Regular readers of this blog know that I seldom talk about actual trades, I mentioned the reason for that in this post. Ironically the trade on Leucadia I spoke about ended up being my dumb trade of the month, talk about confirmation. So to invite disaster I thought I’d discuss what I’m currently up to, in case it’s not clear from my other musing.

Strategies to lock in ANZ profits form the share purchase plan. Including selling calls, buying puts and CFDs. Plus the dangers of a cash rich company.

Today I give thanks to my dad. When several people told me what I wanted to do was impossible and I was too late, it was my dad’s voice reverberating in my mind which drowned out their negativity. My dad wise saying, “there is no such thing as can’t” , was my life jacket in the sea of negativity which four authorative people cast me adrift in.

The Fusion Fund has applied for a full $15k allocation to the ANZ share purchase plan.
I will write more about this later, but if anyone still wants to apply you have a little under one hour to get to 380 Bourke St, Melbourne with your application and cheque. Make sure you have it in a letter with a stamp, as theat is the GPO Box location and you’ll be posting it over the counter.
More later on as I relay the trials and tribuations of how I made $1875 in an …

There is one important thing. Buy Fear Sell Greed. With little time for detailed research (bad move Dean) but a lot of money to put to work in the Fusion Investing Fund, the fund just bought 1,000 ANZ shares at $18.10. While Westpac Bank would have been a more conservative investment the greater potential of ANZ and my better understanding of ANZ swung my decision.
Fund Performance to Date

4 of 6 positions (67%) outperforming the index.
The -0.6% return compares favourably to the -15.4% for the ASX200.
Fund dips into red for second …

Can you hear it?
Two charts to start, ANZ one and five year charts.

the one year chart still captures the high. I thought it would be good to keep a snapshot of that.
four steps forward one giant leap back.
and now the VIX, hitting peaks not seen in…gosh how many years is it? 5 or 6?

a few days back VIX and More commented that “we have a new line in the sand right now, a VIX of 42.16 (and SPX of 1133).”
as VIX said we have extreme fear when the VIX continues …

I just returned from ten days holiday in New Zealand. Before leaving I placed a trailing stop order on the 1,000 ANZ shares the Fund bought in mid July. The stop was set at 5% below the recent high of $19.52.
As I have previously said, I generally do not trade frequently. However, in the current market environment and attitude to financials, this seemed prudent. The stop was triggered at open on Friday July 25th for a 5.8% return in just over a month. However, as I neither wrote about …

Now is one of the times you need to be a net buyer of stocks.
While I don’t have strong conviction that the bottom is in I do see a lot of extremely good value in the market at the moment. I have been focusing on US stocks recently and will continue to do so as I also believe now is a great time for international investors to be buying US assets. From my perspective the Australian dollar is at a 25 year high against the US dollar. While the upward …