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Mad Hedge Fund Trader

May 17, 2019

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
May 17, 2019
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(APRIL 15 BIWEEKLY STRATEGY WEBINAR Q&A),
(MSFT), (GOOGL), (AAPL), (LMT), (XLV), (EWG), (VIX), (VXX), (BA), (TSLA), (UBER), (LYFT), (ADBE),

(HOW TO HANDLE THE FRIDAY, MAY 17 OPTIONS EXPIRATION), (INTU),

https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png 0 0 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2019-05-17 02:06:432019-05-17 03:16:22May 17, 2019
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

May 15 Biweekly Strategy Webinar Q&A

Diary, Newsletter, Research

Below please find subscribers’ Q&A for the Mad Hedge Fund Trader May 15 Global Strategy Webinar with my guest and co-host Bill Davis of the Mad Day Trader. Keep those questions coming!

Q: Where are we with Microsoft (MSFT)?

A: I think Microsoft is really trying to bottom here. It’s only giving up $8 from its recent high, that's why I went long yesterday, and you can be hyper-conservative and only do the June $110-$115 vertical bull call spread like I did. That will bring in a 13.68% profit in 28 trading days, which these days is pretty good. This morning would have been a great entry point for that spread if you couldn’t get it yesterday.

Q: How will tariffs affect Apple (AAPL) when they hit?

A: The price of your iPhone goes up $140—that calculation has already been done. All of Apple's iPhones are made in China, something like 220 million a year. There’s no way that can be moved, they need a million people for the production of these phones. It took them 20 years to build that facility and production capacity; it would take them 20 years to move it and it couldn't be done anywhere else in the world. So, that's why Apple led the charge on the downside and that's why it will lead the charge to the upside on any trade war resolution.

Q: How bad is the trade war going to get?

A: The market is betting now by only going down 1,400 Dow points it will be resolved on June 28th in Osaka. If that doesn’t happen it could get a lot worse. It could get down to my down 2,250-point target, and if it continues much beyond that, then we’ll get the whole full 4,500 points and be back at December lows. After that, you’re really looking at a global recession, a global depression, and ultimately nearing 18,000 in Dow, the 2016 low.

Q: Will global trade wars force US Treasuries down to around 2.10% on the ten year?

A: Yes. Again, the question is how bad will it get? If we resolve the trade war in six weeks, treasuries will probably double bottom here at around a 2.33% yield. If we go beyond that, then 2.10% is a chip shot and we go into a real live recession. The truth is no one knows anything, and we really don’t have any influence over what happens.

Q: How will equities digest and increase in European tariffs for cars?

A: It would completely demolish the European economy—especially that of Germany (EWG) which has 50% of its economy dependent on exports (primarily cars) and mostly to the U.S. And if we wipe out our biggest customer, Europe, then that would spill over here very quickly. Anybody who sells to Europe—like all the big Tech companies—would get slaughtered in that situation.

Q: Is it time to buy the Volatility Index (VIX)?

A: It’s too late to buy (VIX) now. I don’t want to touch it until we get down to that $12-$13 handle again because the time decay on this is enormous. Time decay is more than  50% a year, so your timing has to be perfect with trading any (VIX) products, whether it’s the (VXX), the (VIX) futures, the (VIX) options, or so on. There are countless people shorting (VIX) here, and they will short it all the way down to $12 again.

Q: What should I do about Boeing at this point?

A: We went long, got out, took our profit and caught this rally up to $400 a share. Then (BA) gave it up and it broke down. It’s a really tempting long here. Along with Apple, Boeing has the largest value of exports to China of any company. They have orders for hundreds of airlines from China, so they are an easy target, especially if there is a ramp up in the intensity of the trade war. That said, something like a June $270-$300 vertical bull call spread is very tempting, especially with elevated volatility up here, so I’m watching that very closely. We’re looking for the recertification of the 737 MAX bounce which could happen in the next few weeks; if that does happen it should rally at least back up to 380.

