Zac's Journal

[zacj346]

I finally set up Alerts in TradingView for the MACD strategy. Took a few trades with it Monday. Currently sitting at 55 shares and a $41.85 average. I bumped the percentage per trade up to 20% today, it’s something I’ve been thinking about and it just came down to purpose. I don’t want MACD to be a standalone strategy, I want it to be a part of my whole strategy. As fun as it is to sit and trade the market, it’s never been a goal. I just want to manage positions, and I’m a little disappointed I haven’t been able to lock up the strategy and trade options on it yet. I’m a firefighter sitting around yelling at the sky “Somebody burn something!”

In other news, I did take 2 more positions in TOST

And a 4th position in HOOD

I should have waited on the first TOST trade. I took it Monday instead of waiting until Wednesday, but other than that I’m pretty happy with where I am sitting. I guess we will see what happens Friday.

 

[zacj346]

Bit of confusion today. I had my TOST $37.50 strikes profit locked in at $148.71…and I have no idea why. It should have been pulling numbers right off the trade sheet. I think what happen was I was manually locking in numbers when I was looking at it ending ITM and just forgot to set it back. I think I have it sorted out, but I have it noted I need to verify my numbers the next time I’m flat. I’ll continue with the numbers I have right now but they might be a little off.


I did close out half my position in NVDA and switch it for DKNG. Looking at MACD on the dailies DKNG is in a better position (currently crossing below zero line) NVDA looks like its trading in a range but heading towards the bottom of it. I wouldn’t trust my chart reading abilities though.
Sold 100 shares of NVDA for $135.90 locking in a profit of $614.05 (16.54%). Profit on the remaining position is $86.34 (what I got from rolling it today)

DKNG I split one Call and one Put with a plan to add 2 more positions Wednesday

TOST I rolled the Put and $37.50 strike. The $39 strike did have enough premium so I’ll wait until Wednesday and see what I can get.

Over in Robinhood I closed out my HOOD position except for the $40 Put and added a $39 Put. It cost me some to close everything but I came away with $639.54 (5.33%) on a position started 5 weeks ago. Currently sitting on $135.96 options income.

Last night YTD performance was still positive, it was $1450.55 (1.92%) for the options strategy. That was before today's drop; I think it's still positive, not sure. I’ll pull the numbers this weekend sometime. If I wait til tomorrow Schwab will just tell me, but its performance page only updates overnight. Considering the first 2 weeks of the market this year I’m not doing bad.

Anyway, I’m wrapped up. Got to rebuild some garage doors and a window. I have I have 3 bundles of R-19 left from the ceiling so I’m just going to take the doors down and make them 3.5in thick instead of 1.5in. And use some of it up that way. One of the big doors is warped anyway (top board is warped) and needs rebuilt anyway. I bought some brush seals too, and it’d be easier to get those all lines up if it was on the ground. Weatherbug says it feels like 16F today...oh joy.

 

[zacj346]

Well, 2 weeks down and I have $752.73 (0.99%) for options and $812.75 (1.00%) if you add in MACD. YTD numbers in the Robinhood pictures are higher since I am counting the last 2 days in December which were a net loss and they are not.

Going into week 3 my current positions are:

TOST - 200 shares at -$165.59 (-2.18%)
NVDA - 100 shares at -$710.32 (4.94%)
DKNG - 100 shares at $214.68 (5.48%)
HOOD - 0 shares at $135.96

Total - -$525.27 which represents a 0.69% drawdown.

I also have a Put on DKNG, TOST, and 2 on HOOD that I consider potential positions. TOST is the only position that has 100 shares without an options contract. I don’t know if Friday was an anomaly or the sign of a further pullback so I am waiting until Wednesday to see where the position is. Also on Wednesday I will add 2 more positions to DKNG and HOOD ultimately looking to take profits on Friday or at least bring positions closer to breakeven.

In MACD I took 7 trades last week, 4 closed for a profit of $49.14 bringing the total to $89.61 (1.57%). I have 55 outstanding shares at an average cost of $41.85. I reduced that down to 2 positions by date to align with the larger 20% position sizing.

