I am not claiming they did directly, but those pesky Groundhogs showed up on a day when my portfolio was pulled in a downward direction. Were it not for a couple of key positions taken by Octane, I would have woken up to losses all around. An internet search blames the losses on a Trump-induced trade war. I will try to stay above politics. I am just not a fan of rodents.

With Ethereum dropping, every one of my positions also dropped. Some have been “out of range” for a few weeks. Some have danced in and out of range over the past few days. As it stands now, ALL of them are solidly out of range. The guru will have to let me know later this week what my options are for the short term. If I hold the losing positions, I can still recover some or all of my losses IF they come back into range. When in the pool, it isn’t a loss until you sell the position.

My new bot, Odyssey, trading on the US-Broker woke up Sunday afternoon (I think it wakes up when it is midnight somewhere.) to make some bad decisions. Technically, the decision may not have been bad. It did not factor in the rodent’s shadow when it started taking new positions, and all of the positions left over the weekend likely reversed directions. I curiously watch to see how this bot handles adversity.

The obvious highlight of the weekend was the results from Octane. It had a slow December with a slightly busier January. All in all, the past few months have been disappointing. It did come through in a big way when the markets opened. I thought it would forego the gains and apply the gains to removing the older positions. Its algorithms knew better. The gain is a great start to February!

I am not diversifying perfectly, but I am learning. When one of my less traditional investments does well, it makes accepting the losses of the other investments easier. I don’t know what the investments will look like at the end of the month. Right now, I am glad to see some of them snuck out from underneath the groundhog’s shadow.