What I traded: IPOs and event trades

May’s strongest contribution came from IPO participation. The review records allocations in 剂泰科技, 拓璞数控 and 创想三维 as the main winners. That was different from buying a newly listed share in the market: my same-day purchase and sale of 曦智科技 ended in a loss after I bought at a high price and cut the position.

  • FUTG: I completed two rounds in the leveraged ETF. The first made money; the second re-entry lost money. Taken together they were positive, but the second attempt gave back part of the first gain.
  • SLV, CONL and YANG also appeared in the month’s directional or hedging trades. Their contributions were smaller. They were not the main explanation for May’s result.

What I traded: options and the Alibaba hedge

I used short puts—selling options that can oblige me to buy shares—alongside stock positions, covered calls and protective puts. Ping An, Alibaba, Pop Mart, Meituan, FUTU and Zijin Mining all appeared in the review. Several short puts remained open at month-end, so collecting premium did not mean their risk had ended.

  • Alibaba / BABA: an Alibaba short put expired worthless. I also bought a put and sold a lower-strike put as a bearish protective spread, and shorted U.S.-listed BABA to cover risk while Hong Kong was closed. The BABA hedge lost money on its own; the combined Alibaba position remained profitable in the report.
  • Meituan: I closed part of the short-put exposure at a loss and left part open. FUTU: some puts expired worthless while another short-put position remained open. Ping An’s stock and option losses outweighed its covered-call income.
A profitable month can still leave too much risk for the next one.

My reflections · edited from the review

I should be careful about what I call repeatable. IPO allocations explained much of the good month, and allocation luck and listing-day conditions can change. The weaker 曦智科技 trade and the second FUTG entry also reminded me that an earlier gain does not make the next entry a better opportunity.

I had already recognised that I could not comfortably accept assignment on every put at once, yet I still accumulated several obligations. The gap was between knowing the limit and following it. The Alibaba hedge had a clearer purpose, but its multiple legs also made execution and unwinding more complicated.

My AI research partner’s suggestions

These are process suggestions drawn from the review, not changes that May’s trades prove I had already made.

  • Use one shared assignment budget for all short puts. Before adding a position, check the outcome if the existing contracts and the new one are assigned together; a low delta on each contract is not a portfolio limit.
  • Review IPOs as a whole strategy: include unsuccessful applications, fees, financing costs and the time capital is tied up, instead of keeping only the winning allocations in the story.
  • Give each event one total risk budget across repeated entries. For a multi-leg hedge, write down what each leg protects and the order in which it should be closed.

About the return

The original May note reports approximately +7.53% without specifying its calculation method. The later detailed May review and the July comparison report approximately +7.95% using Modified Dietz. This page keeps the original estimate marked provisional until the difference is reconciled; it should not be directly compared or compounded with the later months.