Travel to Brazil for Free

Travel to Brazil can be expensive.  You need to apply for a Visa for $180 and get a plane ticket which can run $1200-$1600, but here is how to make the trip worthwhile.  Re-sell electronic goods!  

It's probably best to find a buyer ahead of time.  For the more expensive items the Brazilians may want to go on a payment plan and that isn't really practical, if you are not living within the country.  So find a friend that lives in Brazil and have them find buyers for you that can pay in cash.  When you arrive, you just plan to make the exchange and you should be set with plenty of Reals.  

Check out the below sites and the current prices in Brazilian Reals:

iMac sell for $2500:
http://compare.buscape.com.br/proc_unico?id=22&kw=imac


iPhone 3GS for $250:  http://compare.buscape.com.br/proc_unico?id=77&kw=iphone+3gs

Ebay for Brazil --> http://www.mercadolivre.com.br/

Victoria Secret items also are hot sellers.

5 Minutes of Fame

My 5 minutes of fame:  I attended a local Town Hall Meeting on Oct. 3rd, 2013, put on by a local TV station KEYE discussing the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare . I ask a question about how ACA lowers cost and the panelist calls on a professor to help answer it.

I also got some photos take with local celebrities:

KEYE TV Anchor Deeda Payton and Moderator Mark Hyman.

Sam Cox, Austin Conservative Talk Radio DJ 

You can see the entire Town Hall Meeting here www.KEYETV.com.

Cant Short UVXY, but Can Short The Call Options!

A holiday shorten trading session today July 3rd.  The market opened lower and I wanted to buy the dip.  We have been mostly gaping up lately, so I wanted to pounce on this drop.  I was hoping to buy 1000 shares of SVXY.  Volatility has been on the decline and tends to revert to its mean.  I missed my limit price of $78 that I saw in before hours trading.  Instead of chasing, I decided to go try shorting UVXY.  The double inverse of the VIX futures.  Unfortunately, E*Trade cant borrow any shares to trade, but they do sell options on UVXY.  So I saw that the weekly $72 calls was selling at $2.05 with 2 days to go.  That means UVXY would have to move 7.8% in 2 days before I start to lose money or go above $74.  With the market closed for July 4th, we really only have 1 day left, plus the half day today.  That is a risk I was willing to take.

I nailed it.  Some one did pay me for 10 contracts at $2.05 and I received $2050 for calls.  The market recovered and volatility declined the rest of the morning.  After 2 hours the calls were worth .85 and I covered at .90.  The calls will probably expire worthless, but I don't want to be greedy and I locked in the gains.

Here is a chart of the option trading.  Very low volume, but you can still close out trades if you are willing to time your trades well.

Remembering 11 years ago this week

It was 11 years ago this week that we had a July 4th on a Thursday.  I only remember few trading days and this was one one of them in my 15+ years in trading.   We were in a slow and steady decline after the tech bubble busted and what I remember was being in Las Vegas on vacation and the DOW popping +400 points on the Friday after the July 4th!  I thought I missed the bounce, but it was only a dead cat bounce.

I cant say that history will repeat itself, but it is just one of those days you just don't forget.  It turned out to be the best time to short the market.  The DOW continued its decline for the rest of the year, dropping another 2000 points, 20 days later, before giving a longer term bounce.  The bounce went from 7500 back to the July 5th lows.  So that July 5th date served as resistance line for the rest of the year.

Getting Back to Even

Well, that double bottom turn out to be a major head fake.  After the FOMC news, we broke through the 50 day moving average and proceeded to make new lows.  I told my self that the low volume bounce into the meeting was a sign of a 'sell-the-news' reaction and that is exactly what we got.  

I even put in a contingent sell order right before the news for my long $XIV position.  It triggered and I was totally in cash, in my personal account right after the news hit and at my all time high.  I should have left things alone.  The market actually spiked up and down after the news.  After a spike down, I figured it should go right back up. The Fed news was nothing new and my read was they would continue to provide monetary stimulus to the economy.  

The Fed news should be good for Stocks, but I guess everyone else was long too, so we proceeded to go down even further.  I decided to buy 1000 shares of $SVXY at $84.  Big mistake!  I didn't have a stop order so it ended the day at $82.89.  On Thursday the selling continued and SVXY went to $71.28.  

When volatility spikes, this ETF goes down big time.  I held out until Friday, hoping for a relief rally.  We got a gap up in the morning and SVXY started the day at $75.  It proceeded to go down to a low of $71.70.  I wanted to sell out, but decided to bite the bullet and use my margin account to double down and try to get back to even.  I bought 1000 more shares at $72.05.  It was about 5 minutes shy of the day low and SVXY proceeded to climb all the way back over $76.  I finally cashed out at $75.42.  Not quite back to even, but close enough.  Still up for the year and up for the month!