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The Market Outlook for the Week Ahead, or Are We In or Out?

Are we already in a recession or still safely out of one?

That is the question painfully vexing investors after the stock market action of the past seven weeks.

There is no doubt that the economic data has suddenly started to worsen, setting off recession alarms everywhere.

October Durable Goods were down a shocking 4.4%. Weekly Jobless Claims hit 224,000, continuing a grind up to a 4 ½ month high. Is the employment miracle ending? Goldman Sachs says growth is to drop below 2% in 2019, well below Obama era levels. Maybe that’s what the stock market crash is trying to tell us?

The Washington political situation continues to erode confidence by the day. We have already lost real estate, autos, energy, semiconductors, retailers, utilities, and banks. But as long as tech held up, everything was alright.

Now it’s not alright.

The tech selloff we have just seen was far steeper and faster than we saw in the 2008-2009 crash. You have to go all the way back to the Dotcom Bust 18 years ago to see the kind of price action we have just witnessed. The closely watched ProShares Ultra Technology Fund (ROM) has cratered from $123 to $83 in a heartbeat, off 32.5%.

Which begs the question: Are we already ten months into a bear market? Or is this all one big fake-out and there is one more leg up to go before the fat lady sings?

I vote for the latter.

If this is a new bear market, then it is the first one in history with the lead sectors, technology, biotechnology, and health care, announcing new all-time profits going in.

So, either Facebook (FB), Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN), Netflix (NFLX), and Google (GOOG) are all about to announce big losses in coming quarters, which they aren’t, or the market is just plain wrong, which it is.

Which leads us to the next problem.

Markets can be wrong for quite a while which is why I cut my positions by half at the beginning of last week. To quote my old friend, John Maynard Keynes, “Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain liquid,” who lists his entire fortune in the commodities markets during the Great Depression.

To see this all happen in October was expected. After all, markets always crash in October. To see it continue well into November is nearly unprecedented when the strongest seasonals of the year kick in. This was the worst Thanksgiving week since 2011 when we were still a wet dog shaking off the after-effects of the great crash.

There are a lot of hopes hanging on the November 29 G-20 Summit to turn things around which could hatch a surprise China trade deal when the leaders of the two great countries meet. The Chinese stock market hit a one month high last week on hopes of a positive outcome. Do they know something we don’t?

There were multiple crises in the energy world. You always find out who’s been swimming without a swimsuit when the tide goes out. James Cordier certainly suffered an ebb tide of tsunami proportions when his hedge fund blew up taking natural gas (UNG) down 20% in a day.

Cordier got away with naked call option selling for years until he didn’t. All of his investors were completely wiped out. I have always told followers to avoid this strategy for years. It’s picking up pennies in front of a steamroller. Same for naked puts selling too.

The Bitcoin crash continued slipping to $4,200. I always thought that this was an asset class created out of thin air to absorb excess global liquidity. Remove that liquidity and Bitcoin goes back to being thin air, which it is in the process of doing.

Oil (USO) got crushed again, down an incredible 35.06% in six weeks, from $77 a barrel all the way down to $50 as recession fears run rampant. Panic dumping of wrong-footed hedge fund longs accelerated the slide. They all had expected oil to rocket to $100 a barrel in the wake of the demise of the Iran Nuclear Deal and the economic sanctions that followed.

Apparently, Saudi Arabia’s deal with the US now is that they can chop up all the journalists they want at the expense of a $27 a barrel drop in the price of oil. That will cut their oil revenues by a stunning $97 billion a year. That’s one expensive journalist!

Watch the price of Texas tea carefully because a bottom there might signal a bottom for everything including tech stocks. And I don’t see oil falling much from here.

As for performance, Thanksgiving came early this year, at least in terms of the skinning, gutting, and roasting of my numbers. If you do this long enough, it happens. Every now and then, markets instill you with a strong dose of humility and this is one of those time.

My year to date return dropped to +25.72%, and chopping my trailing one-year return stands at 31.71%. November so far stands at a discouraging -3.91%. And this is against a Dow Average that is down -2.01% so far in 2018.