Q: Are your moving averages simple or exponential?

A: I just use the simple. I find that the simpler a concept is, the more people can understand it, and the more people buy it; that’s why I always try to keep everything simple and leave the algorithms for the computers.

Q: What stocks are insulated from a US/China trade war?

A: None. When the whole market goes risk off, people sell everything. Remember that an overwhelming portion of the market is now indexed with passive investment funds, so they just go straight risk on/risk off. It makes no difference what the fundamentals are, it makes no difference who has a lot of Chinese business or a little—everyone gets hit and everyone will get boosted when the trade war ends. There is no place to hide except cash, which is why I went 100% cash going into this. People seem to forget that cash has option value and having a lot of cash going into one of these situations is actually worth a lot of money in terms of opportunities.

Q: Do you have any thoughts on Uber’s (UBER) bad performance?

A: Yes, the whole sector was wildly overvalued, but no one knew that until they brought it to market and found out the real supply and demand for the issue. The smartest company of the year has to be Lyft (LYFT), which got a nice valuation by doing their issue first and keeping it small. So, they kind of rained on Uber’s parade; at one point, Uber was down 25% from their IPO price. That’s awful.

Q: Is Trump forcing the Fed to drop rates with all this tariff threat?

A: Yes, and if you remember, Trump really ramped up the attacks on the Fed in December. And my bet is at the first sign the trade talks were in trouble, they wanted to lower rates to offset the hit to the U.S. economy. There was no economic reason to suddenly demand huge interest rate cuts last December other than a falling stock market. The tariffs amount to a $72 billion tax increase on the American consumer, felt mostly at the low end, and that is terrible for the economy in that it reduces purchasing power by exactly that much.

Q: Would you buy the dollar as a safe haven trade?

A: No, I would not. The dollar may actually go down some more, especially with the collapse in our interest rates and European interest rates bottoming at negative levels. The best thing in the world in a high-risk environment like this is cash—don’t try to get clever and buy something you think will outperform. You could be disappointed.

Q: Why is healthcare (XLV) behaving so badly?

A: You don’t want to get into political football ahead of an election. That said, they're already so cheap that any kind of recovery could very well take healthcare up big, especially on an individual company basis. This is a sector where individual stock selection is crucial.

Q: Would you buy deep in the money calls on PayPal (PYPL)?

A: Yes, I would. Wait for a down day. Today we’re up slightly, but if we have a weak afternoon and a weak opening tomorrow morning, that would be a good time to add more longs in technology. PayPal is absolutely at the top of the list, as are names like Adobe (ADBE) and Alphabet (GOOGL).

Q: Should I be buying LEAPS in this environment?

A: No; a LEAP is a one-year long term deep out-of-the-money call spread. That was a great December bottom trade. The people who bought leaps then made huge fortunes. We’re too high here to consider leaps for the main market unless it's for something that’s just been bombed out, like a Tesla (TSLA) or a Boeing (BA), where you had big drops—then I would look at LEAPS for the super decimated stocks. But the rest of the market is still too high for thinking about leaps. Wait a couple of months and we may get back to those December lows.

Q: What happened to your May 10th bear market call?

A: Actually, it’s kind of looking good. It’s looking in fact like the market topped on May 2nd. If saner heads prevail, the trade war will end (or at least we’ll get a fake agreement) and the market will go to a new high. If not, then that May 10th target forecast I made two years ago IS the final top.

Q: You’re saying today we’re at a bottom?

A: We’re at a bottom for a short-term trade with a June 21st target. That was the expiration date of the options spreads I did this week. Whether this is the final bottom in the whole down move for a longer term, no one has any idea, even if they try to say differently. This is totally dependent on political developments.

Q: What do you have to say about Lockheed Martin (LMT)?

