What a ripoff

Starting on my taxes recently.  As I have written before, I've got an ETF "short" position in stocks.  That is to say, the stock is a derivative that gets its value from the stock market.  It is supposed to go up when stocks go down, and vice versa.

On a trade like this in 2007-2009, I made a good profit on such a trade, but not this time.  I figured that the market would go down back in 2013, but it didn't.  It kept going up, but by not all that much.  However, since it magnifies the movement, the slight movement up exaggerated  the fall of my ETF, so that it lost a lot of value.

I sort of forgot about it.  It so happens that a few changes have occurred since that time to this, and now the stock has reversed split.  Because of that event, it required that I make an adjustment in my holding so as to allow the stock to split evenly, because without that adjustment, I'd have a partial share.  Can't allow that.  Since I didn't attend to it, it resulted in a forced sale.  I have to now account for it in my taxes.  It is a loss, but since I didn't buy much, it didn't lose that much.

But while doing this, I noticed how the price action has gone on the dow since I bought it and now.  Instead of being near break-even, as I think it should be, I'm still way down.

I've probably written about this before.  I don't know how they figure that I'm down, since I bought the ETF when the dow was just about 15k.  Now it is around 16k, which isn't that big of a rise, yet I am still way down.  I guess it is the "new math".  Or maybe it is "democrat math".  Heads I win, tails you lose type of math.  Donald Trump math.  Let's do it over type of math, cuz I've been schlonged.

I figure that the thing might make a profit if stocks fall below 10k, which is quite a bit below where I bought it.  Good work if you can find it. /sarc

Let's see how that all works out.  Right now, it looks like a big ripoff.  Or maybe not that big.  I didn't bet the ranch on it.  I figured small risk, big potential gain.  It now looks like big risk, small potential gain.  Just the opposite.