a single option at a time and focus everything you’ve got on that one play at a time and prioritize taking profit you like to see (can’t stress enough that % are more important than $ when you’ve got a smaller account).

Another thing I’ve done is grow $200 to $2000, pulled out $1500, and tried to get back over 1, taking funds out and dropping back to $500 each time. It helps get you used to growing small balances into larger ones and gets a better appreciation for taking gains when you see them because it’s so much easier to blow your entire account on a single play when you don’t have much in there.

The Russia plays were a bitch, I’m sorry they took such a toll on your account.

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RSX was so unfortunate because it was a legit brained out trade (thanks to this community here). It’s hard to count it as an L even though the acct disappears behind that. I’m not qualified to give advice, but I can put myself in your shoes. I’m not sure if I’m learning but I’ll be damned if I ever stop trying. I believe we both are in the exact correct place for what we hope to achieve. Be well.

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Hey man - I also took some big L’s on many of the same trades you did this month. Saving the numbers for my own spicy blog post if I ever redeem myself lol… but I’ve been marinating on it for a while now and I’d like to share some of the mistakes I believe I made, in case it is helpful at all:

-SPY/UVXY- this 12-day long, ~+10% market run was surely an anomaly, but we all should have cut this shortly after averaging down anyway. Especially holding 4/1’s.

It was easy to convince myself after each day that we were more and more likely to fall back to the 440’s the next, and get that sweet 15+ UVXY jump. Anomaly or not, sometimes we just have to accept the market is irrational/ or doesn’t agree with us, and get out when the tide moves the other direction. Do not pick chance to beat theta, at that point your thesis goes out the window and you are gambling.

One last thing on UVXY that is personal to me - even if your thesis is right, you’ve gotta give the market time. The market usually needs more than a couple weeks to digest macroeconomic shifts, even if there is a sudden movement or volatility on the news drop. So if one of the native SPY gurus calls intraday TA as bullish, maybe you aren’t wrong that we’ll see 410 again, but why hold calls for that now? Cut, let it play out, and re enter at a discount.

-WEAT - didn’t do enough DD into the fund holdings. I had some good early wins with it just swing trading war sentiment, so I didn’t feel the need to dive in deep. I guess the moral here is if you’re trading blind/on sentiment then to better manage position sizing. Who would’ve thought there was so much biodiversity in wheat.

-AMC/GME - IMO we don’t get to complain about losses when playing these tickers in general, but wouldn’t you have it another anomalous event we found ourselves in the middle of. I managed to lose money on both AMC puts and AMC calls lmao. The puts were the smart play with a thesis, it just didn’t work out. The calls were always lottos.

Lessons Learned:
-Trade unexpected events/funds, get unexpected results.

-Take profits. Every single one of these trades were green for me at one point, if just for a minute, before eventually tanking. Not as easy as it sounds when you have to DCA, so:

-Set an exit - dollar amount, percentage, event passing (remember that weak ass midweek WEAT report?), date. Anything but 0, unless it is a true lotto. If you DCA, consider assigning a decision date to your thesis - I.e. I’m going to double down on UVXY calls on this Friday PM run, but if we don’t gap up Monday AM after Putin swings his pecker around all weekend, I’ll cut it and move on.

-Follow the smart money - If you’re stubborn and fight the tide, you will lose. Also, when you are right, stick with your winners if there’s a case for it. Not saying don’t take profits when you gap up, but watch for re entry instead of bothering with other risky plays. Why in the hell did we bother with calls on a deteriorating volatility fund when there are cash flow + companies like MOS or ZIM raking it in?

-Keep fewer trades open. Things can move fast sometimes, and it’s just easier to do more thorough DD. Helps you play a thesis instead of just hopping into trades.

Sorry for the novel - I’ll move it elsewhere if you want. I saw we’ve been hitting our heads against the same walls and felt compelled to share.

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I’m gonna talk about my challenge account and regular account here.

Challenge account:
I put in $400 CAD (~$313 USD) on Tuesday.
Total money put into the account is $2000 CAD (~$1500 USD)
Current account value: $593 USD
Current positions: 1x SOXL 30C Apr 29 @ 2.51 (down 78%)

I did make a Netflix put play on Wednesday:
Bought 1x NFLX 200p Apr 22 @ 2.50, sold @ 4.70

Regular account:
I only hold shares in this account. Current positions are:
40x AAPL @ 105.77
168x AMD @ 90.60 (Bought in July 2021…not today)
2x GOOGL @ 2663.70

Today is probably my darkest day ever. Those AMD shares I bought in July 2021 are now under my average cost. What’s worse is I held through the run to $160 during November 2021 and didn’t sell. The reason why I kept holding was because I believed semiconductors would flourish in 2022. I believed that AMD’s wide range of chip offerings (CPUs, GPUs, data centers, whatever Xilinx makes), along with the high demand and low supply of chips would “make them go to the moon”.

But now I don’t know what to believe in. Even if AMD’s upcoming earnings are stellar, there is the fear that recent macro events will influence poor guidance for the rest of this year, or at the very least, for next quarter.

At this point, I just want to lie down and touch some grass. Just dunce me for not selling AMD at $160.