A: This sector usually does well with a wartime background. Expect that to continue for the foreseeable future. But at a certain point, the defense stocks which have had fantastic runs under Trump will start to discount a democratic win in the next election. If that does happen, defense will get slaughtered. I would be using any future strength to sell out of the whole defense area. Peace could be fatal to this sector.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/unit-sales.png 591 899 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2019-05-17 02:04:382019-07-09 03:43:41May 15 Biweekly Strategy Webinar Q&A
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

May 16, 2019

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
May 16, 2019
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(WHY US BONDS LOVE CHINESE TARIFFS),
(TLT), (TBT), (SOYB), (BA), (GM)
(THE BEST TESTIMONIAL EVER)

https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png 0 0 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2019-05-16 01:07:472019-05-15 17:32:24May 16, 2019
MHFTR

May 16, 2019 - Quote of the Day

Diary, Newsletter, Quote of the Day

"Diversification is the only free lunch," - said David F. Swensen, the legendary fund manager at Yale University.

Free Lunch

https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Free-Lunch2-e1427206717497.jpg 300 226 MHFTR https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png MHFTR2019-05-16 01:01:012019-05-15 17:16:23May 16, 2019 - Quote of the Day
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

May 15, 2019

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
May 15, 2019
Fiat Lux

(SPECIAL CHINA ISSUE)

Featured Trade:

(WHY CHINA IS DRIVING UP THE VALUE OF YOUR TECH STOCKS)
(QCOM), (AVGO), (AMD), (MSFT), (GOOGL), (AAPL), (INTC), (LSCC)

https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png 0 0 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2019-05-15 03:04:442019-05-15 03:49:05May 15, 2019
Arthur Henry

Why China is Driving Up the Value of Your Tech Stocks

Diary, Newsletter

Reduce the supply on any commodity and the price goes up. Such is dictated by the immutable laws of supply and demand.

This logic applies to technology stocks as well as any other asset. And the demand for American tech stocks has gone global.

Who is pursuing American technology more than any other? That would be China.

Ray Dalio, founder and chairman of hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, described the first punch thrown in an escalating trade war as a “tragedy,” although an avoidable one.
 

Emotions aside, the REAL dispute is not over steel, aluminum, which have a minimal effect of the US economy, but rather about technology, technology, and more technology.

China and the U.S. are the two players in the quest for global tech power and the winner will forge the future of technology to become chieftain of global trade.

Technology also is the means by which China oversees its population and curbs negative human elements such as crime, which increasingly is carried out through online hackers.

China is far more anxious about domestic protest than overseas bickering which is reflected in a 20% higher internal security budget than its entire national security budget.

You guessed it: The cost is predominantly and almost entirely in the form of technology, including CCTVs, security algorithms, tracking devices, voice rendering software, monitoring of social media accounts, facial recognition, and cloud operation and maintenance for its database of 1.3 billion profiles that must be continuously updated.

If all this sounds like George Orwell’s “1984”, you’d be right. The securitization of China will improve with enhanced technology.

Last year, China’s communist party issued AI 2.0. This elaborate blueprint placed technology at the top of the list as strategic to national security. China’s grand ambition, as per China’s ruling State Council, is to cement itself as “the world’s primary AI innovation center” by 2030.

It will gain the first-mover advantage to position its academia, military and civilian areas of life. Centrally planned governments have a knack for pushing through legislation, culminating with Beijing betting the ranch on AI 2.0.
 

China possesses legions of engineers, however many of them lack common sense.

Silicon Valley has the talent, but a severe shortage of coders and engineers has left even fewer scraps on which China’s big tech can shower money.

Attempting to lure Silicon Valley’s best and brightest also is a moot point considering the distaste of operating within China’s great firewall.

In 2013, former vice president and product spokesperson of Google’s Android division, Hugo Barra, was poached by Xiaomi, China’s most influential mobile phone company.

This audacious move was lauded and showed China’s supreme ability to attract Silicon Valley’s top guns. After 3 years of toiling on the mainland, Barra admitted that living and working in Beijing had “taken a huge toll on my life and started affecting my health.” The experiment promptly halted, and no other Silicon Valley name has tested Chinese waters since.

