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).
https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Woman-Hari-Kari.jpg280396Mad Hedge Fund Traderhttps://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.pngMad Hedge Fund Trader2013-11-26 01:03:122013-11-26 01:03:12Taking Profits on the Yen?.Again!
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)
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.
https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/TA-Performance.jpg824577Mad Hedge Fund Traderhttps://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.pngMad Hedge Fund Trader2013-11-25 01:04:012013-11-25 01:04:01Mad Hedge Fund Trader Hurtles to 58%
I have always been a big fan of buying a dollar for 30 cents. That appears to be the opportunity now presented by the Japanese software giant, Softbank (SFTBY).
This gorilla of the Internet space was founded and run by my old friend, Masayoshi Son, who many refer to as a combination of the Jeff Bezos and the Bill Gates of Japan. I have known Mas, as his friends call him, for 30 years, meeting him, of all places, at a University of California Alumni Association meeting. Mas received his BA in economics from Berkeley in 1980.
In three decades, Mas has turned an obscure, hard copy Japanese computer hobbyist magazine into today?s massive online empire. You may know him as the organizer of the huge Comdex conferences in Las Vegas every January, the Woodstock of technology gatherings. Today, Mas has an estimated personal net worth $9 billion, not bad for a kid who wore the same pair of ragged Levis to his economics classes every day.
The really interesting thing about Softbank right now is not what Mas doing, but what he owns. That includes a 37% stake in the Chinese Internet giant, Alibaba, which boasts an overwhelming 80% market share in the Middle Kingdom.
The Hangzhou based Alibaba is actually a group of Internet-based e-commerce businesses including business-to-business online web portals, online retail and payment services, a shopping search engine and data-centric cloud computing services. Think of it as Amazon (AMZN), eBay (EBAY), Google (GOOG), and Oracle (ORCL) all wrapped into one.
In 2012, two of Alibaba?s portals together handled 1.1 trillion Yuan ($170 billion) in sales, more than competitors eBay and Amazon.com combined.
Its sales account for no less than 3% of China?s total GDP. Yikes! To learn more about their website please visit http://news.alibaba.com/specials/aboutalibaba/aligroup/index.html.
Online commerce in China is now growing faster than in any other place on the planet, including the US. Some 5% of retail transactions in the People?s Republic take place on the Internet, and that is expected to grow to 25% over the next three years. By comparison, it took online business in America 15 years to reach that market share.
What is happening in China now is truly fascinating. They are leapfrogging traditional brick and mortar stores, going straight from barter to online purchases, completely skipping the Wal-Mart stage of the retail evolution. I saw the same thing happen during the early nineties, when eastern Europeans jumped straight from having no phones to mobile ones, bypassing decades of unreliable and indifferent landline service.
The value of Alibaba is anyone?s guess as the company is still private. However, my former employers at The Economist magazine estimate that it is worth anywhere from $55-$120 billion. What this means is that you can buy Softbank now purely for the value of its Alibaba ownership, and get everything else the company does in the online universe for free.
But wait! It gets better. Softbank also owns major stakes in Yahoo, whose shares are up a gob smacking 157% since last year (Thank you Marissa Meyer!). It owns a major chunk of Sprint (S), which has gained a mind blowing 325% since 2012. Can Mas pick them, or what? Softbank also owns pieces of Japan Cellular and many other companies.
Add it all up together, and you get a Softbank that is worth at least $250 billion, almost triple its current $97 billion market capitalization. In other words, it?s a steal at this price.
Yes, you may say, this all sounds great. But how do I buy shares in Japan in yen? Easy. Softbank trades on the pink sheets in the US (hence the five letter ticker symbol) and is denominated in US dollars. Normally this means nothing, as liquidity in the pink sheets is notoriously poor.
Not so for (SFTBY), which saw 1.6 million shares worth $67 million trade around $42 a share on a slow Friday with a reasonably narrow spread. You may not be able to margin these, but at least you can get them. You also have some yen exposure here, as these shares are tied to the domestic shares in Japan. As for the big hedge funds, they have to go to Tokyo to get the size they want, and then hedge out their yen risk.
OK, OK, you say. Great story. But the road to perdition is paved with fabulous value plays that were never realized in the marketplace. This thing could stay cheap forever, like Apple (AAPL).
Aha! I got you! Alibaba is about to go public in the US, with Goldman Sachs now polling major institutional investors about potential interest. Given the chance to buy an Amazon clone at ten year ago prices, this IPO will be a blockbuster, making the recent Twitter (TWTR) float pale by comparison.
Did I mention that my buddy, Dan Loeb of hedge fund giant Third Point Partners, totally agrees with me, and has bought $1 billion worth of Softbank shares already?
I?ll wait for a dip before I send out the Trade Alert. If I don?t get one, I may just throw in the towel and buy it at market.
https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Masayoshi-Son.jpg352500Mad Hedge Fund Traderhttps://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.pngMad Hedge Fund Trader2013-11-25 01:03:102013-11-25 01:03:10Time to Soak Up Some Softbank
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)
I have discovered a correlation in the market that you can use for the rest of this year, for all of 2014, and probably for the next 20 years. Whenever the Treasury bond market (TLT) takes a dive, bank shares rocket. This is a particularly happy discovery, as my model-trading portfolio is long bank shares and short the Treasury bond market.
By buying bank shares here you are playing the second derivative of the short bond trade. Banks are about to go from being less profitable to more profitable during a falling bond, rising interest rate environment. Every trader on the street knows this, hence the sudden renaissance of the financials.