My nine-year return withered to +302.19%. The average annualized return retraced to +33.57%.

The upcoming week has some important real estate data coming. However, all eyes will be upon the Friday G-20 announcement from Buenos Aires. Will the trade war with China end, or get worse before it gets better?

Monday, November 26 at 8:30 EST, the Chicago Fed National Activity Index is published.

On Tuesday, November 27 at 9:00 AM, the all-important CoreLogic Case-Shiller National Home Price Index is out. It will be interesting to see how fast it is falling.

On Wednesday, November 28 at 8:30 AM, Q3 GDP is updated. How fast is it shrinking?

At 10:30 AM the Energy Information Administration announces oil inventory figures with its Petroleum Status Report.

Thursday, November 29 at 8:30 we get Weekly Jobless Claims which have been on a four-month uptrend. At 10:00 AM, October Pending Home Sales are printed.

On Friday, November 30, at 9:45 AM, the week ends with a whimper with the Chicago Purchasing Managers Index.

The Baker-Hughes Rig Count follows at 1:00 PM. At some point, we will get an announcement from the G-20 Summit of advanced industrial nations.

As for me, I drove through the first blizzard of the year over Donner Pass to finally crystal clear skies of San Francisco. Long-awaited drenching rains had finally cleansed the skies. Every Tahoe hotel was packed with Californians fleeing the smokey skies.

Good luck and good trading.

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

November 23, 2018

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
November 23, 2018
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(SURVIVING THANKSGIVING)
(SPY), (TLT), (TBT), (GLD), (FXE), (FXY), (USO), (VIX), (VXX), (NVDA), (NFLX), (AMZN)

Surviving Thanksgiving

Diary, Newsletter

The Mad Hedge Fund Trader took a much-needed break this week to enjoy turkey with his vast extended family on the pristine shores of Incline Village, Nevada.

The weather was crystal clear, the temperature in the sixties throughout the day, and down into the teens at night. The kids took turns freezing bottles of water outside. To a fire-weary Californian, that’s cool.

During my nighttime snowshoeing on the Tahoe Rim Trail, I am overawed by a pale waning moon setting into the lake. I walked through a heard of elk in the darkness, the snow crunching under my boots. On the way back, I noticed that a mountain lion had been tracking me.

The Trade Alerts went out so fast and furious this year, bringing in my biggest outperformance of my competitors since my service started 11 years ago. As of today, we are up 26% on the year versus a Dow Average (INDU) that has gained exactly zero.

Great managers are not measured by how much they make in rising markets but by how little they lose in falling ones.

I made money during the two market meltdowns this year, at least until this week. That last 1,000-point dive really hurt and breaks all precedent with Thanksgiving weeks past.

I played tech hard from the long side during the first half, then avoided it like the plague in the third quarter.

Short positions in bonds (TLT) continued to be my “rich uncle” trade every month this year. I am currently running a double position there.

I avoided banks, energy, gold, and commodities which performed horribly despite many entreaties to get in.

I avoided the foreign exchange markets such as the Japanese yen (FXY) and the Euro (FXE) because they were largely moribund and there were better fish to dry elsewhere.

The Volatility Index (VIX), (VXX) was a push on the year with both longs and shorts.

My big miss of the year was in biotechnology and health care. I am well familiar with the great long-term bull case for these sectors. But I was afraid that the president would announce mandatory drug price controls the day after I took a position.

I still believe in the year-end rally, although we will be starting from much lower levels than I thought possible. The recent technology crash was really something to behold, with some of the best quality companies like NVIDIA (NVDA), Amazon (AMZN), and Netflix (NFLX) down 30%-60% in weeks. It all looked like a Dotcom Bust Part II.

These are all screaming buys for the long term here. Tech companies are now trading cheaper than toilet paper making ones.

As Wilber Wright, whose biography I am now reading, once said, “Eagles can’t soar to greatness in calm skies.” His picture now adorns every American commercial pilot’s license, including mine.

