Hab Technology

While not entirely over, I doubt I will have a chance to do a real end-of-year post, so just going to call it a year now. That was a doozy of a year – nasdaq composite up 37%, nasdaq 100 up a whopping 46% (!!!!) !!!!

My porfolio up “only” 34%, so honestly “underperforming” esp the nq-100, but 30%+ is a fine return for me. The graph of the performance shows a more interesting picture than dry percentages:

Interesting to note the initial outperformance of my portfolio in January – that was due to my being overweight amzn/tsla in the beginning of the year and the nasdaqs (any my portfolios) terrible end of last year. So January was just kindof making back losses from the end of 2022 which were kindof like an overshoot of what was statistically probable. Throughout the rest of the year, the market (and my portfolio) continued to drift higher until June, where I started to take some profits off the table, lower risk, because I was happy with a 30% year, but the market continued drifting higher still. After peaking in August, my portfolio mostly held its level while the market drifting significantly lower, until the end of October where the nq-100 actually dropped to my portfolios performance. Then the rip-your-face-off rally that was November just took the nasdaq TO THE MOOONNN!!!! with my positions not keeping up.

And honestly this makes sense, because right around mid October I significantly reduced my risk, closing most of my large positions in AMZN, GOOG, TSLA and initiating instead placeholder positions. Hindsight 20/20, obviously this was a bad idea, but I couldn’t help but take some profits off the table, fearing another end of the year like last year which erased all my profits.

And honesly my portfolio right now looks very different than it did at the beginning of the year. As long as the market goes down less than 20-30% my portfolio as it is now will hold most of its value – thats not to say I’m shorting the market, but if it goes up another 30% from here my portfolio definitely won’t keep up.

So lets look at the portfolio and my positions:

First of all – Im 38/63 = 60% uninvested ie I’m only 40% invested which means I have 60% cash available to withdraw (or double down on relevant positions):

Other than that – I hold many double covered, bear put positions, or 2-1 put ratio spreads, positions like these:

So with aapl trading at 192, its a 185-175, double covered bear put spread, or a 2-1 put ratio spread. I love these positions in a toppy market because the cost a very small debit (or sometimes a small credit), and in order to start losing money, you need to first make the whole bear put spread value.

So in the above position, before I start losing money, I will make the whole value of the spread, so if AAPL goes down below 175, I first of all make the whole value of the 185-175 bear put spread (1000$x2 contracts = 2k$), and only when aapl goes below 165$ then the 2 short naked puts offset the gains of the bear put spread. So the above position was an initial 80$ debit, so most likely it will expire worthless and I’ll lose those 80$, but if AAPL does go down 10% from here (unlikely in the 1 day to expiry but I opened the position a week or 2 ago where an 10% correction was possible) towards 170, I have the potential to make 1-2000$, so a great return. And if AAPL goes down below 175, 170, 165, I just roll the 2 naked 175 puts down to a double covered 175-165 put ratio spread, perhaps double the number of contracts.

So other than placeholder short put positions on most of the companies I like, I also have several similar put ratio spreads as well.

Actually screenshotting my whole portfolio will take like 10 screenshots, I’m trying a new thing – its a screencapture where I slowly scroll through the portfolio for whoever is interested, let me know if it comes across:

Other than that I won’t extend this post much longer, as I won’t go over the whole portfolio as I think I’ve explained the strategies enough, but please write in the comments if something is unclear.

Ill end the post with an interesting screenshot – 2 year performance:

So while my YTD performance is only barely keeping up, over the 2 years I’m handily outperforming (by 16% relative to the nq-100!). And thats the beauty of selling time premium as a strategy. While the nasdaq went down and up over the last 2 years, time only goes one way, enabling my portfolio to make (significant) money even in an overall sideways market.