 

[zacj346]

Well, I was pretty excited; MACD was all the way up to 111 shares. I was going to start selling Calls on Friday. Now I’m flat, everything has sold off. I took 2 trades Monday, nothing yesterday and so far nothing today. I missed an entry right at the open and I’m not sure if I’ll get another one. MACD had made $156.11 (2.74%) so far this year and the account is up $234.26 (4.11%) since Dec. 30th. Just to make my life more complicated I switched MACD from HOOD to RKLB and HIMS. Just wanted to diversify away from HOOD since I’m also trading it in the Taxable and I wanted to see how I handle 2 symbols.

Over on the Taxable side I was F’ing around too much. HOOD jumped yesterday so I sold off my Puts, decided I didn’t want to have nothing so I sold a really close to ITM put. Then I decided I didn’t want that so I set a sell order. It didn’t go through but today it dropped a lot so I sold it off and did a Call and Put today. It was all over the place and I should have just waited until today, sticking with my plan to just take trades Wednesday and Friday.

If HOOD closes above $45.50 on Friday I’ll walk away with $330.30 (7.28%), if it drops below $44 my break will be $43.10 (adding shares from the put).

In Schwab things were less messy. Added 2 DKNGS, I sold a call on TOST that I didn’t Friday, and I rolled NVDA down but kept Fridays expiration date.

NVDA’s strike would leave it -$455.64 (-3.17%) if NVDA move up above $138 but its close enough to its breakeven ($142.56) that I feel confident all be able to roll it out without locking it up for too long a time.

I also think I figured out what I did with TOST to mess with its numbers. I think it was up and I cut off the profit for one position and was adding it to the second and I just did it in a sloppy way. I froze DKNG’s income on one position today, but just did it on the summary page so if DKNG falls I can reverse it. It’s also still showing total income as well as todays income. I think that’s what I was trying to do on TOST, but I’ll have to verify the numbers when I close it.

Last thing I did was roll my TSLA to 1/17. It cost me $150 to do that, but I think I can make $150 in 5 weeks with an extra $19.5K available in my account.

 

[zacj346]

So far so good with 2 positions in MACD. HIMS was above the zero yesterday so I only got entries for RKLB. Made 5 trades so far, 3 RKLB and 2 HIMS and made $62.58 since switching. MACD has made $218.63 (3.84%) since Dec. 30th.

On the Taxable side I rolled my two HOOD positions:

Holding 100 shares with an adjusted cost of $40.55 a share. If it stays above $46.50 I have a profit of $595.14 (13.12%)

In Schwab I rolled my calls on DKNG and TOST straight across without bumping up or down. I Rolled NVDA out and up, taking in roughly 0.5%. I also rolled the DKNG put out and down and closed the TOST put.

I also took a speculative position in HUT. I usually stay away from Bitcoin tied positions but the stock was cheap and the premium was hefty. We will see what happens. On Wednesday I plan to add PLTR to replace TSLA. I’ll also add to my DKNG and HOOD positions.

 

[zacj346]

3 weeks in and everything is looking good. Schwab is up 1.34% which isn’t the best but is still 23.22% annualized. TSLA is gone now so my ROI should go up. TSLA sold at $195 a share, buy in was $221.34 a share and profit should be $3843.21 (17.36%) minus the small commissions Schwab takes on sold shares (I’m guessing less than $0.25). I’ll try and add the trade record as thumbnails, never really did that before on purpose. Its 5 pages long and does not include the sold TSLA since it won’t be added until Monday. You guys can math that out though if you want to, I have faith in you. Just add $19,500 to the options premium number. Here’s the highlights:

Cost Basis:

With Options Premium:

I’m doing better in Robinhood. Taxable is up $941.62 (6.67%) and the IRA is up $290.18 (5.10%) Again, the numbers in the picture are different because I am counting from Dec. 30th. These annualize out to 115.61% and 88.40% respectively. I don’t expect the returns to be that high, but it is fun to see what a picture perfect year could look like.