Take a look at the charts below prepared by my friends at Stockcharts.com. They show that after tracking nicely with the S&P 500 for most of the year, Financials suddenly started to drastically lag the market in October. That was on the heels of the bond market rally triggered by the Federal Reserve?s failure to taper in September.
Fast forward to two weeks ago, when I correctly called the top of the bond market and started slamming out the Trade Alerts to buy puts as fast as I could write them. Since November 1, financials have become the top performing sector of the market, and it is dragging the (SPY) upward kicking and screaming all the way.
I?ll tell you what is happening here. Traders are dumping story driven momentum stocks like Tesla (TSLA), and piling into the biggest lagging sectors for fresh meat. The dive in Treasuries gave them all the excuse they needed. That?s why the Financial Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLF) has bolted out of nowhere to a new five year high. The same is also true for Wells Fargo (WFC) and our favored Citigroup (C).
The financials rally could continue until the sector becomes overbought relative to the rest of the market, which could be well into next year. And yes, before you ask, that includes Morgan Stanley (MS) and Goldman Sachs (GS), which are really more structured like banks now in the wake of the Dodd Frank bill.
So I am going to take profits here on my existing long position in the Citigroup (C) December $45-$47 bull call spread. With the shares now trading just short of $52, we are now too far in-the-money to get much further benefit from a continued appreciation. Better to go into cash now, so I can reload on the next dip, which could happen next week.
We grabbed 80% of the potential profit holding the position a mere seven trading days. This is my 15th consecutive closing Trade Alert, and the 20th including my remaining open profitable positions. I have only six more to go until a break my previous record of 25. It doesn?t get any better than this.
Time to enter more bids on eBay for Christmas presents. That black Chanel Classic handbag with gold trim is looking pretty good. Do you think a new Brioni suit will fit into Dad?s stocking over the fireplace? Santa?.hint, hint!
https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Citibank.jpg361545Mad Hedge Fund Traderhttps://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.pngMad Hedge Fund Trader2013-11-22 01:05:432013-11-22 01:05:43Taking Profits on Citigroup
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.
https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Cargo-Plane.jpg327530Mad Hedge Fund Traderhttps://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.pngMad Hedge Fund Trader2013-11-22 01:04:502013-11-22 01:04:50Watch Out for the Jobs Trap
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.
https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Football-Team-CA-Junior-Varsity-1947.jpg298514Mad Hedge Fund Traderhttps://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.pngMad Hedge Fund Trader2013-11-22 01:03:182013-11-22 01:03:18Watch Those Monetary Aggregates!
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)
Not a day, an hour, or a minute goes by without the media blasting at me about how terrible Obamacare is. I wondered, how terrible can it be? There?s got to be a trade in there somewhere.
After intensively researching several industries I concluded that the investment opportunities created by the president?s signature legislative accomplishment are absolutely massive. The health care industry is about to get 30 million new customers with government guaranteed payments. Ten?s of millions more are being driven into the arms of the private health insurers as well. It?s almost the same gravy train that the defense industry has been living off of for the past 75 years.
The stock market has been screaming as much at us all year. Take a look at the Health Care Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLV), which has been rocketing for the past three years. Its ascent accelerated on October 1, when Obamacare officially kicked in.
You will also find the same windfall is showering upon the health insurance industry. The shares of the second largest company in the country, WellPoint (WLP) have soared by 68% this year, while the fourth biggest (AET) is up an impressive 40%.
The speeches claiming that Obamacare is a failure were written in September, before the program ever started. Not, September, 2013, but September, 1936, when Republicans fought tooth and nail against Social Security. The speeches are almost identical, word for word. I?m not kidding!
In fact, insurance exchanges are one of the oldest forms of commerce, dating back to London in the 1600?s. Lloyds of London has been around since 1871, and makes a profit in most years.
It will take Obamacare a decade to become fully operational and actuarially sound. After that it should cost the government almost nothing, just a few hundred million dollars a year for administration of the exchanges. Americans are the smartest people in the world, so there is no reason for this not to work, except political ones. In fact, ours should be better than those in Europe and Asia.
The political obstacles will fade as well. Hillary Clinton is the overwhelming front-runner for the 2016 presidential election. If elected, the earliest Republicans could repeal Obamacare would be 2025. There will probably be a liberal majority on the Supreme Court by then as well. With a 12-year track record, it is unlikely that any political party will try to repeal government-sponsored health insurance at that stage.
The stock market is also telling you that Obamacare is here to stay. Believe in the wisdom of crowds. They are usually right.
This is why the shares of entire health care and insurance industries are melting up now. This is why I want to buy into the industry now.
The easiest way to participate is through Health Care Select Sector SPDR (XLV), a basket of companies in the health care industry with a 1.71% dividend yield. Please note that a basket of stocks is going to deliver half the volatility of single stocks.
Therefore, we have to be more aggressive with the positioning to make any money, picking strikes that are closer to the money. Johnson and Johnson (JJ) is the largest holding in this fund, with a 12.8% weighting, while Gilead Sciences (GILD) is the fourth, with a 5.1% share. For a list of the largest components of this ETF, please click here https://www.spdrs.com/product/fund.seam?ticker=XLV .
As soon as the current correction ends, I?ll shoot out a Trade Alert to you as fast as the speed of light.
https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Doctor-Girl.jpg301452Mad Hedge Fund Traderhttps://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.pngMad Hedge Fund Trader2013-11-21 11:49:382013-11-21 11:49:38Cashing In On Obamacare
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