Week 27: Powell confirms interest rate cuts are coming

What a wild ride the past 3 weeks has been. Finally on Friday, Fed Chair Powell confirms that an interest rate cut is coming in September. Question on everyone's mind is now: By how much? Most are expecting 25 bps but there's a growing group of investors who think we need 50 bps, even 75 bps. We'll find out in less than 4 weeks.

Investing 101: When an option expires at its strike price, what happens?

I had a covered call position with QQQ opened a few weeks ago with a strike price of $480. For most of the time it was out of the money but last week the stock jumped to the mid $470's so I decided to buy back to close a few days before the expiry date, which is today. I pocketed a couple hundred dollars by closing my position early but gave up some money since the option still had time value.

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Week 25: Crazy start to the week but mostly recovered by EOW

Overall portfolio fell 2.5% week-over-week which was a lot less than what I would have expected on Monday.

The Japanese government raised interest rates by 25 bps which shocked the market and sent domestic Japanese shares down 12% and affected U.S. stocks throughout Monday. However, most of the losses were trimmed by the end of the week as investors realized that the U.S. economy remains quite strong still. There was a lot of chatter about an economic collapse on Monday but that fear seems to be overblown. 

 

Week 24: We're entering rough waters

Microsoft tumbles following weaker than expected Azure cloud revenue growth [free WSJ article]

Friday's jobs report had 114k jobs created vs 175k expected. We are now entering correction territory. 

I executed some QQQ covered calls at strikes of $470 and $480 expiring two and three weeks from now to capitalize on the short-term volatility. Trying to make a bit of money. QQQ closed at $448.75 today. Let's see if my options stay OTM.

Week 23: Tesla disappoints

Quick post this week because I need to tuck the kids into bed. Tesla had a rough week when it reported earnings. Nasdaq overall had a really bad week, so Tesla's miss probably got exaggerated a bit as investors flocked to other small cap stocks.

Week 22: BTC rockets up 17%

I guess fears of Mt Gox holders flooding the market with BTC was overexaggerated. In a move that went against the general tech market, bitcoin rocketed by 17% this week while the Nasdaq posted a loss of 3.6%. Why did the Nasdaq drop so precipitously? Fintwit suggests it was mainly driven by investors rotating out of tech stocks and into other industries and small cap in anticipating of a September rate cut.

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