Going into week 4 my positions for options are:

TOST - 200 shares at $430.46 (5.67%)
NVDA - 100 shares at -$417.96 (-2.91%)
DKNG - 200 shares at $143.75 (1.78%)
HOOD - 100 shares at $595.14 (13.12%) - capped*
HUT - 100 shares at $39.34 (1.14%)

Total - $790.73 which represents 1.02% open profit
*Capped - currently above strike (equity at strike given)
Altogether the Schwab and Robinhood Taxable are up $1786.64 (2.31%) Add in MACD and its $2076.82 (2.50%), that’s $17.30 an hour if my money was out there taking your order at McDonalds. I think that’s more than my son earns making pizzas, but I'm not sure. It means holding TSLA hasn’t really hurt anything except maybe taking some off the top. It’s good news, since I have been considering pulling some money out to either buy another truck or fix one that I have. My son’s Ranger doesn’t make it up the driveway when it snows so we could use another 4WD for the winter. My black truck needs about $3000 worth of parts to get it solid again but I don’t have the time or space to do it so I’d have to send it somewhere and pay for the work. I also found a 2003 Silverado SS for sale locally, I think they want $8000 for it, which is a solid discount since the seat is mangled (new seat leather is a few hundred bucks). So It might be something I could buy and flip in the spring (other examples are around $13K). It would mean pulling more money out of Robinhood, but might be worth it if I can find a buyer.

 

[zacj346]

I ended up being sick Wednesday, I’m not all the way over it but at least I’m well enough to trade and journal. I did end up selling a call and put on PTLR on Wednesday but that was it as far as options. I also keep up with my MACD alerts, and it's a minor miracle that I was able to sort that all out. MACD made 7 trades as well as closed an open trade from last week to bring in $105.52 (1.85%) and has made $402.15 (7.07%) since Dec 30th. Currently both RKLB and HIMS are above the zero line. One thing I did notice is both of them are now more than I can cover in the account. I would need $6300 to trade both effectively and the account is only $6089. I’m not going to do anything about it just yet, but I will have to transfer money if things go sideways.

Over in the Taxable I just bumped everything up. At a $48 Strike I have a profit of $843.86 on HOOD. The account itself is up over $1200 since Dec. 30th.

I'll be back later this weekend to give you the run down on how I'm sitting at the end of Week 4.

 

[zacj346]

Week 4 is in the bag and everything is going smooth this week. Schwab is up $1705.27 (2.70%), Taxable is up $1223.25 (8.66%), and MACD is up $398.72 (7.01%). MACD opened up a few trades towards the end of the session on Friday so it’s down a bit from what I said previously. It has 1 position in HIMS and 2 in RKLB.

Altogether options trading brought in $2928.52 (3.79%) and with MACD its $3327.24 (4.01%). That’s $20.79/hr if broken down to a 40 hour 9 to 5. Not bad. We are moving out of pizza making territory and into legitimate work. Although, I think this is more towards the upper end of the range I’m going to fall into as the year goes on.

Flipping through the charts HOOD is getting a little high for me so I am going to work out of that. Maybe swap for AFRM or SQ. I have to be mindful of earnings dates though. PLTR has earnings in 2 weeks so I’ll try and get out of that at the end of next week. HUT isn’t looking great, it’s still up $35 as it sits though so i’m not worried about it.

Going into week 5 my positions are:

TOST - 200 shares at $518.81 (6.83%) - capped
NVDA - 100 shares at $44.70 (0.31%) - capped
DKNG - 200 shares at $445.45 (5.52%)
HOOD - 100 shares at $843.86 (18.60%) - capped
HUT - 100 shares at $35.02 (1.26%)
SHOP - 100 shares at $92.12 (0.85%)

Total - $1979.96 which represents 2.56% open profit.


Just some final thoughts. It’s a little surreal to consider that annualized out I would make over $40,000 if I maintain returns for the whole year. Maybe it's just a good start to the year, but the potential is there. MACD is surprising as well. I didn't expect it to do so well, and I’m still bummed I haven’t been able to sell a single option in that account yet.

 

[zacj346]

I was looking at this chart for HAL and it's a good example of what I’m trying to trade. Ever since the start of 2025 MACD crossed and it took a minute but eventually HAL rose about $2 from the blue arrow to the close of the last green bar, which happens to be a friday. It got hit with a miss on Revenue so it dropped after earnings (at least that’s what the chart is saying). Even now if I would have held too long, forgot about earnings, whatever.. HAL is basically at the same price it became a buy so I could still get out with all the premium as profit.

