Account Net-Liq: $4,976.45
SPX value: 3,276.02
Shiller PE: 30.53

The market seems to finally lose steam on its rally and today, it created an indecision candle and it even went red. True, when I write this entry, it is still too early in the morning and everything may change by the end of the day. I have rolled my SPX trade higher though to make sure the trade is centered on the market. I had to roll the put side higher too to bring in some cash so I hope we won’t crash or anything. We only have 9 days to expiration and I really hope I will be able to expire this trade.

I also opened a new trade against PINS (put butterfly) so hope it will work in my favor too.
IWM works in my favor so far. We have 2 days to expiration and the covered call seems to get expired worthless this Friday.
XLE trade is also showing a profit but not as strong as I would wish for. But, there is still plenty of time.

And as I suspected, the market didn’t ease anything at the end and rallied even higher than the days before. Very frustrating. If this continues, I will have to roll my SPX trade up again. But doing so, I will have to roll the put side up and I am afraid that it may backfire. I still have 9 days to go to expiration and in this crazy market, anything can happen.

Account Net-Liq: $5,259.26
SPX value: 3,257.30

It is astonishing to see how many sudden investing and trading gurus popped out on social media, mainly on Youtube. It reminds me of my enthusiasm in 2008 when I decided to post about the market and my newly achieved knowledge of the market which no one ever knew about. I must have looked stupid to the people of “have” trying to tell them what stocks to invest to because I was the only one there who knew.

How laughable I must have looked like to them! Well, I guess, exactly as these new brewed gurus look laughable to me today. When I browse through my Youtube feed, I see so many of them providing analysis, predictions, forecasts, crash predictions… all a joke of newly bred gurus. But, as an old adage goes, “if suddenly a plumber becomes a market wizard, it is time to bail out”.

Are we seeing this today?

And many of the analysis, predictions, news, forecasts… all these are just an empty blabbing. I can’t watch many of them beyond the first few minutes.

Account Net-Liq: $5,259.26
SPX value: 3,257.30

Another day with large gains and I do not see where do they come from. Another frustrating day where the market goes up 1%+ or down 1%+ and sometimes more. Where are the days where the market went up and down 0.30% and we considered it a huge gain?
I had to roll my SPX calls up again, but it was costly this time. It needed about $0.95 debit to roll it higher. So I decided to roll the put side higher too. Not much confident about it because if this market tanks again I have lost all the cushion built up recently. But, on the other hand, rolling everything down is favorable, at least it used to be. Only 10 days for this SPX trade and I may have saved it… The question, of course, is at what cost?
Other trades are doing well so far. I like my IWM performance, making nice profits already. XLE trade seems to be working well too. I hope, these trades will keep perform and make cash needed to grow the account.

I really wish all this picks up and I build my passive income really fast.

Account Net-Liq: $$5,340.51
SPX value: 3,251.57

It is becoming quite frustrating that the market rallies again. It is weird. Everybody is pessimistic, everybody says that we are in a recession, we have new COVID-19 spikes and everybody is worried, yet the market rallies hard?!?

Did everyone forget about the COVID? How come we sold off hard in March during the first outbreaks of this (in my opinion) fake virus bogus and today, when everyone is, AGAIN, talking about shitting down the economy AGAIN, and the market doesn’t bother about it anymore? Why no one is scared today?

I opened a few new trades using XLE butterfly and had to roll my SPX call spread higher again to keep it away from this raging bull no one believes in. It is totally outstanding that it completely defies anything I keep hearing and reading out there. Well, I guess, the best approach is to take it as it is and ignore all the naysayers.

Last night I watched Linda Raschke’s video on Stock charts. I didn’t finish it as it was too late, but she pretty much predicted that this rally could continue just because of this pessimism, too much money out there sitting on the side. She pointed out M1 money supply spike but the money has not been used to invest so the supply is sitting somewhere… not in the market. This supply will be used to pour more money into the fire one day propping this market higher. I agree with this logic, though.

It is really outstanding how strong rally SPX shows. But it seems, this is driven by only a few tech stocks as almost all my other holdings are losing big. IWM is also losing (-0.33% down as of now). Everything is red but SPY (SPX).

It is tech stocks propelling SPX up. It is crazy:

As you can see, IWM is in poor conditions compared to SPX. Most of the stocks are red:

Here is a picture of today’s rally. I had to roll my calls up again and it seems I will have to roll them up again tomorrow:

Account Net-Liq: $5,202.02
SPX value: 3,224.73

Expecting the new week and hope the market will be favorable to my trades. I hope to repair my SPX trade and make money on the existing open trades.

I also finished reading Lifecycle Investing. I think it is a good book and worth re-reading a few more times. It encourages safe leverage and I, for sure, want to use leverage to increase my income and portfolio growth.

I will keep accumulating cash to be able to keep purchasing LEAPS against indexes such as SPY and IWM and selling covered calls against those LEAPS and keep buying shares of high dividend quality aristocrats. I want to accumulate enough to start selling covered calls against those shares too.

Account Net-Liq: $19,047.39
SPX value: 3,224.73

I have been trading the strategy I was talking about in my previous entries in my diary in my ROTH account for some time now. I have been accumulating shares of HP until I reached 100 shares, later on, I kept accumulating PPL, and now I am accumulating AT&T (T) shares. I keep selling covered calls and using the proceeds to buy more shares. My HP covered call trade is stalled now a bit. I had to sell CCs below my purchase price and at some point, oil companies started rallying hard and I had to roll my covered calls higher to avoid assignment which would cause selling my shares way below my average cost basis. Not happy but it is what it is. Now the CC is in good shape but my expiration is way away in December 2020. Not much happy either but there is no rush. It would not be good pushing these trades and force them. I am in December, so I have to wait. Period.
My PPL trades are in good shape. I could sell CCs above my purchase price, so I do not have to worry about rolling that much. If the stock rallies high and I can’t roll or would have to roll way away in time, I’d rather sell the shares for a profit and start selling puts to buy back in. But PPL is a slow lazy stock. It doesn’t rally that much and that fast, so, will see.

However, it seems, this account is doing extremely well under this strategy. Yes, there are drawdowns, but overall, the account prospers. It is not a quick-rich scheme, but I am happy with the results.

Account Net-Liq: $5,202.02
SPX value: 3,224.73

When I realized that I would not be a good trader and needed to take a different approach, I decided to set the following goal for 2020:

1) invest in high-quality dividend stocks (aristocrats) and reach 100 of those stocks
2) collect dividends on those high-quality stocks
3) sell covered calls on those stocks
4) if assigned, start selling cash-secured puts to buy back the shares

Here are the shares I plan to accumulate in 2020:

5) buy LEAPS against indexes such as SPY and IWM
6) sell covered calls against those LEAPS
7) use covered calls proceeds to raise BP to min $500 and maintain that level
8) use any proceeds above $500 BP to repair bad SPX trades (see below)
9) after repairs, use proceeds to buy more dividend-paying stocks (aristocrats).

Here is the goal for 2020 in individual steps: