Monthly Investment P/L: HK$-58,000
So this was a weird month for sure.
The market is rallying hard, but I am mostly left behind.
QQQ outperformed GRNY and Mag7, while SHLD and NLR actually declined.
The Japanese stocks I held also declined while the Nikkei went the opposite direction soaring.
Probably the biggest divergence and narrowest market I’ve seen and unfortunately I am mostly on the wrong side.
Overall still up on stocks for the month but not nearly as good as the market index itself, and not enough to make up the gold or BTC losses.
USDJPY also gained a lot though so that’s why closed the month basically flat.
I consulted Gemini for some comfort, and it tells me what I already know but want to hear I guess anyways:
The strategy and allocation isn’t wrong. It’s just a narrow run up that might see a correction sooner or later. And the barbell strategy I am deploying is what allows me to ride at such a high leverage ratio.
During downturns my portfolio should be solid and experience a much shallower drawdown than the indexes, especially given that I’ve added the Japanese industrial names (which performed very poorly this month, -15-20% for MHI and Mitsui).
Current Portfolio:
HKD/USD cash: 5.83% (4.33%)
US/JP stocks: 54.60% (52.6%)
Bitcoin (USD): 42.36% (42.81%)
Gold (USD): 79.93% (78.37%)
YEN cash: 4.44% (4.65%)
JPY shorts: -87.15% (-82.77%)
—
Since things are kind of heading down, I’ve increased the leverage ratio a bit.
Also I need around HK$300k for buying the new car and moving costs, so I am taking out a bit of extra cash.
I don’t necessarily want to sell in this environment though so I will let the leverage ratio drive up to 100% before I start liquidating things.
I will probably sell bitcoins and buy MSTR call spreads to get liquidity.
US+JP Equity
As mentioned, SPY and QQQ went up but I don’t feel like I’ve captured it fully.
Both SHLD and NLR actually declined, and GRNY underperformed QQQ, probably due to being equal-weight instead of cap-weighted.
In GRNY’s case, hopefully that means during market crashes, it will be a bit more cushioned then QQQ itself.
Unfortunately at this point QQQ actually outperforms GRNY looking at since 2025. Hopefully choosing GRNY over QQQ would still be the right choice in 3-5 years time.
the JP stocks I hold also unfortunately went into a downturn – all while the Nikkei is soaring to ATH in probably the fastest pace ever.
I got the entry time quite wrong on the industrials, but well can’t help it the losses has already materialized.
At this point I wouldn’t sell but I also don’t really want to add anymore. I’ve also kind of downsized the JP allocation from 25% to 20% of the entire stock portfolio.
Gold
Biggest macro event this month was probably the new CPI data, coming in super hot.
Probably driven by higher oil prices recently.
And along with seeing oil prices not stabilizing and coming down, the market is worried of rate hikes.
Rate cuts are completely off the table now and there is a chance of 1 hike this year, along with more hikes next year.
Therefore gold is under a lot of pressure and right now hovering around the 4.4-4.5k range, down from the 4.7-4.8k range from last month.
Nevertheless, I believe that there won’t be rate hikes, and cuts should still be coming somehow.
I could be wrong but if the “rate hike wind” turns over to no hikes or even cuts, both gold and BTC should get a significant tailwind.
Crypto
Kind of same story as gold for the month I think.
Although I am a bit surprised that it’s so weak –
Given that QQQ has soared to new highs and people trade BTC like a high-beta tech stock
And the IGV that it’s been strongly correlated since Oct and was facing the same downward pressure – even that has recovered significantly in the last few trading sessions, due to SNOW’s spectacular earnings and overflowed to other software names.
Fortunately I picked up NOW and ORCL and they both soared +20% in just a few days.
USDJPY
With the US rate upward pressure, of course the USD also has significant upward pressure.
Which is pushing up the USDJPY and it’s back near 160 again after large scale interventions back last month.
If US rate hike expectations cool down, maybe it will cool down to 155 range again, which is fine then because gold and BTC would’ve probably rose a lot more anyways.
In a weird sense shorting yen is actually a really good diversification and hedge during this “strong dollar” period, which was the completely opposite to July 2024 when there was a growth scare and both US stocks and USDJPY crashed (along with a fierce yen-carry unwind)