I have a split personality–in addition to managing my own rapidly shrinking portfolio, I also manage a handful of IRAs for friends and relatives and a large account that is not mine. The IRAs are all doing great, thanks to the miracle of Radio Shack puts I bought in January: I think every stock I’ve bought for the IRAs has tanked and they’re still up 20% thanks to those RSH January 2013 7.5 puts.
So I have one account in which I don’t have to answer to anyone, and another one which is checked by someone who has a fondness for former best of breed stocks in dying/contracting industries, which means the portfolio is shot through with BHP, RIMM, and a few others which I am not able to touch due to a belief in the divinity of “dividends” or some other ancient religion such as “buyouts.” Not that they’re always wrong, just that this is a hell of a time to be holding copper and blackberries.
I didn’t realize until today that I had developed a split personality between the two accounts.
I went into today holding YELP and GRPN puts in the watched account and YNDX and RENN calls in the unwatched account, and I have no explanation as to why I did this. I got a congratulatory phone call today as the watched account tore through barrier after barrier and finished up a significant amount.
“But how did you know the facebook IPO wouldn’t cause a pop in social media and they would all collapse?” They asked, voice full of adminiration and wonder, and I was modest and deferential. Meanwhile some of the long YNDX calls sit in my account are an angry, angry red that I can’t even take off the books because there is no buying interest whatsoever, and obviously my weekly RENN six calls were so universally bought on stocktwits that it was clear in retrospect that it wouldn’t work.
Just earlier this week, I dumped all my FIO calls in my risk account at a small loss reasoning that they were doomed, but decided that nearly identical competitor OCZ was onto something big and held it in the safe account, where it died like everything else. Wait, what?
So I’ve effectively been playing a shell game against myself, and I have no idea why. This ended today, and now I awake as if from some fevered dream. The two halves are joined and from this point on they will work like one well oiled machine that’s been losing an average of 1% a day for the last two weeks because I decided to switch from stocks to more call options on May 2nd, the exact worst day in history to do this. I’ve lost untold riches to my own stupidity, margin calls, and AOL in the last month and I will recover and restore my sanity starting on Monday. For real, this time.
My only lingering problem is that I believe with all of my soul that ATVI will be at 13 again and stay there very soon, tape be damned. Accordingly, I have an obscene amount of ATVI calls for June and August and as the price goes down, I keep buying more. My hoard of ATVI 13 and 14 calls is now approaching the thousands and if I’m right I’ll sell all the motherfuckers at the first hint of green and build a golden statue of myself patting myself on the back. Right now I feel like a very stupid dragon who keeps bringing pogs and beanie babies and collectible mcdonald’s 40 ounce cups back to his lair while the other dragons are out gettting actual gold.
