My “degen” IRA hit a mini milestone today. It started with a humble balance & the intention to trade actively. Active trade I did. Started in late 2018, today it hit an ~8x. But a 20x+ off its lows. I have a few potentially interesting takeaways from this experiment I’ll share.
It’s worth starting by saying this was generally full of lessons in “how not to do it”. However, aggression was my strategy at the outset. I haven’t run traditional metrics like Sharpe at it yet, but they’d be terrible. I experienced several 50% drawdowns. One 75%+ drawdown.
Every drawdown of size was created by allocating too high a % of my portfolio to highly correlated options strategies. Once I put a roughly 20% portfolio cap toward long premium, performance increased massively.
Attention was another huge deal. Whenever crypto was boring, I was a better risk manager for an aggressive stock portfolio. When crypto was exciting, I paid less attention but still took risks, and I would end up with another 50% drawdown. I changed that lately with huge benefits
Huge lesson in legacy: all short positions should be low conviction. The only high conviction plays should be longs. Every time I had a high conviction short idea (even during Covid wipeout), I would over-commit and get rekt. There's always a long, somewhere.
The saying where there are only three trades to take is VERY obvious on an equity curve.
1) small loss (most common) 2) small win (common) 3) big win (rare)
4) big loss (should be never)
If you EVER experience 4, your equity curve sucks.
Taking one high conviction #4 per year (they are always high conviction) can reset your total gains for the year easily, in a concentrated portfolio.
I am up 5x since fall 2020 when I started refusing #4s. Accomplished by position size limits in options (even long dated).
Forcing a trade when you don't see one will result in too many #1s. Pride can turn a #1 into a #4. Cash is cozy. Or in a bull, the index is cozy. Forcing trades outside my prime setups has kept me flat too often.
The adage "let runners run" is true for a reason. I gave up multiple, MULTIPLE, portfolio doubles by not keeping partials (yes, even on spot) of high conviction runners.
If I kept those partials, I'd be 2-4x current balance, easily.
Some things that are important:
1) Find YOUR favorite trade setup. Markets have so many tickers/sectors you'll find it somewhere, always. Attack that setup. 2) Never take large losses. Refuse. Cut ruthlessly if it violates trade setup. 3) Keep options to a small % of account.
4) Trust your convictions, but test them. Is it conviction due to pride or conviction due to rationale? Trust rationale-based convictions. 5) Be willing to lose, small, and often. 6) Let runners run. Trends can go well beyond expected target. You can TP AFTER the top on a runner.
7) Only trade if/when you think you have an edge versus the index. Otherwise, it's too much time. Can't focus? Stick to the index for a while. Don't force trades. 8) Review your performance regularly. Find the mistakes and why they happened.
9) Survive. If you revenge trade, you'll end up blowing up (or close to it). I almost... almost, did that here. Get back to your roots and level your head. Survive. 10) Play the long tame. There will be another trade. Always is.
I will let you know how it goes from here. Today's target is what I would define as "real money". Outshined by crypto, but that doesn't matter. Trade on!
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ETH is the network that matters. ETH is used. Defi is the sector with rapid development, real world use case, massive $$$, and momentum.
Long ETH and Defi, forsake nearly all other alts. They are laggards.
The very few worth dabbling for swings would be Solana, BSC, Polkadot. I can’t think of many others. Because these are also going after Defi and arent legacy chains pivoting. They bring challenge to ETH and that could be fun.
Some to avoid? Eos, ada, ltc, bch, xrp, trx... and so on. Stay away. They will forsake you.
When the arb mining process is finished this month, you’ll probably start getting a lot of announcements for product launches, exchange listings, partnerships. You definitely want to make sure you wait until after all that to accumulate. Makes total sense.
“Wow ledger how much you gonna shill this?”
What is nicer? That I shill it on a 25% up day or after I’ve 5x’d or a day where it’s down 15% against ETH?
I have bought every price between $67 and $195. If you make me, I’ll keep buying. It’s your move.
If you consider a 30% tax rate, selling a bitcoin at $15k to chase an altcoin, if your last tx on that btc was at $10k, you have a $5k profit and roughly $1500 tax burden.
You’ll realize it either way at some point, but my calculus is if it’s worth it before Dec 31 or not.
If you underperform btc you needlessly speed up the time you owe the tax man by a year. If you overperform, you need to make at least 10% (1500/15000) before it makes sense.
It’s really hard but I’m waiting for a fat pitch. Today looks good but not worth it yet for me.
Meanwhile, if btc continues upward, each btc becomes much stronger buying power for paying 2020 cap gains that occurred pre-$10k btc. Reducing the % of portfolio I have to take out in January to pay them.
The GOP will soon dump Donald Trump and ask you all to accept that they only did what they had to do to stop Democrats. That they can now carry on with conservative principles.
They are spineless cowards. They are finished.
There are no real conservatives in government. There are establishment Republicans with endless power thirst, and populist Republicans who will follow the Trump line.
But there are almost no fiscal conservatives in favor of limited government. It's a sham.
However, the narrative will now shift to the need for fiscal conservatism. It is all a lie. A complete sham. If you're a fiscal conservative, Bitcoin is a much better answer than Republican government.