Mad Hedge Fund Trader

Taking Profits on the Yen?.Again!

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This is my 14th consecutive closing Trade Alert, and the 20th including my remaining profitable open positions. I have only six more to go until a break my previous record of 25. It doesn?t get any better than this.

The yen is now in free fall, and the Japanese stock market is going ballistic, as I expected. Both the ProShares Ultra Short Yen double short ETF (YCS) and the Wisdom Tree Japan Hedged Equity ETF (DXJ) have pierced new five-month highs, and loftier levels beckon.

The immediate trigger was a meeting at the Bank of Japan, where the governors voted to maintain their ultra low, 0.1% discount rate. They also reiterated their commitment to growing the money supply by a blistering $600-$700 billion a year, or nearly triple the US monetary easing rate on a per capita GDP basis.

On the same day, we received month old Fed minutes showing a definite lean towards tapering our own quantitative easing. When this eventually does happen, the interest rate differential for dollar/ yen will rise dramatically. Needless to say, this is all terrible news for Japan?s beleaguered currency, as interest rate differentials are the primary drivers of foreign exchange markets.

Given all this, I am going to take profits on my existing short position in the yen through the Currency Shares Japanese Yen Trust (FXY) December, 2013 $101-$104 in-the-money bear put spread. At this mornings shockingly high prices for the spread, we can harvest 83% of the potential profit with one full month still to run to the December 20 expiration.

The outlook for the yen is no so bleak that I want to have plenty of cash to reload on the short side during the slightest recovery. I will move to closer strikes and more distant maturities to maximize your profits. It is now looking like we will soon challenge the 2013 low for the (FXY) of $94.80 and the $72 high for the (YCS).

We have a lot of new readers on board now, as my white-hot performance has become a talking point in the hedge fund community. So for the newbies to familiarize themselves with the basic structural flaws in the yen, please click here http://madhedgefundradio.com/rumblings-in-tokyo-2/, here http://madhedgefundradio.com/new-boj-governor-craters-yen/, and finally here http://madhedgefundradio.com/new-boj-governor-crushes-the-yen/.

FXY 11-25-13

YCS 11-25-13

CXJ 11-25-13

Woman - Hari KariThe Final Act for the Yen Is Just Beginning

Mad Hedge Fund Trader

November 25, 2013

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Global Market Comments
November 25, 2013
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:
(MAD HEDGE FUND TRADER HURTLES TO 58%)
(C), (XLF), (XLI), (FXY), (FXA), (TLT), (TBT),
(TIME TO SOAK UP SOME SOFTBANK),
(SFTBY), (AMZN), (ORCL), (GOOG), (EBAY), (TWTR)

Citigroup, Inc. (C)
Financial Select Sector SPDR (XLF)
Industrial Select Sector SPDR (XLI)
CurrencyShares Japanese Yen Trust (FXY)
CurrencyShares Australian Dollar Trust (FXA)
iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond (TLT)
ProShares UltraShort 20+ Year Treasury (TBT)
SoftBank Corp. (SFTBY)
Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN)
Oracle Corporation (ORCL)
Google Inc. (GOOG)
eBay Inc. (EBAY)
Twitter, Inc. (TWTR)

Mad Hedge Fund Trader

Mad Hedge Fund Trader Hurtles to 58%

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The performance of the Mad Hedge Fund Trader?s Trade Alert Service is still going ballistic, falling just short of a 60% gain for the year last week. Every new subscriber since September has seen 100% of their trades turn profitable. This is your classic ?shooting fish in a barrel? market.

I know guys my age aren?t supposed to be packing in 16-hour workdays. But it?s all worth it when I can level the Wall Street playing field for the individual investor.

Including both open and closed trades, the last 21 consecutive Trade Alerts have been profitable. I am rapidly closing in on old record of 25 successful Trade Alerts, made earlier this year.

The Trade Alert service of the Mad Hedge Fund Trader is now up 58.00% in 2013. The November month to date record is now an enviable 13.54%.

The three-year return is an eye popping 113.05%, compared to a far more modest increase for the Dow Average during the same period of only 32%.
That brings my averaged annualized return up to 38.8%.

This has been the best profit since my groundbreaking trade mentoring service was launched three years ago. These numbers place me at the Mount Everest of all hedge fund managers, where the year to date gains have been far more pedestrian. It seems that their shorts are killing them.

I took profits on my long position in Citigroup (C), which just achieved a major upside breakout, and then rolled the capital into the Financials Select Sector SPDR (XLV). I cashed in on a long position in the Australian dollar (FXA). I also took profits on short positions in the Japanese yen as it approached new lows for the year.