So this trade had a setup I am looking for, it gained and gave a chance to get out and take profit before earnings, and I could still get out after earnings with most of the premium just no stock gains. It’s a good setup, I think. It's not going to be that nice and condensed everytime. It's also not going to happen every time. So here is where I’m sitting with my positions:

I did say I was going to work on a strategy for buying into positions, cause I really didn’t have a system for it. I’m already using MACD for the MACD trades, so it's already up on my charts to begin with. I did enter TOST early in Dec. which wasn’t ideal but it’s come together finally. NVDA as well, and…let’s just say it's a work in progress. DKNG, PLTR, and SHO are following this at least. HOOD has just been a producer for me since I’ve had it. Its MACD hasn’t been below zero since Sep.

I’d just thought I’d share some insights. This thread is getting more views than I realised so maybe some of you are wondering what I’m doing. I’m just running off of charm, goodlooks, idiosyncrasies, and MACD. And right now, DayQuil, but it's just for a persistent cough at this point.

 

[zacj346]

Did everyone make it through the dip Monday? I’ve got NVDA down and HUT down. Everything else is doing fine. MACD is still racking up Wins, 6 completed trades so far this week $88.23 so far. 2 open positions in RKLB but it’s doing its thing.

I sold out of NVDA and DKNG to sell a put on TGT. NVDA was -$1904.96 (-13.24%) for that leg, -$1270.49 since 12/4/24. DKNG had a profit of $389.13 (4.38%) since 1/10/25. I sold off both positions in DKNG when I really didn’t need to. I was looking at a more expensive stock; PG. I decided to go with TGT instead since it has a dividend coming up. Oh well, DKNG has earnings coming up anyway.

 

[zacj346]

Just letting stuff go. I’m letting HOOD, PLTR, TOST, and SHOP go today. All of them are because earnings are coming up and I don’t want to hold them for that. I’ll have to wait and get exact numbers but its going to be close to $2150 in profit altogether. I do have some same day rollouts set to get a little bit more money but I’m not sure if any of them will hit or not. I flipped through my lists but nothing really jumped out as something I wanted to get into that wasn’t in front of earnings. But I did sell puts on LVS and NUE today as well as roll HUT and TGT.

I’m considering doing a rescue attempt on HUT. I was looking at it, but its not quite ready yet. I am thinking of sell 3 puts on it, and if nothing pops up for next week that’s what I’ll do.

MACD is still Chug-a lugging along. $160.72 (2.82%) from 12 trades this week. The whole account is up somewhere in the neighborhood of $550 (9.60%) since Dec. 30th. It’s still running behind about $350 from where it needs to be to operate fully without running out of capital but it hasn’t affected it yet.

I’m constantly considering just going with MACD for all of Robinhood. I’ve looked at the software to do it and the cost isn’t terrible. I have my whole record keeping sorted out, I’m still not sure though. 2 positions triggered about 80 trades this month. I setup a paper account at one of the companies to test it out, I think I have it set correctly, we’ll see.

 

[zacj346]

January is in the bag and while I’m not quite as well off as I was mid January I still came away with profits. Schab ended with $370.77 (0.59%). NVDA was a big loser for me, down around $1300. I could have stayed with it and grind it out until it was positive again but I think I could do better waiting for a setup and jumping in again rather than grinding it out. I think i’ll end up better off in the long run.

Anyway, the real winners of January were the Robinhood accounts. The Taxable as up $1428.48 (10.11%) and the MACD account is up $466.04 (8.19%) Again, I’m going from Dec. 30th so the numbers in image YTD are not the same as I am using. The starting balances I am using are $14,116.42 and $5687.46. Taxable is higher than 2024’s ending balance because I added money to it.

Combined options trading is up $1799.25 (2.33%) and MACD brings it up to $2265.29 (2.73%). This is based on starting balances of $77,164.93 and $82,852.39 respectively. Those are also adjusted up to account for the money added. So far so good.

There are some things I would like to change or at least work on changing going forward. I think I am going to try and keep trading HOOD.The main reason is simplicity, everytime I switch to a new symbol it adds sheets to my spreadsheet. I’ve got it down to a quick process now, but the more symbols the messier it gets. So I’m going to try it. The Taxable account where I have been trading it is the strongest performer so giving up a month or two to try this isn’t going to hurt too much.

