Monday, February 24, 2014

Alpha-D Updates for 02/24/14

The first trading day after an options expiration weekend is my usual opportunity to make changes in my portfolio.  My covered calls on GDX and FXF were exercised against me when the share prices of those two securities rose through the strike prices.  I repurchased all of my previous holdings in those two securities and renewed the covered calls for another month, in both my taxable account and my IRA.

My covered calls on FXA and FXC in my taxable account expired unexercised.  I renewed them both and made no changes to my underlying holdings in those securities.  I remain long a put position on FXE, in anticipation of the euro's nonviability.  I still consider the currencies of Australia, Canada, and Switzerland to be suitable hedges to the US dollar for my purposes.  I have to live with GDX as a proxy for the gold mining sector, and I anticipate adding other hard assets as their valuations become attractive to me.

My regular readers may have caught the Venn diagram I recently published as a special report over on the Alfidi Capital main site.  My philosophy of hedging the broader markets with exposure to hard assets and currencies still holds.  The past few years of remaining mostly on the sidelines while central banks inflated stock and bond markets have been frustrating for value investors like me.  Lots of idiots now think they're geniuses by owning big swaths of assets that owe their valuations to cheap credit.  Anyone who is happy to ride the Federal Reserve's coattails through monetary stimulus had better be happy with the end result when it occurs.  I'll be happy to watch a bunch of idiots burn themselves running for the door.