My remaining long positions in Apple (AAPL) and the Industrials Sector Select SPDR (XLI) are contributing daily to my P&L, thank you very much. I am also keeping my short in the Treasury bond market, and will double up on the next ten basis point backup in ten-year rates.

This is how the pros do it, and you can too, if you wish.

Carving out the 2013 trades alone, 74 out of 89 have made money, a success rate of 83%. It is a track record that most big hedge funds would kill for.

My esteemed colleague, Mad Day Trader Jim Parker, has also been coining it. Since April, his own performance numbers have just come back from the auditors, revealing that he is up a staggering 279%.

The coming winter promises to deliver a harvest of new trading opportunities. The big driver will be a global synchronized recovery that promises to drive markets into the stratosphere in 2014. The Trade Alerts should be coming hot and heavy. Please join me on the gravy train. You will never get a better chance than this to make money for your personal account.

Global Trading Dispatch, my highly innovative and successful trade-mentoring program, earned a net return for readers of 40.17% in 2011 and 14.87% in 2012. The service includes my Trade Alert Service and my daily newsletter, the Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader. You also get a real-time trading portfolio, an enormous trading idea database, and live biweekly strategy webinars.? Upgrade to?Mad Hedge Fund Trader PRO?and you will also receive Jim Parker?s?Mad Day Trader?service.

To subscribe, please go to my website at www.madhedgefundtrader.com, find the ?Global Trading Dispatch? box on the right, and click on the lime green ?SUBSCRIBE NOW? button.

TA Performance

C 11-22-13

XLF 11-22-13

FXY 11-22-13

BusinessJohnThomasProfileMap2-2

Mad Hedge Fund Trader

November 22, 2013

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Global Market Comments
November 22, 2013
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:
(TAKING PROFITS ON CITIGROUP),
(C), (XLF), (WFC), (MS), (GS), (JPM),
(WATCH OUT FOR THE JOBS TRAP),
(FDX), (UPS),
(WATCH THOSE MONETARY AGGREGATES)

Citigroup, Inc. (C)
Financial Select Sector SPDR (XLF)
Wells Fargo & Company (WFC)
Morgan Stanley (MS)
The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (GS)
JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM)
FedEx Corporation (FDX)
United Parcel Service, Inc. (UPS)

Mad Hedge Fund Trader

Watch Out for the Jobs Trap

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We are about to get some wild, seasonal gyrations to the jobs numbers, and I think you will be well advised to know about them in advance.

A large part of our economy is moving online more rapidly than most people and governments realize. According to ComScore, a marketing data research firm, online sales leapt by 15% to $35.3 billion during the last November-December holiday period, an all-time high.

I speak from a position of authority here as I happen to run one of the most successful financial sites on the Internet, which I kicked off four years ago with a $500 investment.

Much of this migration is being captured by FedEx and UPS, the nexus at which Internet commerce meets the real world. After all, virtual products require a real world delivery. This explains why the couriers are seeing a booming business in an otherwise flat economy. FedEx (FDX) hired 10,000 temporary workers to deal with the last Christmas surge in 2012, a gain of 18% over the same period the previous year. UPS added a stunning 55,000, a 10% increase.

Watch for the other shoe to drop. That will become apparent when that the newly hired become the newly fired, leading to a sudden and rapid deterioration of the jobs data. This could be the information the stock market and other risk assets need to put in a top for the year. The scary part is that this may happen sooner than you think.

FDX 11-21-13

UPS 11-21-13

Cargo PlaneYup, I Just Got My Pink Slip Too

Mad Hedge Fund Trader

Watch Those Monetary Aggregates!

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Call me a nerd, but instead of spending my Sundays watching football, I pour over data analyzing the monetary aggregates. That?s a tough thing to say for someone whose dad was a lineman on the University of Southern California?s legendary 1947 junior varsity football team.

This is so I can gain insights into the future performance of assets classes. What I am seeing these days is not just unusual, it?s bizarre. Call it a double reverse, a Hail Mary, and a Statue of Liberty all combined into one.

You can clearly see the impact of QE2 at the end of 2010 on the chart below, which caused the monetary base to explode and triggered a six month love fest for all risk assets. Hard asset prices, like energy, commodities, the grains, and precious metals did especially well, leading to fears of resurging inflation. This prompted the European Central Bank to commit a massive policy blunder by raising interest rates twice. The US dollar (UUP) was weak for much of this time.