This is a week when my mother’s seven children, 22 grandchildren, and 11 great-grandchildren suddenly remember that they have a wealthy uncle, cousin, or brother with a mansion at Lake Tahoe.

So, the house is packed, all the sofa beds put to use. We even had to put a toddler to sleep in a bathtub on pillows.

A 28-pound bird made the ultimate sacrifice and was accompanied with mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, potato salad, and mince pie. Cooking a turkey here at 6,125 feet can be tricky where water boils only at 198 degrees Fahrenheit. You have to add 15% to the cooking time or you end up with medium-rare meat, not such a great idea with a turkey.

Topping it all was a fine Duckhorn Chardonnay which the White House served at state dinners during a former administration. I’m told the current president doesn’t drink.

I ate an entire pumpkin pie topped with whipped cream last night just to give my digestive system an early warning that some heavy lifting was on its way.

I am the oldest of seven of the most fractious and divided siblings on the planet, so attending these affairs is always a bit of an emotional and physical challenge.

I bet many of my readers are faced with the same dilemma, with mixed red state/blue state families, and they all have my sympathy. Hint: Don’t mention Bitcoin. Your Millennial guests will suddenly develop food poisoning, down 80% in a year.

My family ranges throughout the entire political spectrum, from far-right big oil to far-left pot legalization and transgender rights. For this first time in family history, we all voted for the same candidate in the last election in every one of three generations.

Hillary Clinton. Go figure!

Suffice it to say that we'll be talking a lot about the only two safe subjects there are, sports and the weather. Go Niners! Hurray Giants! Will it snow?

We are all giving thanks that we weren’t roasted alive in a wildfire and prayed for the 1,000 missing who won’t be sitting down for Thanksgiving dinners this year. Most will never be found.

I learned from my brother who runs a trading desk at Goldman Sachs that the industry expects a recession in 2019. (GS) stock has been hammered because the had to refund $600 million in fees that were stolen from the Malaysian government.

Dodd-Frank and Glass Steagall are history, and interest rates are steadily rising like clockwork. Trading volumes are shrinking as the algorithms take over everything. Some 80% of all trading is now thought to be machine-driven.

He finally traded in his Bentley Turbo R for a new black high-performance Tesla Model X with the “ludicrous” mode. I take delivery of mine at the Fremont, CA factory next week. After six decades, sibling rivalry still lives. I cautioned him to keep an ample supply of airline airsick bags in the car. Good thing he got it before the subsidies expired at yearend!

It looks like it’s OK to be rich again.

My born-again Christian sister was appalled at the way the government separated children from parents at the border earlier this year. There are still several hundred lost.

My gay rights activist sister has been marching to protest current government policy on the issue. She was quick to point out that Colorado elected its first gay governor, although I doubt anyone there will notice since they are all stoned in the aftermath of marijuana legalization.

A third sister married to a very pleasant fellow in Big Oil (USO) will be making the long trip from Borneo where he is involved in offshore exploration. This is the guy who escaped from Libya a few years ago by the skin of his teeth.

In the meantime, his industry has been beset by waves of cost-cutting and forced early retirements triggered by the recent oil price crash. He says the US will have to build energy infrastructure for a decade before it can export what it is producing now in oil and natural gas.

So far, the local headhunters haven’t taken a trophy yet. And I mean real headhunters, not the recruiting kind.

Sister no. 4, who made a killing in commodities in Australia and then got out at the top seven years, thanks to a certain newsletter she reads, graced us with a rare visit.

Fortunately, she took my advice and converted all her winnings to greenbacks, thus avoiding the 30% hit the Aussie (FXA) has taken in recent years.

She’s now investing in cash flow positive Reno condos, again, thanks to the same newsletter.

My poor youngest sister, no. 5, took it on the nose in the subprime derivatives market during the 2008 crash. Fortunately, she followed my counsel to hang on to the securities instead of dumping everything at the bottom for pennies.

