achieving financial freedom one lazy step at a time

An unpleasant experience

Well, we had a drop in the market. Finally. Let’s be honest, it was long overdue. And actually it wasn’t even that much of a correction.

Being an active investor sinds 2000 this isn’t my first drop and it definitely wil not be my last one. But it was my first one with a huge leveraged position. Which did add a little bit extra spice to the whole experience.

The broad overview is this. On the first of February my stash stood at 289 722 euro. The 5th February it would reach a low of  253 860 euro. That is 35 862 euro gone poof.

The reason: the strong drop in AB Inbev which first eliminated my buffer and then continued to plunge down.

How did it feel? Well, imagine somebody putting on a glove with spikes on the inside and then cupping your balls.

Day 1: there is slight pressure. You are thinking you are not liking this (and if you are me, a small part of your brain is also thinking, ‘Hey, if it was a beautiful woman doing it, I might find this kinky’ 😉

Day 2: the pressure increases. Gone are all thoughts of it possibly being kinky. Ugly ogre or the most beautiful woman in the world. It doesn’t matter. There is pain, so much pain.

Day 3: you hear craking. There is not supposed to be any cracking down there! What the hell is making the cracking noise? Also pain, so much pain. Please, please let it stop!

After trading hours you take stock of the situation. The biggest question you have is this: have I been an idiot? How stupid was it to put a construction on AB Inbev with it trading around 95 euro? Was it a bad price?

Well it isn’t a really cheap price, I knew that going in. But they do make a ton of money. They will continue to make a ton of money. The dividend is healthy and assured. They will pay down there debt, making either room for more dividend or new acquisitions. I read Dream big and know those guys are efficiency freaks, squeezing an ever increasing free cash flow out of their operations. I read almost every interview with Alexander van Damme. He is smart, high up in the management and already owns a ton of shares of aB Inbev but on 10th January he bought an additional 500.000 shares via patrinvest (and the time before he even bought at  101 euro).

If there is one guy on this world who nows the value of AB Inbev it’s him. And he just put in 48 million euro at 95 per share.

Also, I knew there might me a change of a correction. It’s why I reduced my leverage. It’s why I chose a stable dividend paying stock for the construction because  the dividend covers the financing fees. As long as I do not get a margin call I can keep the position for all eternity and even get some positive cash flow out of it! And a margin call was still a long way out!!

All of a sudden the pain was gone! My head cleared.

And then it hit me like a freight train! I actually could make a profit from this drop. If AB Inbev would eventually go back to the 95 euro level I now had an opportunity!

You see, the construction has two legs. And one of them had a very nice profit. The other leg just had an even larger loss. But that loss would disappear if AB Inbev rebounds. But part of the profit on the other leg would then also disappear. Solution: take the profits on the one leg. Then wait till AB Inbev rebounds enough and only then deploy the second leg again. I could actually make a lot of money of this drop!

So day 4, this morning, I woke up with a shiny new pair of metal balls and traded the shit out of the drop.

If it all works out, and AB Inbev does bounce back I will have made an extra 14.000 euro. If it starts dropping again I just sacrificied another 1,7 euro of downward protection because now I am fully exposed to any price movement in AB Inbev. Do me a favor: drink more beer!

12 Comments

  1. ambertreeleaves

    What a painful metaphor…. And I am in the same boat with various puts and no profitable legs to take of the table… Sweating hard…

    • finan112_wp

      This isn’t the big drop. But it does proof the market is very skiddish at the moment. With the rebound it might be prudent to reduce the leverage a bit.

      • ambertreeleaves

        Thinking of that as well… Keep some dry powder over the next months

  2. Team CF

    “If it all works out, and AB Inbev does bounce back I will have made an extra 14.000 euro.” and if it drops? You will need a cast iron toque!
    P.s. I hope it goes the right way for you.

    • finan112_wp

      Dropping at the moment. The pain is back, but that might be something I ate …

  3. o femeie

    A sloth wakes up at act. Change your nickname, please.

    ( I proposed my husband to invest all our savings because the market is going down. “He looked at me and he said: sounds a good decision, woman.” ).

    • finan112_wp

      Smart husband! Now I just need to hang in there. But hey, sloths are pretty good at hanging ….

      • Claudia

        only you can find a quality of this animal 🙂
        (it’s me, Claudia, that I comment there).

        I am very proud to tell you about my husband more: in the morning he told me the market is still going down, and he asked me to wait several days, maybe is going down more and more. He even studied to understand the causes and to estimate how deep could go, but we are positive.
        No one can predict the financial crises, but we can enjoy it. Spectators.

  4. Dividend Cake

    Going back to 95 euro won’t happen, I am afraid. Risk management is key when entering a trade but you know this. I hope you can manage the trade with the least amount of loss. You put a smile on my face with your methaphor.

    • finan112_wp

      I would be ok around 90. Also, don’t underestimate the cash generation of AB Inbev. Sure, there are some headwinds but that is true for most businesses.

  5. CyclingInvetor

    Changing the name of your most well known beer in “Belgium” instead of Jupiler is the most stupid marketing trick I ever read. Doesn’t make me confident for the stock price I am afraid. But I realy hope for you I am wrong!

    • finan112_wp

      Belgium has become a blip on the volume of beer ab inbev is selling. Our newspapers may make it seem as a ‘big thing’ but numbers wise it has 0 impact on the bottom line of AB Inbev.

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