Back to the drawing board for the Middle Kingdom…

China then turned to lustful shopping sprees of anything tech in any developed country.
 

Midea Group of China bought Kuka AG, the crown jewel of German robotics, for $3.9 billion in 2016. Midea then cut German staff, extracted the expertise, replaced management with Chinese nationals, then transferred R&D centers and production to China.

The strategy proved effective until Fujian Grand Chip was blocked from buying Aixtron Semiconductors of Germany on the recommendation of CFIUS (Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States).

In 2017, America’s Committee on Foreign Investment and Security (CFIUS), which reviews foreign takeovers of US tech companies, was busy refusing the sale of Lattice Semiconductor, headquartered in Portland, Ore., and since has been a staunch blockade of foreign takeovers.

CFIUS again in 2018 put in its two cents in with Broadcom’s (AVGO) attempted hostile takeover of Qualcomm (QCOM) and questioned its threat to national security.

All these shenanigans confirm America’s new policy of nurturing domestic tech innovation and its valuable leadership status.

Broadcom, a Singapore-based company led by ethnic Chinese Malaysian Hock Tan, plans to move the company to Delaware, once approved by shareholders, as a way to skirt around the regulatory issues.

Microsoft (MSFT) and Alphabet (GOOGL) are firmly against this merger as it will bring Broadcom intimately into Apple’s (APPL) orbit. Broadcom supplies crucial chips for Apple’s iPads and iPhones.
 

Qualcomm will equip Microsoft’s brand-new Windows 10 laptops with Snapdragon 835 chips. AMD (AMD) and Intel (INTC) lost out on this deal, and Qualcomm and Microsoft could transform into a powerful pair.

ARM, part of the Softbank Vision Fund, is providing the architecture on which Qualcomm’s chips will be based. Naturally, Microsoft and Google view an independent operating Qualcomm as healthier for their businesses.

The demand for Qualcomm products does not stop there. Qualcomm is famous for spending heavily on R&D — higher than industry peers by a substantial margin. The R&D effort reappears in Qualcomm products, and Qualcomm charges a premium for its patent royalties in 3G and 4G devices.

The steep pricing has been a point of friction leading to numerous lawsuits such as the $975 million charged in 2015 by China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) which found that Qualcomm violated anti-trust laws.

Hock Tan has an infamous reputation as a strongman who strips company overhead to the bare bones and runs an ultra-lean ship benefitting shareholders in the short term.

CFIUS regulators have concerns with this typical private equity strategy that would strip capabilities in developing 5G technology from Qualcomm long term. 5G is the technology that will tie AI and chip companies together in the next leg up in tech growth.

Robotic and autonomous vehicle growth is dependent on this next generation of technology. Hollowing out CAPEX and crushing the R&D budget is seriously damaging to Qualcomm’s vision and hampers America’s crusade to be the undisputed torchbearer in revolutionary technology.
 

CFIUS’s review of Broadcom and Qualcomm is a warning shot to China. Since Lattice Semiconductor (LSCC) and Moneygram (MGI) were out of the hands of foreign buyers, China now must find a new way to acquire the expertise to compete with America.

Only China has the cash hoard to take a stand against American competition. Europe has been overrun by American FANGs and is solidified by the first mover advantage.

Shielding Qualcomm from competition empowers the chip industry and enriches Qualcomm’s profile. Chips are crucial to the hyper-accelerating growth needed to stay at the top of the food chain.

Implicitly sheltering Qualcomm as too important to the system is an ink-drenched stamp of approval from the American government. Chip companies now have obtained insulation along with the mighty FANGs. This comes on the heels of Goldman Sachs (GS) reporting a lack of industry supply for DRAM chips, causing exorbitant pricing and pushing up semiconductor companies’ shares.

All the defensive posturing has forced the White House to reveal its cards to Beijing. The unmitigated support displayed by CFIUS is extremely bullish for semiconductor companies and has been entrenched under the stock price.

