Not a day goes by without an email coming in asking if beginners can make use of my money making service.
I always reply; “Absolutely.”
When I first started the Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader a 17 years ago, layoffs were rampant, General Motors was going bankrupt, and the financial crisis was imminent.
Many newly unemployed were facing joblessness for years, if not forever. So they started trolling the Internet for new jobs.
Then they stumbled across my website.
I quickly learned that I had to write for the unemployed GM assembly line worker to get these new subscribers the education they urgently needed.
It worked.
Now, hundreds of ordinary people earn a full time living entirely from focusing on the Mad Hedge Fund Trader Alerts.
And you know what?
It turns out that financial advisors, institutional money mangers, and the $25 billion hedge fund manger also likes to read research that a blue collar worker can understand and profit from.
To make this task easier, I have distilled 55 years of market and options trading experience into a simple three-hour video course entitled “Trading Options for Beginners.”
The course covers the basics of options trading, as well as insights that even the most grizzled veterans can appreciate.
It is filmed at my personal trading station in San Francisco, as well as on location around the world. Think of it as a basic options educational course that meets “Europe on $10,000 a day.”
Each chapter instructs you on the basic strategy behind each position. I then take you through my personal online trading account to show you exactly how to execute orders in your own accounts.
It will certainly be the most entertaining, if not the most scenic options course you have ever taken.
“Trading Options for Beginners” is only available in my online store for $48, and is one of the best bargains you will ever find. Please find the table of contents below:
Trading Options for Beginners
1) Table of Contents
2) Welcome to New Customers
3) What is An Option?
4) How to Execute a Trade Alert
5) How to Execute a Vertical Bull Call Spread
6) How to Execute a Vertical Bear Put Spread
7) The Mad Hedge Trading Philosophy
8) The Mad Hedge Trading Rules
9) Meet the Greeks
10) How to Find a Great Options Trade
11) Introduction to Risk Management
To buy “Trading Options for Beginners,” please click here.
Global Market Comments
December 4, 2024
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(AMERICA’S DEMOGRAPHIC TIME BOMB)
You can never underestimate the importance of demographics in shaping long-term investment trends, so I thought I’d pass on these two highly instructive maps.
The first shows a map of the world drawn in terms of the population of children, while the second illustrates the globe in terms of its 100-year-olds.
Notice that China and India dominate the children’s map. Kids turn into consumers in 20 years, stay healthy for a long time, and power economic growth.
The US, Japan, and Europe shrink to a fraction of their actual size on the children’s map, so economic growth is in a long-term secular downtrend there.
There is more bad news for the developed world on the centenarian’s map, which shows these countries ballooning in size to grotesque, unnatural proportions.
This means higher social security and medical costs, plunging productivity, and falling GDP growth.
The bottom line is that you want to own equities and local currencies of emerging market countries and avoid developed countries like the plague.
This is why we saw tenfold returns from SOME emerging markets (EEM) over the past ten and why there is an irresistible force pushing their currencies upward (CYB) over the long term.
Use any major meltdowns this year to increase your exposure to emerging markets, as I will.
Would You Rather Own Them?
Or Them?
"The next leg of the bull market is going to have to be a fundamental leg, not a liquidity leg, and investors are in a little bit of a malaise trying to figure that out," said Anthony Scaramucci of Skybridge Capital.
Global Market Comments
December 3, 2024
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(THE MAD HEDGE DECEMBER TRADERS & INVESTORS SUMMIT IS ON!)
(IT’S GROUNDHOG DAY)
(LAUNCHING "TRADING OPTIONS FOR BEGINNERS”
(SPY), (TLT), (TBT), (VIX), (VXX), (GLD), (SLV)
The election is over and a brave new world lies before us.
But the Fed may soon stop raising interest rates, inflation is rising, and tech stocks are flat-lining! Can a stock market crash be far behind?
What should you do about it?
Attend the Mad Hedge Traders & Investors Summit from December 3 - 5. Learn from 24 of the best professionals in the market with decades of experience and the track records to prove it. They are offering a smorgasbord of successful trading strategies.
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Get the tools to build an outstanding performance for your own portfolio.
Best of all, by signing up you will automatically have a chance to win up to $100,000 in prizes.
Usually, access to an exclusive conference like this costs thousands of dollars. You can attend for free!
Listening to this webinar will change your life! To register, please click here.
It is always the sign of a great hedge fund manager when he makes money while he is wrong.
I have seen this throughout my life, trading with clients and friends like George Soros, Julian Robertson, Paul Tudor Jones, and David Tepper.
And wrong I certainly was in 2024.
I thought Trump would lose the election.
Then, I thought that markets would rocket no matter who won. Only the sector leadership would change.
How about one out of two?
The big question is: “Is a stock market crash now in front of us?” The answer is absolutely yes. It’s only a question of how soon.
At this point, we only know what Trump said. And as we all know, what Trump says and does, or can do are totally different things. It all adds a new and constant source of unknowns for the market.
Of course, it helps to have a half-century of trading experience, too. I like to tell my beginning subscribers, “Don’t worry, after the first 50 years, this gets easy.”