She is the only member of the family I was not able to convince to sell her house in 2005 to duck the coming real estate collapse because she thought the nirvana would last forever. At least that is what her broker told her.

Thanks to the seven-year-old real estate boom, she is now well above her cost, while serial refi’s have taken her cost of carry down by more than half.

My Arabic speaking nephew in Army Intelligence cashed out of the service and is now attending college on the newly revamped GI Bill.

He is majoring in math and computer science on my recommendation. My dad immensely benefited from the program after WWII, a poor, battle-scarred kid from Brooklyn attending USC. For the first time in 45 years, not a single family member is fighting in a foreign war. No gold stars here, only blue ones. If it can only last!

My oldest son is now in his 10^th year as an English language professor at a government university in China. He spends his free time polishing up his Japanese, Russian, Korean, and Kazak, whatever that is.

At night, he trades the markets for his own account. Where do these kids get their interest in foreign languages anyway? Beats me. I was happy with seven.

He is planning on coming home soon. Things have recently gotten very uncomfortable for American residents of the Middle Kingdom.

It’s true that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

My second son is now the head of SEO (search engine optimization) at a major Bay Area online company. Hint: you use their services every day. His tales of excess remind me of the most feverish days of the Dotcom boom. He says that technology is moving forward so fast that he can barely keep up.

His big score this year was winning a lottery to get a rent-controlled apartment in a prime San Francisco neighborhood. It’s all of 400 square feet but has a great view and allows dogs, a rarity indeed.

My oldest daughter took time out from her PhD program at the University of California to bear me my first grandchild, a boy. It seems all my kids are late bloomers. We are all looking forward to the first Dr. Thomas someday (we have an oversupply of Captains).

I am looking forward to my annual Scrabble tournament with all, paging my way through old family photo albums between turns. And yes, “Jo” is a word (a 19^th century term for a young girl). So is “Qi.” The pinball machine is still broken from last Thanksgiving, or maybe it just has too many quarters stuffed in it.

Before dinner, we engaged in an old family tradition of chopping down some Christmas trees in the nearby Toiyabe National Forest on the Eastern shore of Lake Tahoe.

To keep it all legal I obtained the proper permits from the US Forest Service at $10 a pop.

There are only three more trading weeks left this year before we shut down for the Christmas holidays.

That is if I survive my relatives.

Good luck and good trading!
Captain John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader

The Market Outlook for the Week Ahead, or Mass Evacuation

Diary, Newsletter

I will be evacuating the City of San Francisco upon the completion of this newsletter.

The smoke from the wildfires has rendered the air here so thick that it has become unbreathable. It reminds me of the smog in Los Angeles I endured during the 1960s before all the environmental regulation kicked in. All Bay Area schools are now closed and anyone who gets out of town will do so.

There has been a mass evacuation going on of a different sort and that has been investors fleeing the stock market. Twice last week we saw major swoons, one for 900 points and another for 600. Look at your daily bar chart for the year and the bars are tiny until October when they suddenly become huge. It’s really quite impressive.

Concerns for stocks are mounting everywhere. Big chunks of the economy are already in recession, including autos, real estate, semiconductors, agricultural, and banking. The FANGs provided the sole support in the market….until they didn’t. Most are down 30% from their tops, or more.

In fact, the charts show that we may have forged an inverse head and shoulders for the (SPY) last week, presaging greater gains in the weeks ahead.

The timeframe for the post-midterm election yearend rally is getting shorter by the day. What’s the worst case scenario? That we get a sideways range trade instead which, by the way, we are perfectly positioned to capture with our model trading portfolio.

There are a lot of hopes hanging on the November 29 G-20 Summit which could hatch a surprise China trade deal when the leaders of the two great countries meet. Daily leaks are hitting the markets that something might be in the works. In the old days, I used to attend every one of these until they got boring.

You’ll know when a deal is about to get done with China when hardline trade advisor Peter Navarro suddenly and out of the blue gets fired. That would be worth 1,000 Dow points alone.

