Month: May 2021

Cross Country – Planes, Gains, and Automobiles. Part 1

Ordered a new car in Houston (got it for a steal) and had an instructor pilot fly with me and a friend to drop us off and take the plane back then made a 2000 mile road trip back with a friend to LA. We went Houston –> Austin –> Oklahoma City –> Santa Fe –> Utah –>Las Vegas –> LA. Wild trip in a wild car. It involved planes, some significant gains and a car.

The trip started with some eventful memories. We had planned the first leg to be KVNY to E98 (Benson Municipal), a small airport with some cheap fuel. We landed and the guy that was supposed to be there to fill the plane up was AWOL. We had did some quick calculations and looked for an alternative airport, luckily there was one just 9 min away (we were in the middle of the desert). So there was a chance we weren’t getting off the ground with the reserves we had available unless there was a close by airport.

Beautiful day but the thermals caused some issues with winds, so the landing was one of the trickier ones that I’ve done. We landed with about 45 min reserve which is the Cirrus specified and suggested minimum. We didn’t have much room to the FAA 30 min reserve (we had like 15 min radius to find another airport). Luckily, there was one just 9 min away and after calling to confirm they’d be there, we took off!

Middle of nowhere (Benson Municipal airport)

No Fuel here……

So after doing the calculations, we took off to the nearby Chochise airport where we had another incident, the lady there wasn’t wearing her hearing aid and we told her fill it to tabs (airport slang for filling it up to a specific marker that allocates 60 gallons of 92 total). We were over weight at full and we couldn’t take off if it was above 60. Well, she filled it to full and we had to milk the plane… There was no way for us to take off. Luckily the instructor knew how to milk the plane. She ended up giving us a refund on the unused fuel and we took off towards Houston shortly after. All told the trip took about 6.5 hours of flying.

Milking 345PK

Was tempted to watch some sweet flicks on the VHS but we had to make up time!

Enroute to Houston..the final leg!

The pick up. Beautiful! Such a ridiculous car, almost embarrassing but whatever, it’s a childhood dream so why the fuck not. We got it for under value due to a guy not being able to close on it and I took that opportunity to acquire the car. I can literally sell it for a profit in a year.

We left Houston for Austin during a literal rainstorm. Along the way, we stopped at a small Texas town and had some Mexican food. I don’t think I fit in there, got stared at hard by five pretty burly guys. After checking the market, it was time to leave…

On our way to Austin…listening to some Heaven Shall Burn for the boys..

Trade Compositions for 2021

So far through 2021,

For the income portion: I’ve been doing equal parts HS3EZ, 488 and 484 along with an ATM campaign leaning bearish. This helps provide a lot of diversification.

For the convexity portion: I’ve been doing BSH factory + opportunistic entries of additional black swan insurance (haven’t had to since Feb).

I’ve just started using a base LTI as well

Pretty boring, pretty simple. I’ve found now that I rarely care or even look at what the market is doing. I just enter and add adjustments when required. The first quarter was great and so far April is pretty stagnant but with a lot of potential and I’ve got a solid formed campaign both for the income and convexity portions as well as live LTI. Looking good into finishing Q2. That 48x theta has to come in sometime.

That’s pretty much the summation of how I’ve been running trades through the year. Very boring weekly entries of 48x and HS3EZ plus the management of the convex black swan portfolio. Systematic with intent and with little regard to timing of markets re entries and adjustments. It works.

The intent is to continue to investigate variants and other trades that provide some diversification to the portfolio but I haven’t had anything really pop out. I’ve got some interest in the 0DTE and looking at it from a professional gambling standpoint re edges and trade sizing but I just haven’t had the ability to jump in yet. Probably a summer thing. I will probably finish up a 486 backtest to add to the research. That’s probably all that’s on my radar.

I can’t go into the individual trade compositions because of community privacy etc but you can get more information at the mastermind group, Ron Bertino runs a few awesome well constructed courses there and the community you can become part of is a private one where we share info and strategies and as such we’re mandated to keep specific details private as it’s not fair to others in the group.