Except easy it is not, going into the next several couple of years.
In a few months, it will be Ground Hog Day, and Punxsutawney Phil will call the weather for the next six weeks from his hilltop in Gobbler’s Knob, Pennsylvania.
For the financial markets, it could mean six more MONTHS of winter.
Nobody wants to sell because they believe in a longer-term bull case going into yearend.
In the meantime, they are buying deregulation plays (JPM), (GS), (BLK), and Tesla (TSLA) as a hedge against the next Tweet.
We could see a repeat of the first half of 2017 when markets rocketed and then died.
This is what a Volatility Index (VIX), (VXX) is screaming right in your face, kissing the $13 handle.
The never-ending tweets are eroding the bull case by the day.
So, we’re at war with Canada now? Wait! I thought it was Mexico? No, it’s France. If it’s Tuesday, this must be Belgium.
And our new ally? Russia!
Even the Federal Reserve is hinting in yesterday’s statement that it is going into “RISK OFF” mode, possibly postponing a December interest rate cut indefinitely.
Unfortunately, that completely sucks the life out of our short Treasury bond trade (TLT), (TBT) for the time being, a big earner for us earlier this year.
Flat to rising interest rates also demolish small caps and other big borrowers (homebuilders, real estate, REITs, cruise lines).
The market is priced for perfection, and if perfection doesn’t show, we have a BIG problem.
All of this leads up to the good news that followers of the Mad Hedge Fund Trader enjoyed almost a perfect month in November.
Trade Alert Service in November
(DHI) 11/$135-$145 call spread
(GLD) 12/$435-$340 call spread
(TSLA) 12/$3.90-$400 put spread
(JPM) 11/$195-$205 call spread
(CCJ) 12/$41-44 call spread
(JPM) 12/$210-$220 call spread
(NVDA) 12/$117-$120 call spread
(TSLA) 12/$230-$240 call spread
(TSLA) 12/$250-$260 call spread
(TSLA) 12/$270-$275 call spread
(MS) 12/$110-$115 call spread
(C) 12/$60-$65 calls spread
(BAC) 12/$41-$44 call spreads
(VST) 12/$115-$120 call spread
(BLK) 12/$950-$960 call spread
The net of all of this is that 2024 is looking like a gangbuster year for the Mad Hedge Fund Trader, up 18.96% in November and 72.00% YTD, compared to only 26.62% for the S&P 500.
It seems that the harder I work, the luckier I get.
Hanging With David Tepper
Global Market Comments
November 29, 2024
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(The Mad DeCEMBER traders & Investors Summit is ON!)
(CHINA’S VIEW OF CHINA),
(FXI), (BIDU), (BABA), (JD)
There was so much enthusiasm for China only a month ago.
A stimulus package was announced, a massive short-covering rally ensured, and finally, after a three-year hiatus, China was back in play. Several hedge funds announced major commitments to the Middle Kingdom.
Here we are only three weeks after the US presidential election, and China now looks so much rubble. Asst prices returned to their starting points. The hedge funds have so much mud on their faces. It’s back to a long wait.
Which gives us all plenty of time to think about what China is really all about.
I ran into Minxin Pei, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who imparted to me some iconoclastic, out-of-consensus views on China’s position in the world today.
He thinks that power is not shifting from West to East; Asia is just lifting itself off the mat, with per capita GDP at $12,969, compared to $81,695 in the US.
We are simply moving from a unipolar to a multipolar world. China is not going to dominate the world, or even Asia, where there is a long history of regional rivalries and wars.
China can’t even control China, where recessions lead to revolutions, and 30% of the country, Tibet and the Uighurs want to secede.
China’s military is almost entirely devoted to controlling its own people, which makes US concerns about their recent military build-up laughable.
All of Asia’s progress, to date, has been built on selling to the US market. Take us out, and they’re nowhere.
With enormous resource, environmental, and demographic challenges constraining growth, Asia is not replacing the US anytime soon.
There is no miracle form of Asian capitalism; impoverished, younger populations are simply forced to save more because there is no social safety net.
Try filing a Chinese individual tax return, where a maximum rate of 40% kicks in at an income of $35,000 a year, with no deductions, and there is no social security or Medicare in return.
Ever heard of a Chinese unemployment office or jobs program?
Nor are benevolent dictatorships the answer, with the despots in Burma, Cambodia, North Korea, and Laos thoroughly trashing their countries.
The press often touts the 600,000 engineers that China graduates, joined by 350,000 in India. In fact, 90% of these are only educated to a trade school standard. Asia has just one world-class school, the University of Tokyo.
As much as we Americans despise ourselves and wallow in our failures, Asians see us as a bright, shining example for the world.
After all, it was our open trade policies and innovation that lifted them out of poverty and destitution. Walk the streets of China, as I have done for four decades, and you feel this vibrating from everything around you.
I’ll consider what Minxin Pei said next time I contemplate going back into the (FXI) and (EEM).
China: Not All Its Cracked Up to Be
Global Market Comments
November 27, 2024
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(THE REAL ESTATE CRASH COMING TO A MARKET NEAR YOU),
(THE FALLING MARKET FOR KIDS)