It is likely the hostile takeover will flounder, and Hock Tan will attempt another round of showmanship after Broadcom relocates to Delaware as an official American company paying American corporate tax. After all, Tan did graduate from MIT and is an American citizen.

The chip companies are going through another intense round of consolidation as AMD (AMD) was the subject of another takeover rumor which lifted the stock. AMD is the only major competitor with NVIDIA (NVDA) in the GPU segment.

The cash repatriation has created liquid buyers with a limited amount of quality chip companies. Qualcomm is a firm buy, and investors can thank Broadcom for showing the world the supreme value of Qualcomm and how integral this chip stalwart is to America’s economic system.

 

 

 

 

https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png 0 0 Arthur Henry https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Arthur Henry2019-05-15 03:02:272019-07-09 03:43:54Why China is Driving Up the Value of Your Tech Stocks
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

May 14, 2019

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
May 14, 2019
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(FIVE STOCKS TO BUY AT THE BOTTOM),
(AAPL), (AMZN), (SQ), (ROKU), (MSFT)

https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png 0 0 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2019-05-14 03:04:152019-05-14 03:59:03May 14, 2019
MHFTF

Five Stocks to Buy at the Bottom

Diary, Newsletter, Research

With the Dow Average down 1,400 points in six trading days, you are being given a second bite of the apple before the yearend tech-led rally begins.

So, it is with great satisfaction that I am rewriting Arthur Henry’s Mad Hedge Technology Letter’s list of recommendations.

By the way, if you want to subscribe to Arthur’s groundbreaking, cutting edge service, please click here.

It’s the best read on technology investing in the entire market.

You don’t want to catch a falling knife but at the same time, you want to diligently prepare yourself to buy the best discounts of the year.

The China trade war has triggered a tsunami wave of selling, tearing apart the tech sector with vicious profit-taking few trading days.

No doubt that asset managers are frantically locking in profits for the rest of the year and protecting ebullient performance from a first quarter to remember.

This week shouldn’t deter investors from picking up bargains that were non-existent since December because the bulk of the highest quality tech names churned higher with lurching momentum.

Here are the names of five of the best stocks to slip into your portfolio in no particular order once the madness subsides.

Apple

Steve Job’s creation weathering the gale-fore storm quite well. Apple has been on a tear reconfirming its smooth pivot to a software service-tilted tech company. The timing is perfect as China has enhanced its smartphone technology by leaps and bounds.

Even though China cannot produce the top-notch quality phones that Apple can, they have caught up to the point local Chinese are reasonably content with its functionality.

That hasn’t stopped Apple from vigorously growing revenue in greater China 20% YOY during a feverishly testy political climate that has its supply chain in Beijing’s crosshairs.

The pivot is picking up steam and Apple’s revenue will morph into a software company with software and services eventually contributing 25% to total revenue.

They aren’t just an iPhone company anymore. Apple has led the charge with stock buybacks and will gobble up a total of $150 billion in shares by the end of 2019. Get into this stock while you can as entry points are few and far between.

Amazon (AMZN)

This is the best company in America hands down and commands 5% of total American retail sales or 49% of American e-commerce sales.

It became the second company to eclipse a market capitalization of over $1 trillion. Its Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud business pioneered the cloud industry and had an almost 10-year head start to craft it into its cash cow. Amazon has branched off into many other businesses since then oozing innovation and is a one-stop wrecking ball.

The newest direction is the smart home where they seek to place every single smart product around the Amazon Echo, the smart speaker sitting nicely inside your house. A smart door bell was the first step along with recently investing in a pre-fab house start-up aimed at building smart homes.

Microsoft (MSFT)

The optics in 2018 look utterly different from when Bill Gates was roaming around the corridors in the Redmond, Washington headquarter and that is a good thing in 2018.

Current CEO Satya Nadella has turned this former legacy company into the 2nd largest cloud competitor to Amazon and then some.

