Counting with Doug: Financing a trip to Lake Tahoe solely with blackjack winnings?

Two years of trading for “Cape Cod Doug,” and a profit of 133%

Well, it’s March 19th, and this marks the two year anniversary of my posting trades on this blog.

As I wrote here in one of my very first posts, the inspiriation for the site was my grandmother, Edith Carlson, who would have been 116 today, but who died in 2001 at the age of 105. I still miss her very much, every day.

It was Edith who taught me about markets, which she loved to play and follow, and which she did very well in, even though she was not a “professional,” but spent her life in hard manual work.

I hope she would be proud of this site; after placing my first trade on March 19th, 2010, in two years I have run my starting capital of $10,000 up to over $23,300 — a two year gross profit of 133%.

On the other hand, I realize I have been all over the place with trading strategy. When I started, I was mostly placing swing trades of about 2 days to 2 weeks in holding time.

After a year of that, I more or less gravitated to options trading, and quickly to specializing in trading VIX options. Last summer’s losing trades on a “lazy man’s strategy,” which basically imploded when partisan brinksmanship almost caused a US default and sent the VIX soaring.

So I had to reevaluate again, and this year started selling SPY credits spreads every week on the weekly options market, ad then hedging my exposure with longer term SPY options.

So far, I’ve got a profit of more than $1,000 doing this, with seven profitable weeks against three losers. I’m not sure this will keep up, though, because premiums are selling so cheap with the constant grind upward we have had this year.

That could change at any time, though. And no matter what happens, I know that my first trading advisor, born in 1896, will be looking down from heaven and playing along.


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