Nothing is Happening. Yet.

by JDH on June 14, 2025

Here’s the one-month Bitcoin chart, as of 7:00 am Eastern time on Saturday, June 14.

It’s almost exactly flat over the last month.

How can that be?  A change of less than 1% in a month? Aren’t a lot of “Bitcoin Treasury” companies buying Bitcoin?  Yes, Strategy Inc. MSTR—Microstrategy Inc., in the last month, has purchased 52,770 coins (you can see the summary on the Strategy Purchases page).  That’s one company, others are buying, yet Bitcoin is flat?  How can that be?

The answer is that others are selling, and those sellers tend to be longer-term holders (or HODLers, in Bitcoin parlance, Hold On For Dear Life).

If you bought Bitcoin five years ago at $10,000, and could sell it today for $100,000, would you?  Perhaps.  Having some fiat money to spend in the real world is nice.

This has hurt Strategy Inc.’s price.  It’s a leveraged play on Bitcoin, and if Bitcoin is flat, why own MSTR?  That’s why, in the last month, MSTR is down 6%.

So what am I doing?

Same as before.  I’m holding my MSTR shares, assuming they will go up over time, but I’m selling covered call options against them to “harvest the premium.”  I’ve been doing it since the beginning of the year, and, as you would expect, the results have been “mixed.”  When MSTR goes on a bull run, I lose money buying back my shares.  When it’s flar or down, the options expire worthless and I keep the premium.

I’m playing with 200 shares; since January, I’ve lost $1,500 on this strategy.  I had significant losses in April, when Strategy was running, but I’ve made money on my trades since mid-May, when MSTR has been flat.  A few more weeks of flat and I’ll break even.

The good news is that my share position is up $9,400, so I would have made more money doing nothing, but I’ve made money overall, so I’m satisfied.

For the last three weeks I’ve waited until Thursday to sell the options that expire on Friday, and I sell them well out of the money.  So, this week, on Thursday I sold the calls with a strike price of $400 expiring on Friday, when MSTR was trading at around $380.  There wasn’t much chance in 24 hours MSTR would go up by $20, so the premium was only 79 cents, but it was free money, so I took it.

This week I may get more aggressive and sell closer to the money, or a day earlier.  We shall see.

So, for now, we watch and wait, and pocket the cash.

Thanks for reading.  See you next week (if anything happens).

I’ll Keep it Brief

by JDH on May 31, 2025

I’ll spare you the charts this week, and keep it brief.  Bitcoin appears to be breaking down, and may go below $100,000.

Long term, it doesn’t matter.

Gold is also under pressure.

The stock market isn’t looking great.

So, I stay the course.

Fortunately my MSTR call options expired worthless this week, so that helped mitigate some of the weakness.

Other than that, we carry on.

Coulda Done Better

May 24, 2025

Bitcoin Let’s start with the long-term Bitcoin chart, going back to the peak in 2018: As you can see, the red uptrend resistance line perfectly hits the 2018, 2022, and 2025 peaks. That indicates major resistance somewhere around $115,000 USD. A six-month view of the same chart shows the red resistance line but also the […]

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Bitcoin: We Wait

May 17, 2025

Bitcoin has struggled to make a new high, and until it does, those struggles will continue. There is sold support around $101,000, so I’m sitting and waiting to see what happens next. My MSTR covered calls were unwound this week, at a profit, so that was good. Other than that, we wait.

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My Strategy on Strategy is Getting Out of Control

May 10, 2025

Last week, I said the MSTR Covered Call Strategy didn’t Work This Week.  Well, it didn’t work again this week, either. I am trying to “juice” my returns on the shares I own in MSTR—Microstrategy Inc. (now Strategy Inc., but the ticker symbol has yet to change).  I sell out-of-the-money covered calls that expire in one to […]

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The MSTR Covered Call Strategy Didn’t Work This Week

May 3, 2025

As discussed in previous posts, I own shares in MSTR—Microstrategy Inc. (now Strategy Inc., but the ticker symbol has yet to change).  To enhance my returns, I sell out-of-the-money covered calls, assuming that, as with all call options, the time premium erodes, and I can pocket that premium. That strategy works great when the underlying stock […]

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Bitcoin Break Out: False or Real?

April 26, 2025

Let’s start with a one-year chart of Bitcoin, with lots of funny lines: The US election results in November 2024 led to a run from $73,000 to two all-time highs above $108,000 in February 2024, and then Bitcoin corrected down to $73,000.  Since then, it has clawed its way back to almost $95,000.  The red […]

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The MSTR Covered Call Option Experiment Results – So Far

April 19, 2025

In January 2025, I started an experiment.  In a non-registered account, I deposited cash and purchased 200 shares of  MSTR—Microstrategy Inc. (now Strategy Inc., but the ticker symbol has yet to change).  The cost of those shares was $335.56.  On Thursday, April 17, 2025 (the markets were closed on Friday), MSTR closed at $317.31.  So, […]

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Is the Stock Market Correction Over?

April 12, 2025

Everyone is scared. Trump’s Tariffs are killing the world economy, interest rates remain elevated, and more is on the horizon.  Is that true?  Perhaps, but here are some reasons the correction may be over or close to it. Let’s start with a chart of XEQT, the IShares Core Equity ETF Portfolio, which is an ETF […]

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Quite a Week, Eh?

April 5, 2025

Last week, in my post on Bitcoin and Strategy Inc (Microstrategy) I said The shorter-term trend, quite obviously, is down. It turns out that statement applied to the entire market.  There were big red down candles everywhere, like on the S&P 500: That’s a 17.6% drop from the peak, which is not quite a 20% […]

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