Microsoft Azure is rapidly catching up to Amazon in the cloud space because of the Amazon-effect working in reverse. Companies don’t want to store proprietary data in Amazon’s server farm when they could possibly destroy them down the road. Microsoft is mainly a software company and gained the trust of many big companies especially retailers.

Microsoft is also on the vanguard of the gaming industry taking advantage of the young generation’s fear of outside activity. Xbox-related revenue is up 36% YOY, and its gaming division is a $10.3 billion per year business.

Microsoft Azure grew 87% YOY last quarter. The previous quarter saw Azure rocket by 98%. Shares are cheaper than Amazon and almost as potent.

Square (SQ)

CEO Jack Dorsey is doing everything right at this fin-tech company blazing a trail right to the doorsteps of the traditional banks.

The various businesses they have on offer makes me think of Amazon’s portfolio because of the supreme diversity. The Cash App is a peer-to-peer money transfer program that cohabits with a bitcoin investing function on the same smartphone app.

Square has targeted the smaller businesses first and is a godsend for these entrepreneurs who lack immense capital to create a financial and payment infrastructure. Not only do they provide the physical payment systems for restaurant chains, they also offer payroll services and other small loans.

The pipeline of innovation is strong with upper management mentioning they are considering stock trading products and other bank-like products. Wall Street bigwigs must be shaking in their boots.

The recently departed CFO Sarah Friar triggered a 10% collapse in share price on top of the market meltdown. The weakness will certainly be temporary, especially if they keep doubling their revenue every two years like they have been doing.

Roku (ROKU)

Benefitting from the broad-based migration from cable tv to online streaming and cord-cutting, Roku is perfectly placed to delectably harvest the spoils.

This uber-growth company offers an over-the-top (OTT) streaming platform along with the necessary hardware and picks up revenue by selling digital ads.

Founder and CEO Anthony Woods owns 21 million shares of his brainchild and insistently notes that he has no interest in selling his company to a Netflix or Apple.

Roku’s active accounts mushroomed 46% to 22 million in the second quarter. Viewers are reaffirming the obsession with on-demand online streaming content with hours streamed on the platform increasing 58% to 5.5 billion.

The Roku platform can be bought for just $30 and is easy to set-up. Roku enjoys the lead in the over-the-top (OTT) streaming device industry controlling 37% of the market share leading Amazon’s Fire Stick at 28%.

The runway is long as (OTT) boxes nestle cozily in only 40% of American homes with broadband, up from a paltry 6% in 2010.

They are consistently absent from the backbiting and jawboning the FANGs consistently find themselves in partly because they do not create original content and they are not an off-shoot from a larger parent tech firm.

This growth stock experiences the same type of volatility as Square.

Be patient and wait for 5-7% drops to pick up some shares.

 

 

 

 

 

https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png 0 0 MHFTF https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png MHFTF2019-05-14 03:02:172019-07-09 03:44:00Five Stocks to Buy at the Bottom
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

May 13, 2019

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
May 13, 2019
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, OR A GAME OF CHICKEN),
(SPY), (TLT), (UBER), (BA), (SOYB)

https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png 0 0 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2019-05-13 11:05:072019-05-13 11:07:23May 13, 2019
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

The Market Outlook for the Week Ahead, or a Game of Chicken

Diary, Newsletter

In summarizing the global financial system today, I recall the classic fifties James Dean movie, Rebel Without a Cause. Two cars are racing towards a cliff and the chicken has to bail out first. But the chicken gets his jacket sleeve stuck on a door knob, and his car dives over the cliff and crashes and burns.

Thus, here we are entranced by the world’s two largest economies in a race towards a cliff, but this time, it’s an economic one. Will rational minds prevail, or will our leaders miscalculate and plunge the world into a Great Depression? In other words, will the crashing car land on us?

That’s what happened during the 1930s when after the 1929 stock market crash lead to tit for tat tariffs that eliminated economic growth for a decade. It was only after the massive defense spending of WWII that the slump ended. This time the script is playing out exactly the same way.

