TIB: Today I Bought (and Sold) - An Investors Journal #175 - Europe, Swiss Banks, Japan Interest Rates, Stellar, Bitcoin

Donald Trump slaps tariffs on solar panels and washing machines. Ouch. Bank of Japan says "steady as she goes" and bonds jump. Another way to have a go at Swiss interest rates looks juicy. Bitcoin has another go at testing levels below $10,000 and rejects it again. Whew!!

Portfolio News

Solar Panels Donald Trump slaps tariffs on solar panels and washing machines. That took me by surprise. I thought the timing was interesting given he is heading off to Davos for the World Economic Forum and one of the topics is Gloabalization. I would have waited a week.

Immediate market reaction was dramatic with US solar plays jumping and foreign plays falling. I am holding a bit of Solar in my portfolios - First Solar, a US manufacturer, (FSLR - black bars) jumped 10% in opening trades. Canadian Solar (CSIQ - orange line)), a Canadian producer and Sunpower (SPWR - red line), a Chinese producer jumped too.

Then everybody read the details and prices finished below opening levels. Sunpower was the big loser at 6.64% down. Who is the big loser in all of this? Short term: US installers who have to persuade customers to stump up more cash. Does this change my thesis on solar energy? Not sure yet.

I will not be surprised if this move is the start of a bigger game. The big game is gong to be areas like steel and aluminium. I am somewhat exposed to non-US steel only. Might just be revisiting a few US steel charts.

Carrefour The French supermarket chain announced a big restructuring and a big move into online shopping. Share price jumped. Nice to see life in an old dog that I picked up as a dog 3 weeks ago.

Bought

UBS Group (UBSG.VX): Swiss Bank. UBS made future strategy announcements with a share buyback and a commitment to invest $1 billion in technology over the next 4 or so years. The market was underwhelmed as they had been hoping for a bigger buyback. Share price has been tracking well after breaking out of a consolidation range in Q4 of 2017. I am already holding a staircase of options with 2020 and 2021 expiries. I added the next rung up in the 2021 staircase with a strike 24. The SFr1.13 premium is 5.7% of the closing price of SFr19.58 and 4.7% of the 24 strike. This is 2 strikes out-the-money. I would have preferred to buy 22 strikes but these are not available. For some reason strikes go in bands of 4 above 20.

At first glance the prospects of pricing reaching SFr24 let alone the 100% profit mark do not look great as this is well above recent highs. Price has to keep following the trajectory it has been on since the 2016 lows to make it (follow the green weekly uptrend line).

The bigger picture context is what makes this a better looking trade. There is a long way to go to reach the pre-GFC highs. Banking has changed dramatically since the GFC - we may only ever see price get to half way. For reference purposes, Bank of America (BAC) has now reached the half way mark. No reason why UBS cannot once Swiss interest rates start to rise.

Sold

iShares Europe ETF (IEU.AX): Reduced holdings in Europe Index to raise cash to fund pensions. The broad plan is to progressively reduce exposure at index level in favour of specific stock exposure. 20.7% profit since February 2016.

Shorts

Japanese 10 Year Government Bonds (JGB): Japan Interest Rates. Bank of Japan announced no change in bond purchases. Bond prices jumped and took out my trailed stop loss for 36 basis point profit (0.24%). Contract size is over ¥30 million. I remain exposed to one contract short. I will reopen once I see a price reversal.

Cryptocurency

Bitcoin (BTCUSD): Price range for the day was $1882 (15% of the high). Price did cross below $10,000 briefly. In my IG account I added one new half position at $10,584 once the reversal above $10,000 was confirmed.

Bitmex day was busier. I started the day with 5 contracts at an average of $11,743. I traded a few reversals on the 30 minute and 1 hour chart looking for the lows. Lowest trade entry I achieved was $9927. In all, I closed out 6 trades for an average trade win of $320 per contract (3.14%) with one losing trade. I added one new position this morning at $11,111 - hope that is a good omen. Average entry is now $11,693 - a little lower than yesterday. Bitmex is showing $10,954 and a liquidation price of $9128. The chart shows the perfect setup for the patient trader. Long tailed bar with lots of volume

I was in action before that on a 15 minute chart

Stellar (XLM): Bitmex started offering contracts on Stellar, which I am holding in my AltCoin portfolio. I placed one trade when price broke out of a congestion zone to test it out and closed it out at prior highs for 135 points profit (3.09%). Beginner's luck perhaps

Currency Trades

Forex Robot did not close any trades and is trading at a negative equity level of 7.7% (higher than prior day's 8.3%).

Outsourced MAM account I run an outsourced forex trading account with Actions to Wealth. They closed out 3 trades for 0.4% profits for the day.

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

Images: I own the rights to use and edit the Buy Sell image. News headlines come from Google Search. All other images are created using my various trading and charting platforms. They are all my own work

Tickers: I monitor my portfolios using Yahoo Finance. The ticker symbols used are Yahoo Finance tickers

Charts: http://mymark.mx/TradingView - this is a free charting package. I have a Pro subscription to get access to real time forex prices

Crypto Trading: get 6 months free trades with Bitmex for leveraged crypto trading. http://mymark.mx/Bitmex

Bitcoin: Get started with Bitcoin for as little as €50 (in Bitcoin) and earn Bitcoin at a rate way better than your bank will offer - think weeks instead of months. Not available in US or Canada http://mymark.mx/Mark

January 23, 2018