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Boom time

Today was absolutely insane. There was some good news about another COVID vaccine which set the equities markets up today, and $ETH hit $600, which set the crypto markets roaring. It was amazing. I finished the day up eight percent, for my first five digit day, (and then some.)

The news behind $DPW was that they announced some partnerships with restaurants to provide electric vehicle charging stations. I’ve had a standing trigger since September to set a trailing stop next time it pumped past five dollars, and it triggered at 5.39, which cut me out of a couple hundred dollars to the close.

Overall, I’m glad to be out of this one. I had picked it after I misinterpreted some news about their involvement with bitcoin, and got caught up in that first big pump gap a week after I opened the position. By the time I hit my value averaging targets in the grey box, I was down, so I set the trigger, hoping that it would have another big spike that I could capitalize on. Turns out it worked, so yay me. I feel a lot better about the other, pure-crypto plays in my portfolio, and would rather put my focus there than worry about these guys in the future.

Ethereum was obviously the driver in today’s rally, and again, the fact that the mining companies are up even more shows me where I need to be focusing my cash. $RIOT and $MARA and the rest are doing really good.

Strangely, BTC has been pretty flat despite a big dip over the weekend, I think the fact that it’s basically back where it was Friday has proven really bullish for the market. In fact, $BTC was down from Friday’s levels, but $GBTC was up five percent.

I have actually been anticipating a BTC dip when we get near ATH levels, and I had calculated a GBTC price of 22.40 for a sell order. Today’s close set us at 22.15, so I’m thinking I may want to reconsider that order. If the premium keeps running up like today, we may hit it without any price movement by BTC, and I may get stuck holding the cash. I’m going to sleep on it and see what happens overnight.

In spite of today’s mind-blowing rally, I still managed to get pulled into four different fires at work. And it gave me a bit of solace while dealing with the bullshit, knowing that none of it mattered and that ultimately I didn’t have to put up with any of it if I didn’t want to. I got so much done today, I even managed to take the girls to the playground for an hour this afternoon, cooked lunch and dinner and did grocery shopping.

All in all, today kicked ass in more ways that one.

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Market updates

September is starting off with a bang.

$BTC was up to $11.9k this morning and has been edging on either side of $12k all day, but most of my attention was on ETH and DeFi tokens. I entered positions in Horizon ($ZEN) and Grayscale’s Ethereum Trust ($ETHE).

DPW Holdings

I started a value averaging protol with DPW Holdings ($DPW) back in June of last year. I believe they were on a list I pulled together for autonomous or aerial vehicles or something and is one of those stock pics that I threw a minimal amount of capital at without too much thought. Within a week they went from a dollar to six, and I thought I was a damn genius. It fell right back down, thankfully I sold some during this and a subsequent spike in mid-July. The protocol ended early last month, and my position is a bit underwater, but it’s less than half a percent of my total portfolio.

DPW Holdings

I set a contingent order to set a trailing stop should the price exceed five dollars. It’s my first time doing this with my brokerage, but I think I’m going to be putting them to use in the future.

Horizen

Horizen came up in my notes yesterday while I was feeding off of CryptoPanic. I was looking a running a node, actually, but discounted the one percent returns on the “Secure” node as weak, while the capital required for the 14% APR “Super” nodes as too steep. And mining the coins seemed completely out of the question as well. Still, the ticker price was trending as a nine on the TD Sequential for most of the day, so I broke out my trade calculator and took out a two percent position.

Horizen ($ZEN) chart

The price recovered after my order, so the nine actually turned into a one by close, so that might actually make a good strategy. My stop is set at the last entry signal, and I’ll raise the stop if it hits the exit target.

Grayscale Ethereum Trust

I’ve been heavily invested in Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust ($GBTC) for at least a year or more, and right now it makes up about a fifth of the holdings in my managed IRA. And while I hold a special place in my heart for Ethereum, I’ve refrained from participating in Grayscale’s Ethereum Trust ($ETHE), mainly due to the insane premiums that have been attached to it since it was made available through my brokerage.

Since all the madness in DeFi and yield farming has taken off, ETH has become extremely lucrative, jumping to the top of the mining calculators over the past couple days. I switched my rig over last weekend, and at last check I’m making close to three times mining revenue than I was six months ago. And while the price of ETH has risen four times since last March’s lows, ETHE’s premium over NAV (the ratio between actual assets and number of shares,) is actually at the lowest level in a year.

The ETHE premium (ETHE/ETHUSD/NAV; NAV = 0.0934346 ETHE/ETHE) on the candlesticks. ETHE (falling) in blue, while ETH (rising) in red.

To me this seems like the best time to enter into an ETHE position. There’s not a lot of chatter about it on Twitter, but I did find the following thread which thinks that the premium could go even lower, and the price down to $40. Given what’s happening in DeFi right now, I don’t think it’s likely, especially given that price computes below NAV, but I set a stink bid regardless and opened a small position (0.5% capital) before the end of the day. Taking these nominal positions relieves my FOMO and gives me some breathing room.

https://twitter.com/JonathanZafar/status/1299460592173027330
https://twitter.com/JonathanZafar/status/1299460592173027330

It’s just crazy to think that just back in June, ETHE was $220, ETH was $240, and now ETHE is $60 and $ETH is $470. I’ll scale in from here and keep an eye on the premium. The closer things go to NAV, the better a deal we’ve got here.