It was a week when the good were punished and the bad were taken out and shot. Wal-Mart (WMT) saw a 4% hickey after a fabulous earnings report. NVIDIA (NVDA) was drawn and quartered with a 20% plunge after they disappointed only slightly because their crypto mining business fell off, thanks to the Bitcoin crash.

Apple (AAPL) fell $39 from its October highs, on a report that demand for facial recognition chips is fading, evaporating $170 billion in market capitalization. Some technology stocks have fallen so much they already have the next recession baked in the price. That makes them a steal at present levels for long term players.

The US dollar surged to an 18-month high. Look for more gains with interest rates hikes continuing unabated. Avoid emerging markets (EEM) and commodities (FCX) like the plague.

After a two-year search, Amazon (AMZN) picked New York and Virginia for HQ 2 and 3 in a prelude to the breakup of the once trillion-dollar company. The stock held up well in the wake of another administration antitrust attack.

Oil crashed too, hitting a lowly $55 a barrel, on oversupply concerns. What else would you expect with China slowing down, the world’s largest marginal new buyer of Texas tea? Are all these crashes telling us we are already in a recession or is it just the Fed’s shrinkage of the money supply?

The British government seemed on the verge of collapse over a Brexit battle taking the stuffing out of the pound. A new election could be imminent. I never thought Brexit would happen. It would mean Britain committing economic suicide.

US Retails Sales soared in October, up a red hot 0.8% versus 0.5% expected, proving that the main economy remains strong. Don’t tell the stock market or oil which think we are already in recession.

My year-to-date performance rocketed to a new all-time high of +33.71%, and my trailing one-year return stands at 35.89%. November so far stands at +4.08%. And this is against a Dow Average that is up a miniscule 2.41% so far in 2018.

My nine-year return ballooned to 310.18%. The average annualized return stands at 34.46%. 2018 is turning into a perfect trading year for me, as I’m sure it is for you.

I used every stock market meltdown to add aggressively to my December long positions, betting that share prices go up, sideways, or down small by then.

The new names I picked up this week include Amazon (AMZN), Apple (AAPL), Salesforce (CRM), NVIDIA (NVDA), Square (SQ), and a short position in Tesla (TSLA). I also doubled up my short position in the United States US Treasury Bond Fund (TLT).

I caught the absolute bottom after the October meltdown. Will lightning strike twice in the same place? One can only hope. One hedge fund friend said I was up so much this year it would be stupid NOT to bet big now.

The Mad Hedge Technology Letter is really shooting the lights out the month, up 8.63%. It picked up Salesforce (CRM), NVIDIA (NVDA), Square (SQ), and Apple (AAPL) last week, all right at market bottoms.

The coming week will be all about October housing data which everyone is expecting to be weak.

Monday, November 19 at 10:00 EST, the Home Builders Index will be out. Will the rot continue? I’ll be condo shopping in Reno this weekend to see how much of the next recession is already priced in.

On Tuesday, November 20 at 8:30 AM, October Housing Starts and Building Permits are released.

On Wednesday, November 21 at 10:00 AM, October Existing Home Sales are published.

At 10:30 AM, the Energy Information Administration announces oil inventory figures with its Petroleum Status Report.

Thursday, November 22, all market will be closed for Thanksgiving Day.

On Friday, November 23, the stock market will be open only for a half day, closing at 1:00 PM EST. Second string trading will be desultory, and low volume.

The Baker-Hughes Rig Count follows at 1:00 PM.

As for me, I'd be roaming the High Sierras along the Eastern shore of Lake Tahoe looking for a couple of good Christmas trees to chop down. I have two US Forest Service permits in hand at $10 each, so everything will be legit.

Good luck and good trading.

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

November 16, 2018

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
November 16, 2018
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(RISK CONTROL FOR DUMMIES),
(SPY), (AMZN), (TLT), (CRM), (VXX)

November 12, 2018

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
November 12, 2018
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(THE MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, or IT’S FINALLY OVER),
(SPY), (TLT), (AAPL), (ROKU), (USO)

The Market Outlook for the Week Ahead, or It’s Finally Over

Diary, Newsletter

Could it have been the election all along?

