I'd like to play.
This is similar to my actual portfolio, except for the fact that in my actual portfolio I have puts/calls on a greater number of carefully selected stocks, further back calls on oil/gas and other commodities, and 50% cash. Last year's actual return was ~120% with essentially the same type of portfolio.
I'll add a self-imposed restriction: I will try to go without a single trade until year-end. I reserve the option to trade once or twice mid-year, but only to rebalance, roll positions forward to equivalent positions with longer expiration or take profits.
All trades are bought at the end-of-day ask price in the day that I post the trade. (ie worst possible execution ;) The trades posted below are at end-of-day ask as of 2008/01/04.
The theory behind this: it is essentially a giant four-way spread trade,
(1) long energies ,which is really a combination of long energies (in
terms of real demand/supply imbalance) and short the dollar since that
is what the contracts are denominated in; and
(2) short equities particularly financials (but also a few others that seem to have gone up exponentially for no good reason) and short interest rates
An infusion of liquidity big enough to rescue the financials will crash
the dollar, and interest rates high enough to keep the dollar up will
crash the financials. If economic activity is high, energies will go
up due to supply problems, if it is low stocks will crash. What
happens depends of course on investor psychology as well as actions by
central banks and SWFs etc, but I can't really see any plausible
scenario in which (for example) financials go up while energies go down.
And now for the actual trades....
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initial position
cash = $100000
trades 2008/01/04
Bought 1x YVCMD GOOG 2010 Jan PUT @ 500 50.70 = $5070 (http://finance.yahoo.com/q/op?s=GOOG&m=2010-01)
Bought 1x YFZMT BIDU 2010 Jan PUT @ 200 33.30 = $3330 (http://finance.yahoo.com/q/op?s=BIDU&m=2010-01)
Bought 100x VKPMT XLF 2009 Jan PUT @ 20 1.08 = $10800 (http://finance.yahoo.com/q/op?s=XLF&m=2010-01)
Bought 25x YCKMV DIA 2010 Jan PUT @ 100 5.60 = $14000 (http://finance.yahoo.com/q/op?s=DIA&m=2010-01)
Bought 25x FYSXV SPY 2009 Dec PUT @ 100 4.55 = $11375 (http://finance.yahoo.com/q/op?s=SPY&m=2009-12)
Bought 5x CLZ08 NYMEX CL 2008 Dec CALL @ 100 5.87 = $29350 (http://www.mfglobalfutures.com/resources/getquotes.cfm?page=optqte&sym=CL&mode=i&contract=Dec%202008)
Bought 2x NGZ08 NYMEX NG 2008 Dec CALL @ 9.00 1.109 = $22180 (http://www.mfglobalfutures.com/resources/getquotes.cfm?page=optqte&sym=NG&mode=i&contract=Dec%202008)
Bought 14x U.S. Treas Strips 15 Feb 2037 (CUSIP 912803CZ4) $1000 face, $260.80 price = $3651.2 (http://reports.finance.yahoo.com/z2?ce=4915552143581545817552)
commissions = 8*$15 = $120
remaining cash balance = $100000 - $99876.20 = $123.8
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(the format for all options is symbol, underlying, date, call/put @ strike, price)
(the overall leverage is ~14.5x, with a notional amount of $1,450,000, moreover without the use of any margin, and with a possible loss limited to no more than the initial investment, which is kind of nice. yes, some people really do trade with that much leverage in real life. i guess there's aggressive, and then there's "kamikaze")