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Considering selling my AMD shares and putting that money into 60x Apple shares so I have 100 Apple shares to do covered calls. Apple seems so safe during these times, but then again, what do I know about safety. I thought AMD was safe and wouldn’t go under $100 yet here we are

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The challenge account is BACK! Thanks to @Jekyll_and_Hyde’s banger callout on TDOC puts, my challenge account is very close to my initial investment.

Challenge account:

Current account value: $1395
Initial investment: $2000 CAD (~$1556.70 USD)
Current positions: 1x ROKU 55P @ 1.41

Here are the trades I made between April 21 to April 29:
1x SPY 425P Apr 25 @ 2.23: -$68 (tried scalping SPY, did not work well)
1x SOXL 30C Apr 29 @ 2.50: -$224 (bought this contract last month thinking semis would rebound)
2x DWAC 30P Apr 29 @ 1.63: -216.70 (was supposed to be the pro-Twitter sentiment play)
1x SPY 423C Apr 27 @ 2.38: -$5 (tried scalping SPY again)
2x TQQQ 42.5C Apr 29 @ 2.00: -$75.56

After the above losing trades, my account was at $208.95 on April 27. Thinking that there was nothing else to lose, I bought 1x TDOC 45P May 20 @ 1.78 on Wednesday April 27. The following day, I sold it at open for a total of $1500. This put me very close to my initial investment which is about $1556.70 USD ($2000 CAD).

Later that day, I bought 1x ROKU 55P @ 1.40. This is the only position I’m holding and it’s down -$118 currently, which puts my account value at $1395 USD.

Regular account:
I did some major repositioning on this account last week. Here are my current positions:
110x AMD @ $90.60
100x AAPL @ $137.16
3x TSLA @ 896.58
$1584.41 cash
Total account value: $29368.25 USD
Initial investment: $37500 CAD ($29187.75 USD)

And I just realized…after investing for 2 years (started in April 2020)…I made no money :face_holding_back_tears:

My current plan is to sell weekly covered calls on AAPL and AMD, which is why I sold off 1/3 of my AMD shares (at a loss, unbelievable) to buy 60x AAPL shares. I will try to average down on TSLA when possible (preferably 750 to low 800s)

I kick myself everyday for not selling AMD back in November 2021 when it was at $160.

2 Likes
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Glad you’re back, bud. Jekyll’s callouts are great and profitable, yep.
Hope to read more updates from you.

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Monday May 2 2022:

Regular Account

Sold 1x AMD 91C May 6 @ 2.62 covered call near open

If I waited 15mins after open I could’ve sold it for 3.25, and if I waited till near EoD I could’ve sold it for 4.00. Can’t have everything I guess. My plan for this call is to potentially get it assigned this week so I can get rid of my shares at a slight profit.
If the price drops to between $85-90 after it cools off from earnings then I’ll buy back in.

I was looking for an opportunity to sell an AAPL covered call today and it came EoD, but I decided to hold off and wait for FOMC cause this EoD SPY rally is making me think we’ll have more SPY rallies as we approach FOMC, and perhaps SPY will continue to rally for the rest of the week if the rate hike is the expected 50bps. The covered call I’m thinking of selling is 1x AAPL 160C or 162.5C May 6.

Challenge Account:
No trades were made today. Still holding onto the ROKU put I listed in my previous post.

1 Like
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I’m looking for some genuine outside perspective on my portfolio as I’ve been holding onto a huge loss this past 7 months.

Current positions:

  • 100 AAPL shares @ ~$170
  • 100 TSLA shares @ $184 (don’t be fooled by this, I’ll explain below)
  • 1 AAPL 180c Aug 11 covered call @ $12.72 (rolled this out from a 177.5c), current value is ~$15.00
  • 1 TSLA 140c Nov 17 covered call @ $123.31 (rolled this out since Jan), current value is $152.00

Biggest loss in the porfolio is the TSLA covered call. I sold it in Jan and have been rolling it out since. If it gets exercised I’ll be realizing a $4k loss. With the TSLA earnings coming up tomorrow, I’m looking to rearrange my holdings because I’m tired of holding onto these covered calls. Below are the various ways I’m thinking of moving forward with my portfolio:

  1. Close out the TSLA CC and reinvest the $14k into something else, such as AMZN, GOOGL, AMD. This will require me to sell all my TSLA shares at the same time as I close out my TSLA CC
  2. Close out my AAPL positions and use the $18k to close out my TSLA CC position. This way I will still get to keep my TSLA shares and have an opportunity to do TSLA CCs again in the future
  3. Hold onto my current positions and keep waiting for a downturn in the markets (i.e. probably Sept)

Lemme know if you have any questions.

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<@132275267321331713> If it’s not too much trouble I would like to hear your thoughts on my situation and how you would proceed <:pepepray:930324508018106448>

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I have ccs in the same situation but it doesn’t really matter holding onto them and just keep rolling forward. I have had Ccs that I rolled for almost 2 years before they expired otm.

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If you just want to close it out then that’s a personal choice. But what I do is I sell puts together with having the cc so I make some profit even if price stays up

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So hold and roll is what you would continue doing in this situation? Unfortunately this is in a cash account that doesn’t allow selling puts (Canadian laws :p)

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I roll mine that are in the same situation. I don’t see any risk if assignments unless they are super deep itm

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This is a TSLA 140 CC though so it’s pretty deep ITM…current TSLA price is more than 2x that strike price

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Is it delta 1

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0.981

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Yea not likely yet

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Whoever exercises is giving money away so chances of that happening is low