Did the massive uncertainty created by the midterm elections hold back investors for all of ten months?

That’s what it looks like now. In a mere three days, shares made back half of what they lost in October, one of the worst trading months in stock market history.

All the market did was trade in a giant range until the day before we trudged out to our local ballot boxes. After that, it was off to the races. Who was the big winner? The people who want to make Donald Trump’s life miserable who now have countless means with which to do so.

Now that the wraps are off, the way is clear for markets to forge on to new all-time highs which they will do by yearend, or early 2019 at the latest.

The Mad Hedge Market Timing Index saw the sharpest rally in 30 years, from 4 to 29 in a week. I told you the market was cheap!

Oil prices (USO) are telling us we are already in recession. Prices are in free fall hitting $60 a barrel, a nine-month low. China certainly is hurting and they are the largest marginal new buyer of Texas tea.

What we are really seeing is a massive unwind of wrong-footed hedge fund oil longs who expected oil prices to soar with the implementation of new sanctions on Iran. They didn’t.

US Exports plunged 26% in September while tariffs paid by US companies soared by an eye-popping 54%. The destruction of American international trade is well underway. When will it end? Who’s benefiting?

Asians are boycotting US Treasury sales and the US needs to sell to staggering $1.3 trillion in new debt in 2019. Keep hammering the (TLT) with those short positions, your new rich uncle trade.

The Producer Price Index Soared in October, up 0.6% versus 0.2% expected. Yikes, and double yikes! Inflation is here. Keep selling short those bonds (TLT)!

Trump threatened anti-trust action against all of big tech. Market yawned, with Amazon down only $50 after an enormous run-up. A 1% market share against falling prices and enormous customer satisfaction never triggered an anti-trust action before. Jeff Bezos is not the robber baron John D. Rockefeller. Could it be political?

The Number of Job Openings exceeded workers by 1 million in August, with 7.01 million openings versus 5.96 million unemployed. It’s the first time since the Dotcom Bubble top. Are we headed for a 3% Headline Unemployment Rate?

The Golden Age of Gridlock began with the Dems taking the House by flipping 40 seats and the Republicans holding the Senate. Now you can turn off your TV and focus on trading for the next two years. Buy stocks on dips, sell bonds on rallies. Oh, and the 2020 presidential election starts tomorrow.

Housing Sentiment hit a one year low, down a humongous five points, the second fastest drop in history. Rising interest rates have driven a stake through the heart of this once rip-roaring market, but it’s no 2008 replay.

November Share Buy Backs are poised to be the largest in history. Of course, you knew this was going to happen a month ago if you read Mad Hedge Fund Trader. Gotta love that tax reform!

My year-to-date performance rocketed to a new all-time high of +32.94%, and my trailing one-year return stands at 35.33%. November so far stands at +3.31%. And this is against a Dow Average that is up a pitiful 4.43% so far in 2018.

My nine-year return ballooned to 309.41%. The average annualized return stands at 34.72%. 2018 is turning into a perfect trading year for me, as I’m sure it is for you.

In the week before the election, I strapped on the most aggressive long portfolio of this year. It worked like a charm. I then went almost entirely in cash before election day, locking a 12% gain for the model trading portfolio.

I lasted in cash on two days. On the first down 300 point Dow day, I started adding positions in the old familiar names, including Apple (AAPL), Roku (ROKU) for the Mad Hedge Technology Letter, and a short in the (TLT). Bonds could really get crushed going into yearend targeting a 3.50% yield.

Q3 earnings have finished with a whimper and the blackout periods for share buybacks are now over. Let the buying begin! Some $200 billion has to hit the market by yearend, mostly in technology stocks.

After all the recent fireworks, this will be a quiet week on the data front. The October CPI will be the big one, out on Wednesday.

