And we're in... rare RSI2 SPY signal is short the day before probably the year's most anticipated Fed announcement.  This is like the feeling you get when you're so excited for a rollercoaster until you're actually looking down from the top of the hill... (and it doesn't help that we'll be out on a flight during tomorrow morning! )

lol this will change once we start traveling next week. Market goes nuts as soon as our backs are turned.

Pretty hilariously awesome day.  SPY opens up a percent before selling off and ending up down a percent.  Tech Trader opens flat as usual but then actually gains half a percent as the market sells off, despite being net long at 30% long x 20% short.  As usual, the most exciting days happen when one of us is out traveling (me this time); had the foresight this time to blindly throw on a few SPY weekly 201 puts before boarding, which are already up 100%.  Getting pretty good at mastering this Fate and Irony stuff.  Can't wait to see what happens when all 3 of us are out traveling on Fed Day.


Meanwhile SPY... flopping like a dead fish as usual these past weeks.

Sorry for the lack of updates.. because there hasn't been anything to update.  Tech Trader has literally flatlined in performance since the end of August and just held at year highs...

... while SPY flops up and down near year lows.

Tech Trader yet again positive for the day and at year highs, while the market is down 3% today and at year lows.  Still 38% long vs 25% short, but the shorts are greatly outperforming what little the longs are down.


As usual, notice just how unaffected Tech Trader's performance is from SPY's whiplashing up and down. Shown in the SPY chart below is also the old Comprehensive SPY strategy's short signal from yesterday which pretty much nailed it.  It's not in the core portfolio for Tech Trader, but we're having fun just manually trading weeklies in small lots around it here in our PAs.  Interesting again that many of my older strategies (first Trendlines and now Comprehensive SPY strategy) are coming back to life.

Hm.. the first strategy I ever wrote now wants to short SPY after selling around 213 a couple months ago. Kind of disturbing. It's made plenty of mistakes in the past though and is more of a slow moving guy, can hold for years, so it's just fun to watch more than anything.  Again, just very interesting to see all my older, abandoned 2012-era strategies coming back alive now after several years of silence.

Tech Trader's overall equity-only portfolio (not including the SPY options trade, only the equity) is already back within 2% of the year highs.  Exposures are also crushed to an extremely neutral 34% long by 26% short.  SPY meanwhile is still down about 7% from the highs and under $200.

SPY at $197! Jinxed it by exiting the $191 weekly calls yesterday ($4.5 from $1.5, +200%)... Except I still have my $197 weeklies (now $1.7 from $.3, >+500% gain) and $191 month-out ($8.5 from $3.93, >+100% gain). Take that Fate! Tech Trader is one step ahead of you. Bahaha!

Again, Tech Trader's 100% hitrate on calling SPY tops/bottoms (aka the once-in-a-blue-moon SPY signal) remains intact.
(Note the orange sell means it's thinking about but hasn't sold yet... though I'll probably at least let go of the weeklies mid-day to avoid decay)

The blue moon SPY signal nailed the market bottom (from a close-to-close basis of which it operates anyway).  Currently up 2% in stock, 50% in 191x weeklies, and 25% in 191x month-out calls.  I totally forgot it also had a price target.  Currently its target is 197 and will adjust according to market conditions.  I went ahead and added some 197x weekly calls as well in case we do jump that high.

Here's a review of where things are at.  Tech Trader did end up taking a hit (largely Monday) and is down 5% off the highs of 20%.  Markets are off about 12% from the highs, however, and SPY is actually negative for the year now.   The playbook currently is in ETFs and market timing.  Positions in individual names remain very neutral as a portfolio thanks to the large exposure cutting that Tech Trader did in July.  Tech Trader is getting longer on each sell off day but only in increments where it thinks might be the bottom, leaving a lot of dry powder to average down.  As the market bounces, Tech Trader will scale some out, and if we go lower, it will average down again.  It will do this until we get back into an uptrend of sorts where market timing signals will then recede and individual names start coming back into play.

Currently it is 112% long by 24% short, with 30% of that long exposure just now being added from Tuesday's close.  If you look at exposures below, you'll see that long is slowly increasing but in the sector charts, all the exposure is coming from ETFs (n/a) which is dwarfing any contribution from individual names right now.  



As usual, a YTD chart of SPY for comparison always highlights how stable Tech Trader's performance is compared to the market despite being largely net long most the year (let's not kid ourselves, SPY looks like a nightmare).

At long last, my once-in-a-blue-moon buy signal on SPY is finally here. I've been waiting all year for this. 
Would wait until close, don't get hasty in case of the remote chance Tech Trader changes its mind.
(but seriously, what are the chances of filling a $10 gap in SPY by end of day?)
Update: Yet again cancelled near the close.  The volume and price action is there though, so it'll probably be soon.  I need to stop posting these in advance before they actually get traded.  The only thing we got is a couple ETFs (XLV and SLV) intraday again. <_<


This is what a proper sell off looks like.  Tech Trader wants to buy *everything*.  Days like this are a beautiful example of how Tech Trader is NOT quant or conventional algo trading and definitely not mean reverting. All the other quants I know of started scaling in last week and got hit big time, unlike Tech Trader aiming for precision with technical analysis to figure out the exact bottoms (or at least pretty darn close).

Added the strike selection logic for options to the Tech Trader interface.

(note, prices are a bit out of wack on weekends, so if this were run tomorrow morning, we would probably get a nearer-money strike)

I don't know if this is delta or some other metric/technique.  It's how I've always picked my own strikes when trading options, but I never had a name for it.

It just hit me that SPY is really under $200.  This is like one of the once-in-a-blue-moon opportunities to buy SPY on Tech Trader's bottom signal once it hits.  That's the one we should really be waiting for and should be lining up capital to go in on.  Need to wake up here and stop getting side tracked with UNG and all these other distractions.

This is the bottom signal on SPY since 2008.  Super rare.

It's only the first half hour of the day, and Tech Trader is already outpeforming market again, down only .5% when the indicies are down 1%.  Shorts like TASR (5%) helping a lot today.  Added - signs to the charts to show where exposures are short.

Great show of strength today for Tech Trader against the market sell off.  Tech Trader in total, even with yesterday's IWM buy, is only down 0.5%.  SPY is down over 2% and IWM is down almost 3%.  Shorts like GRUB (5%), ADI (7%), and GRMN (2%) contributed a lot to outperformance, but it's nonetheless 40% net long, meaning longs were pretty resilient as well.

What's interesting to note is that Tech Trader isn't buying the dip today; no bottom or RSI signals on the major indices.  There was one yesterday and a leftover from last week, but not the usual 3-5 cluster or more with aggressive averaging down.  Again, exposures are at year lows of 65% long vs 28% short.

The n/a sector is ETFs, which consists of EEM and IWM collectively being down about 2% individually but affect less than .3% of the portfolio and are offset everything else.  The most any individual name is losing the portfolio is no more than about .1% either.



Again, the sell off is barely a blip in Tech Trader's P&L while you can see SPY for the YTD time frame being very volatile.