When quantitative easing ended in June of that year, not only did the base stop growing, it started shrinking. Hard assets rolled over like the Bismarck, and gold peaked in August. No surprise that when you take away the fuel, the fire goes out. And guess what else happened? The dollar began an uptrend that continues unabated.

So what happens next? Given the continuing strength of the economic data, I think that the prospects of a taper have been greatly diminished. Not only has it been taken off the back burner, the flame has been extinguished and the pot put back into the cupboard.

Needless to say, if this trend continues it will have an inflationary impact on the global economy as a whole, and ?RISK ON? assets specifically. It?s simply a question of supply and demand. Print a lot more dollars and you create a supply shortage of other assets, forcing bidders to pay up.

Adjusted Monetary Base

Football Team-CA Junior Varsity-1947Dad Was Always a Great Monetarist

Mad Hedge Fund Trader

November 21, 2013

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Global Market Comments
November 21, 2013
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:
(CASHING IN ON OBAMACARE),
(XLV), (GILD), (AET), (WPT),
(THE FLASH CRASH RISK IS RISING), (SPX), ($INDU),
(TESTIMONIAL)

Health Care Select Sector SPDR (XLV)
Gilead Sciences Inc. (GILD)
Aetna Inc. (AET)
World Point Terminals, LP (WPT)
S&P 500 Index (SPX)
Dow Jones Industrial Average ($INDU)

Mad Hedge Fund Trader

The Flash Crash Risk is Rising

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Those who lived through the cataclysmic ?flash crash? that occurred precisely at 2:45 pm EST on May 6, 2010, have been dreading a replay ever since. Their worst nightmares may soon be realized.

That is when the Dow Index (INDU) dropped a gob smacking 650 points in minutes, wiping out nearly $1 trillion in market capitalization. On that day, some ETF?s saw intraday declines of an eye popping 75% before recovering. A flurry of litigation ensued where many sought to break trades as much as 99% down from the last indication, some successfully.

The true reasons for the crash are still a matter of contentious debate. Many see a smoking gun in the hands of the high frequency traders who account for so much of the daily trading volume. But I happen to know that many of these guys pulled the plugs on their machines and went flat as soon as the big move started.

I think that it was the obvious result of too many people following similar models in markets with declining liquidity. The ease of instant execution through the Internet was another contributing factor. It also could be a symptom of no growth economies and lost decades in the stock market. The increasing short-term orientation of many money managers also played a hand.

Mathematicians who follow chaos theory and ?long tail events? known as ?black swans? argue that the flash crash was not only inevitable, it was predictable. They are also saying that the next one could be far worse.

Since then we have suffered several mini flash crashes. These include the recent $200 collapse in gold, a $5 plunge in silver, a five-cent gyration in the Euro, and a ten-cent gap in the Swiss franc. Notice that these ?flash? events only happen on the downside, and that we don?t have flash melt ups.

In many respects, traders and portfolio managers dodged a bullet on that fateful day. What if it had happened going into the close? Then assets would have been marked to market less $1 trillion, and the Asian openings that followed hours later would have been horrific. This could have triggered a series of rolling flash crashes around the world from time zone to time zone that would have caused several trillion more in losses. Those losses eventually did happen, but they were spread over several more months at a liquidation rate that could be absorbed by the markets.

Regulators claim that they have reduced the risks of a flash crash through the enforcement of daily trading limits across a broader range of financial instruments. I am not so sure. During a real panic, preventing people from unloading risk is almost an impossible feat. I know because I have lived through many of them.

In the meantime, the S&P 500 continues its inexorable rise well above the exact point at which the last flash crash started, at 1,160. We are now 55% above that last flash point. Avoid, like the plague, shorting leveraged naked puts on anything. It is the best way to wipe out your entire equity that I know of.

Like me, you are probably too old to start life over again with a job at McDonald?s, and they probably would take you anyway.

SPY 1-7-12

You Tube

Mad Hedge Fund Trader

Mad Hedge Fund Trader Melts Up to 56.4% 2013 Performance

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I sit here painfully typing this letter, as my fingertips have been worn down to bloody stumps. I have been pounding out the Trade Alerts since the month started, sending out 37, and the month is only half over. That works out to a 3.3636 Trade Alerts a day!

I have been so busy that I literally haven?t had time to eat, living entirely on black coffee, and losing three pounds since November 1. Maybe I should go into the weight loss business. I hear it?s more profitable than this financial stuff.

Not only have I worked myself to the bone, my staff is rapidly wearing out as well. Everyone is taking a well-earned rest this weekend, melting a few ice cubes along the way.