Monday, November 12 is Veterans Day. Stock markets are open but bonds are closed.

On Tuesday, November 13 at 6:00 AM EST, the NFIB Small Business Optimism Index is released.

On Wednesday, November 14 at 8:30 EST, we have the all-important Consumer Price Index announced. How hot will it be?

At 10:30 AM the Energy Information Administration announces oil inventory figures with its Petroleum Status Report.

Thursday, November 15 at 8:30, we get Weekly Jobless Claims. At the same time, October Retail Sales are put out.

On Friday, November 16, at 9:15 AM, the October Industrial Production is published.

The Baker-Hughes Rig Count follows at 1:00 PM.

As for me, I am on standby to volunteer as a pilot and serve as spotter for Calfire for the latest Northern California wildfires. I put my name on the waiting list last year, and they only just got around to calling me. There were 2,000 other volunteer pilots on the waiting list ahead of me.

You gotta love America.

Good luck and good trading.

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

November 8, 2018

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
November 7, 2018
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(A NOTE ON OPTIONS CALLED AWAY), (SPY), (MSFT)
(TESTIMONIAL)

November 5, 2018

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
November 5, 2018
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(THE MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, or THE MAD HEDGE FUND TRADER HITS A NEW ALL TIME HIGH),
(AAPL), (FB), (RHT), (GE), (VXX), (AMZN), (SPY), (IWM), (CRM)

The Market Outlook for the Week Ahead, or The Mad Hedge Fund Trader Hits a New All Time High

Diary, Newsletter

I used to do a lot of skydiving from 20,000 feet. There’s nothing like a freefall, feeling the wind rip at your jumpsuit as you plunge towards the earth at terminal velocity of 125 miles per hour. In the beginning, the ground looks very far away. Then it suddenly gets very close, very fast.

I used to do this during the 1960s with WWII surplus silk parachutes with a “double L” cut. You hit the ground like a ton of bricks. Sometimes, we’d swing back and forth from the wings of the airplane before letting go just to have fun and freak out the pilot who had no chute.

Over time, you develop a very accurate sense of how fast the ground is approaching and when to pull the ripcord. If you’re wrong, you die.

That’s how I felt when markets went into freefall last Monday. However, after a half-century of trading, I have a highly developed sense of where the bottom is.

So, I piled on the “bet the ranch” longs in technology stocks and shorts in the bond market right at the absolute bottom. And to make sure everyone to a man got in, shares swooshed down one final time when rumors spread that Trump was escalating the trade war with China once again.

By Wednesday morning, the Mad Hedge Fund Trader model portfolio had booked its largest two day gain since the inception of this letter 11 years ago, some 12%. By miracle of miracles, we ended up positive for October, virtually the only one to do so in the entire hedge fund industry.

I would like to think that 50 years of toil in the markets is finally starting to pay off for me. The truth is, the harder I work, the luckier I get.

Stocks lost $2 trillion in market value in October, off 6.9%. Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln? Tech took the worst hit in a decade, with many favorites down 20%-30%.

I am raising as much cash as I can ahead of the Midterm Elections tomorrow. Democrats seizing the House of Representatives is priced into the market already.

If the Republicans end up keeping the House, you can count on at least a 1,000-point rally in the Dow Average in the next few days as the door is now open for more tax cuts, more deregulation, and more deficit spending.

If the Democrats end up taking both the Senate and the House you can look for a 1,000 point drop in the Dow. That would bring on a huge “flight to safety” bid in the bond market and yet another opportunity to sell short at great prices.

Either way, I want more dry powder with which to take advantage of any extreme moves that may take place. “Extreme” seems to be the order of the day.

By the way, we are so far in the money with our remaining positions that even with a 1,000 point drop we should still reap the maximum profit with the November 16 option expiration in only 9 trading days.

Not that it matters, but October Nonfarm Payroll Report came in at a red-hot 250,000. The headline Unemployment Rate remained at a two-decade low at 3.7%. The Broader U-6 “Discouraged worker” unemployment rate fell 0.1% to 7.4%.