Certainly, the stock market believes in the rosier scenario. The Dow average only fell 1,278 points last week. In a real “NO DEAL” case, it would have given up the full 4,500 points it gained since December.

A prolonged trade war until the next election would take us well into a recession and back to down the 18,000 that prevailed before the last presidential election.

For the short term, the S&P 500 (SPY) is clearly gunning for the 200-day moving average at $275. That would take us down 6.78% from the recent high. I have been using soybean prices (SOYB) as an indicator of China trade negotiation success. It hit a seven-year low this morning.

It's all about trade talks all the time now and nobody has the slightest idea of what is coming next. So, I’ll sit back and wait until the Volatility Index (VIX) hits $30, or the (SPY) drops to $275 before entertaining another trade alert. Until then, I’ll maintain my 100% cash position.

I reach all these conclusions after two days of solid sleep, recovering from four days of bacchanalia at the SALT conference in Las Vegas. I'll write more about this when the market stops crashing long enough for me to write it up.

Long term followers of this letter are laughing because they recall that two years ago I predicted that the next bear market would start precisely on May 10 at 4:00 PM EST. That estimate was arrived at by an intricate calculation of the timing of a coming yield curve inversion and recession.

The S&P 500 (SPY) hit an all-time high of $295 on May 2 at 4:00 PM EST, seven trading days early. Who knew that it would be a Tweet that did it?

Uber went public last week, likely at an $82 billion valuation which sucked $10 billion out of the market. Not helping was a stock market crash and an Uber driver’s strike that spread from the US to London. After car operating expenses are taken out, drivers only net a paltry $5 an hour.

The Fed warned about high stock prices, and business borrowing is at an all-time high just two days before the market dumped. Maybe we should listen to our central bank?

US Job Openings soared in March, by a stunning 346,000 to 7.5 million. This is what tops look like.

Bonds exploded to the upside on stock market panic, as the world stampedes to “RISK OFF.” There’s a great (TLT) short sale setting up here, but not quite yet.

The US trade deficit hit a five-year low in March, down 16.2% to $20.7 billion. This is due to a big 23.7% jump in US exports to China, thanks to China’s massive economic stimulus program, not ours. But at what cost?

The Mad Hedge Fund Trader dumped its last position Monday morning and, as a result, was completely up 50 basis points on the week. You may have noticed that I have been stopping out of positions must faster than usual recently and now you know the reason why.

Global Trading Dispatch closed the week up 14.59% year to date and is down -1.13% so far in May. My trailing one-year retreated to +18.96%. 

Mad Hedge Technology Letter gave back some ground with two new very short-term positions in Intuit (INTU) and Google (GOOG) which expire on Friday

Some 11 out of 13 Mad Hedge Technology Letter round trips have been profitable this year.
 
My nine and a half year profit rose slightly to +314.73%. With the markets in free fall, I am now 100% in cash with Global Trading Dispatch and 80% cash in the Mad Hedge Tech Letter. I’ll wait until the markets find their new range and then jump in on the long side.

The coming week will be pretty boring on the data front.

On Monday, May 13 at 11:00 AM, the April Survey of Consumer Sentiment is announced.

On Tuesday, May 14, 6:00 AM EST, the NFIB Small Business Index is out.

On Wednesday, May 15 at 8:30 AM, March Retail Sales are released

On Thursday, May 16 at 8:30 AM, Weekly Jobless Claims are published. March Housing Starts to come out at the same time.

On Friday, May 17 at 10:00 AM, March Consumer Sentiment is printed.

As for me, I will be flying back from Las Vegas over the weekend having attended the SALT conference and my own Mad Hedge Fund Trader strategy luncheon. The highlight of the week was listening to Woodstock veterans Credence Clearwater Revival. I’ll write more about it next week.

Good luck and good trading.

John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You Can’t Do Enough Research

https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png 0 0 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2019-05-13 11:03:222019-07-09 03:44:07The Market Outlook for the Week Ahead, or a Game of Chicken
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