Welcome back Meta-Traders.Spring has sprung in North America, and things are looking up. We had some positive developments this past week, most importantly a pending deal for resolution of holders of debt issued by Greece. Another positive was a jobs bill passed my the US Congress in a bi-partisan manner by our elected representatives and supported by our President. Nice to see some harmony and consensus from Capitol hill for a change.
My Forex portfolio edged back to the positive this week, even if just slightly. I'll get to the specifics below, but first a word or 2 about my favorite stock Apple Computer.
Its easy to dismiss Apple as a fad, but stay with me for a moment here. If we look back 60 days to 1/9/2012, Apple stock was priced at $421 per share. Today, a mere 60 days later, the stock is priced at $545 per share. With 900M shares outstanding, that move represents a gain in market capitalization of about 111 billion dollars! That represents a real creation of value that can be spent on cars, houses, employees and all the things that make our economy work. And that's a great thing about the stock market is that it creates wealth where there was none before. Of course, it could all evaporate in a short time, but we have the wind at our back in the form of an incredibly accommodating US Federal Reserve.
The chart above shows a 5 days of history of the March Apple 550 put contract on an hourly basis. I traded this contract briefly this week a made a point or 2, but take a look at the range. The contract had a high on the week of 35 and a low of about 9.5. That represents a 300% change from top to bottom! In dollar terms that means a low of $950 and a high of $3500 with about half the value being traced out in a single day's trading. I don't know of any financial instrument that provides this amount of movement on a pure cash basis, in other words without use of margin.
Also regarding equities, we had new, all-time highs in portfolio holdings IBM, SXCI and Yum Brands. Generally speaking though, I expect some upcoming bearish action in equities and most charts gapped down on Tuesday and ran back up to the top of the range on Friday without taking out the prior high. I will be watching the AAPL Puts closely, as I think there's some money to be made there.
Forex has not gotten much love lately and I am glad to say we finally have something good to report. We had new equity highs this past week in Atipaq Full Portfolio and Atinalla #3 both of which ran out to new highs before pulling back. Offsetting those gains is Coatl H1 which continues to bleed money and is down a nasty -11.06% for the year. Taking a look at Asirikuy, my account is behaving much differently than the one other instance of Coatl H1 on Asirikuy, and that has me concerned.
All told, my forex accounts are up about $200 for the year which represents just 1% of my 20K invested. But this a paltry return compare to equities where I am up 9% and 11% respectively in my retirement and cash accounts.
In terms of upcoming Forex changes, I am going to transfer the funds in my Megadroid and FX-Regression accounts over to Atipaq Full Portfolio and Atinalla #3. Since those 2 accounts are basically idle, this will make better use of the funds. Its significant, through since I've finally thrown in the towel on Megadroid, a system which once believe held a lot of promise. But times change and we keep doing what works, and throw out what does not.
As for the rest of the weekend, its time to turn my attention to taxes. Reconciling all of my buying a selling is a painful and cumbersome process and ranks up there with cleaning bathrooms and going to the dentist. Its not pretty but it needs to be done.
Enjoy your weekend.
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