For the first time in yonks, no sector lost jobs last month. HealthCare added 36,000 jobs, Manufacturing 32,000 jobs, and Leisure & Hospitality 42,000 jobs.

However, the real blockbuster was that Average Hourly Earnings exploded to a 3.1% YOY rate, the highest in ten years. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this is what inflation looks like, up close and ugly.

The number immediately knocked the wind out of the bond market taking it to a new low for the year. Yes, this is what double short positions in bonds are all about. I saw this coming a mile off.

The backdrop for the bond market is looking worse than ever. The budget deficit is about to break $1 trillion for the first time since the 2009 crash. Rising interest rates mean the government’s debt burden is about to grow by leaps and bounds, eventually becoming its largest expenditure.

The US Treasury is hitting the markets daily with massive new issuance, and the Chinese are dumping what US bonds they have to support the Yuan, now at a ten-year low. This is what Armageddon looks like in slow motion.

Last week was dominated by a China trade war that was on again, then off, then on one more time. The stock market ratcheted four-digit figures every time this happened.

Apple (AAPL) announced record profits yet again but countered with cautious forward sales guidance. Social media pariah Facebook (FB) delivered an earnings report beyond all expectations popping the stock $10.

IBM took over Red Hat (RHT) for $33 billion, the third largest merger in history. It’s too little too late for Big Blue as the stock falls on the news. It all reeks of a “Hail Mary.”

General Electric (GE) cut its dividend from 12 cents a share to one cent after reporting a breathtaking $22.8 billion loss. The Feds have opened a criminal investigation into accounting practices. This may define the final bottom in the stock. Take another look at those long-term LEAPS.

My year-to-date performance rocketed to a new all-time high of +33.17%, and my trailing one-year return stands at 37.57%. October finished at +1.24% and that includes an ill-fated -4.23% loss in the iPath S&P 500 VIX Short Term Futures ETN (VXX).

And this is against a Dow Average that is up a miniscule 1.9% so far in 2018. So far in November, we are up an eye-popping +3.54%.

Incredible as it may seem, the Mad Hedge Fund Trader has been up 18 consecutive months. That’s what you pay for and that’s what you’re getting. There’s nothing more fulfilling in life than making promises to friends, then delivering in spades.

As the market collapses, I scaled into longs in Amazon (AMZN), the S&P 500 (SPY), the Russell 2000 (IWM), and Salesforce (CRM). I used the flight to safety bid in the bond market to double up my short position there, and am kicking myself for not going triple weight.

My nine-year return ballooned to 309.64%. The average annualized return stands at 34.72%.

All the BSDs are done reporting Q3 earnings and only a few tag ends are left to report. The carnage is over until we restart the cycle once again in February. In any case, economic data pales in comparison to the election in terms of market impact.

On Monday, November 5 at 10:00 AM, the ISM Manufacturing Index is out.

On Tuesday, November 6 is Election Day. Trading will be a subdued affair and the results will start coming out at 11:00 EST after the west coast polls close.

On Wednesday, October 24 we have the election aftermath to deal with. Up 1,000, down 1,000, or unchanged, who knows?

At 10:30 AM the Energy Information Administration announces oil inventory figures with its Petroleum Status Report.

Thursday, October 25 at 8:30, we get Weekly Jobless Claims. The Federal Open Market Committee meets to discuss interest rates but will take no action.

On Friday, October 26, at 8:30 AM, the October Producer Price Index is out, an important read on inflation.

The Baker-Hughes Rig Count follows at 1:00 PM.

As for me, I made a massive amount of money personally in the October crash. I am going to plop down $150,000 and buy a brand new Tesla Model X for myself. The ashtrays are full on the old one, and besides, there is a tiny nick in the windshield from driving up to Lake Tahoe. I hear the new one has new “Summon” technology that allows it to drive into a parking lot by itself and drive around until it finds an empty space, then back into it, all untouched by human hands.

Good luck and good trading.

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

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