I’m also not happy about TGT I thought it would be a nice opportunity to scoop up some dividends, and it has only been dropping. I didn’t follow my strategy at all, I thought since MACD was crossing zero it would get a nice bump and continue its run and so far that hasn’t happened. If I wanted to trade it I should have established a position back in Dec. when it actually had a setup I want to trade.

You can see where I started (cross) and my breakeven (dotted line). I wanted to replace NVDA but this was not a good position to start. To be fair, I think the other position I was looking at was PG and it is down a bit since Jan. 29th. Just not as bad. It’s MACD looks was better though. I just thought I could do better with a dividend payment.

Cross is an estimated entry based on time of day I usually trade, I’m not sure what time I actually took TGT trade.

Contradicting what I said about HOOD and wanting fewer symbols I did add to my list of possible trading symbols. I now have a list of about 100 between $25 and $270 with about 27 I’m actively watching for entries. The reason is I am looking for a specific setup that may only happen a few times a year on any one symbol. So I am casting a wide net for potential trades even though I want to try and keep my basket of actual trades smaller. I’m also watching an additional 10 between $20 and $25 to potentially add to MACD as it grows.

Speaking of MACD, I am paper trading on I think TraderPost. I have a week free trial to get it set up and running to see if it works as I expect it to. I did get an entry Friday but the webhook wasn’t setup properly so it didn't go through. That was my fault, I completely skipped that step. I’ll keep you posted how that goes and what I think about the service. Looking through it it has the ability to trade just on my Robinhood IRA, which I liked. I’m not sure the monthly costs yet because I didn’t look too deeply into what tier I will need, but the prices are reasonable for the first few tiers. So far, getting it set up was simple enough, if I have it right this time. If I do get MACD automated it would be nice.


That’s all I can think of saying. I am sitting on a lot of cash right now, over 50%. So I’ll definitely be looking to add positions Wednesday, but I don’t have any particular positions in mind.

 

[zacj346]

Still working on getting TraderPost going. Part of the long setup is due to not being able to work on it until last night. I had to start paying to get auto-submit, and then I still didn’t have the webhooks right, when I copied it I missed a bracket. I went through it last night and I think it's ready now. While I was working on it I did find https://www.pinescriptwizard.com/ which is a ChatGPT for pine script code. It lets you demo a few things and I managed a few queries before it said I was done for the week. It wasn’t perfect but with it and my limited pinescript knowledge I was able to rewrite my strategy so at least it isn’t a hacked up mess. I’m going to keep the link and mess around with it some more and try to get the strategy to do a few things that I want it to do but not sure how. Like don’t add shares if I have 100. I’m sure there is something I can do, like adding a count and resetting the count. I’ll have to play around with it.

So far I just have it set up on the Robinhood IRA, so I’m just on the $49 a month plan. Once I get it worked out and actually working I will probably switch to a yearly plan to save a little money. I’m not sure if I can stay on that plan and add the other Robinhood Accounts or if I need to go up a tier. I just says I’m allowed 1 broker but I don’t know how they count the different accounts inside a broker. It doesn’t matter right now, as I’m using one account, but I might add more in the future. Especially if Schwab ever allows automated services.

Anyway, I exited my NUE Put and replaced it with a HOOD Put yesterday. Today I decided HOOD was getting too expensive for the Robinhood Account and Switched it to one of the Schwabs. I replaced that Put with a Put on HIMS, which got too expensive for the MACD account so I swapped in VFC. Along with HOOD I also added Puts for DKNG and TOST in Schwab. All these puts were conservative around 0.5% to 1% and all the swapping around was for a profit, but I’m talking 10’s of dollars so nothing much.

MACD is still performing, 4 closed trades for Feb. $49.73 (0.87%) so far. RKLB is currently at 100 shares so its paused. If they are all still open Friday I will start selling options on it. VFC was just swapped in today so no signals from it yet. Returns on the strategy tester look good though.

That’s it, just coasting right now waiting for a better setup.



Update:

Still not getting signals from TradingView…went through and check everything again and tests go through, if this keeps up I’ll probably need to reach out and get some support. Oh, well I’ll work on it more this weekend.