Still, you don?t get market melt ups like this very often in life. You have to strike while the iron is hot, make hay while the sun shines, and carpe diem. Usually I warn investors that if they ?invest in haste, they will repent at leisure.? In this market it?s the opposite. Invest at leisure, repent with haste.

Still, it?s all worth it when it?s working. Including both open and closed trades, the last 18 consecutive Trade Alerts have been profitable. I am rapidly closing in on an old record of 25 successful Trade Alerts, made earlier this year.

The Global Trading Dispatch service of the Mad Hedge Fund Trader is now up 56.4% in 2013. The November month to date record is now an enviable 11.92%.

The three-year return is an eye popping 111.43%, compared to a far more modest increase for the Dow Average during the same period of only 30%.
That brings my averaged annualized return up to 38.2%.

This has been the profit since my groundbreaking trade mentoring service was launched 35 months ago. These numbers place me at the absolute pinnacle of all hedge fund managers, where the year to date gains have been a far more pedestrian 3%. I predict the arrival of a lot more job seekers on Craig?s List in January.

I took profits on all of my extensive shorts in the Treasury bond market, taking advantage of the sudden back up in ten-year yields from 2.47% to 2.77%, the sharpest move of the year. I then reloaded on the first 9 basis point back up in yields

I then bet that the stock market would continue another tedious sideways correction going into the Thanksgiving holidays. I bought an in the money put spread on the S&P 500, and then bracketed the index through buying an in the money call spread. Both of these expired profitably on Friday.

I then took advantage of the weakness to add another long in the Industrials ETF (XLI), a rifle short at one of the best performing sectors of the market. I piled on more shorts in the Japanese yen (FXY), (YCS), believing that the Bank of Japan will have to accelerate its monetary easing program to deal with an economic slowdown. I also caught the China recovery play by going long the Australian dollar (FXA).

This is how the pros do it, and you can too, if you wish.

Carving out the 2013 trades alone, 74 out of 89 have made money, a success rate of 83%. It is a track record that most big hedge funds would kill for.

My esteemed colleague, Mad Day Trader Jim Parker, has also been coining it. He caught a spike up in the volatility index (VIX) by both lapels. He also was a major player on the short side in bonds, to the delight of his many followers.

The coming winter promises to deliver a harvest of new trading opportunities. The big driver will be a global synchronized recovery that promises to drive markets into the stratosphere in 2014. The Trade Alerts should be coming hot and heavy. Please join me on the gravy train.

Global Trading Dispatch, my highly innovative and successful trade-mentoring program, earned a net return for readers of 40.17% in 2011 and 14.87% in 2012. The service includes my Trade Alert Service and my daily newsletter, the Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader. You also get a real-time trading portfolio, an enormous trading idea database, and live biweekly strategy webinars. Upgrade to Mad Hedge Fund Trader PRO and you will also receive Jim Parker?s Mad Day Trader service.

To subscribe, please go to my website at www.madhedgefundtrader.com, find the ?Global Trading Dispatch? box on the right, and click on the lime green ?SUBSCRIBE NOW? button.

TA Performance

BusinessJohnThomasProfileMap2-2

Mad Hedge Fund Trader

November 20, 2013

, ,

Global Market Comments
November 20, 2013
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:
(THE MARKET TAKES A BREAK),
(SPY), (IWM), (FXY), (AAPL), (C), (TLT),
(RINGING THE REGISTER WITH THE AUSSIE),
(FXA), (EWA), (FXI),
(THE MYSTERY OF THE BRASHER DOUBLOON)

SPDR S&P 500 (SPY)
iShares Russell 2000 (IWM)
CurrencyShares Japanese Yen Trust (FXY)
Apple Inc. (AAPL)
Citigroup, Inc. (C)
iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond (TLT)
CurrencyShares Australian Dollar Trust (FXA)
iShares MSCI Australia (EWA)
iShares China Large-Cap (FXI)

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There is a very high degree of risk involved in trading. Past results are not indicative of future returns. MadHedgeFundTrader.com and all individuals affiliated with this site assume no responsibilities for your trading and investment results. The indicators, strategies, columns, articles and all other features are for educational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice. Information for futures trading observations are obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but we do not warrant its completeness or accuracy, or warrant any results from the use of the information. Your use of the trading observations is entirely at your own risk and it is your sole responsibility to evaluate the accuracy, completeness and usefulness of the information. You must assess the risk of any trade with your broker and make your own independent decisions regarding any securities mentioned herein. Affiliates of MadHedgeFundTrader.com may have a position or effect transactions in the securities described herein (or options thereon) and/or otherwise employ trading strategies that may be consistent or inconsistent with the provided strategies.