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Tag Archive for: ($VIX)

Mad Hedge Fund Trader

Volatility Here is Peaking

Diary, Newsletter, Research

It is often said that the stock market has discounted 12 out of the last four recessions.

While the market is discounting another recession now, I believe it is one of the many previously forecast that will never happen, a lot like to 18% swoon in the futures markets we saw last summer.

If anything, the reported hard data are showing that the economy is strengthening now, not weakening. The December nonfarm payroll hit a one-year high at 292,000. Christmas sales were off the charts for online merchants.

Auto production topped an 18 million rate. And this is an industry that was bankrupt only seven years ago.

But what else would you expect from a global economy that just has a $2 trillion annual tax cut dumped in its lap, thanks to lower energy prices.

I therefore think we are within days of the final capitulation of this move. That means the Volatility Index (VIX) will peak as well, probably around $30, the top that defined the top of every spike for all of 2015, except for the August 24 flash crash day. That apex is probably only days away.

I am one of those cheapskates who buys Christmas ornaments by the bucket load from Costco in January for ten cents on the dollar, because my eleven month theoretical return on capital comes close to 1,000%.

I also like buying flood insurance in the middle of the summer when the forecast here in California is for endless days of sunshine.

That is what we are facing now with the volatility index (VIX) where premiums have just doubled, from $15 to near $30. Get this one right, and the profits you can realize are spectacular.

Watch carefully for other confirming trends to affirm this trade is unfolding. Those would include a strong dollar, collapsing stocks, and oil in free fall, and a weak Japanese yen, Euro.

I don?t know about you, but I am seeing seven out of seven cross asset confirming price action.

The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) is a measure of the implied volatility of the S&P 500 stock index, which has been rallying hard since oil began its precipitous slide three weeks ago.

You may know of this from the many clueless talking heads, beginners, and newbies who call this the ?Fear Index?. Long-term followers of my Trade Alert Service profited handsomely after I urged them to sell short this index three years ago with the heady altitude of 47%.

For those of you who have a PhD in higher mathematics from MIT, the (VIX) is simply a weighted blend of prices for a range of options on the S&P 500 index. The formula uses a kernel-smoothed estimator that takes as inputs the current market prices for all out-of-the-money calls and puts for the front month and second month expiration's.

The (VIX) is the square root of the par variance swap rate for a 30 day term initiated today. To get into the pricing of the individual options, please go look up your handy dandy and ever useful Black-Scholes equation. You will recall that this is the equation that derives from the Brownian motion of heat transference in metals. Got all that?

For the rest of you who do not possess a PhD in higher mathematics from MIT, and maybe scored a 450 on your math SAT test, or who don?t know what an SAT test is, this is what you need to know. When the market goes up, the (VIX) goes down. When the market goes down, the (VIX) goes up. End of story. Class dismissed.

The (VIX) is expressed in terms of the annualized movement in the S&P 500, which today is at 1,800. So a (VIX) of $14 means that the market expects the index to move 4.0%, or 72 S&P 500 points, over the next 30 days.

You get this by calculating $14/3.46 = 4.0%, where the square root of 12 months is 3.46. The volatility index doesn?t really care which way the stock index moves. If the S&P 500 moves more than the projected 4.0%, you make a profit on your long (VIX) positions.

Probability statistics suggest that there is a 68% chance (one standard deviation) that the next monthly market move will stay within the 4.0% range. I am going into this detail because I always get a million questions whenever I raise this subject with volatility-deprived investors.

It gets better. Futures contracts began trading on the (VIX) in 2004, and options on the futures since 2006. Since then, these instruments have provided a vital means through which hedge funds control risk in their portfolios, thus providing the ?hedge? in hedge fund.

But wait, there?s more. Now, erase the blackboard and start all over. Why should you care? If you sell short the (VIX) here at $24, you are picking up a derivative at a nice overbought level. Only prolonged, ?buy and hold? bull markets see volatility stay under $14 for any appreciable amount of time. That?s probably what we have now.

If you are a trader you can sell short the (VIX) futures somewhere over $20 and expect an easy profit sometime in the coming weeks. If we get another 5% rally somewhere along that way, that would do it.

If you don?t want to sell the (VIX) futures or options outright, then you can always sell short the iPath S&P 500 VIX Short Term Futures ETN (VXX). Better yet, you can buy a short (VIX) ETN outright, the Velocity Shares Daily Inverse VIX Short Term ETN (XIV).

If you make money on this trade, it will offset losses on other long positions.

No one who buys fire insurance ever complains when their house doesn?t burn down.

VIX 1-11-15

VXX 1-11-16

1-11-16

Tiger hugs ManVolatility Can Be Your Friend

https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Tiger-hugs-Man-e1452549843482.jpg 400 262 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2016-01-12 01:06:382016-01-12 01:06:38Volatility Here is Peaking
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

The Coming Market Reaction to the Fed Decision

Diary, Newsletter

Up, then down, then up again.

How about that?

Will the Federal Reserve reverse their nine-year interest rate-cutting trend, or does it have another three months of life?

Is global economic weakness, or the approach of US full employment first and foremost in the mind of my friend, Federal Reserve governor Janet Yellen?

I?m sure that two days before the meeting, even the Fed itself doesn?t know the answer to these burning questions.

That has been the wellspring of the tremendous volatility we have grievously suffered for the past month that had the Volatility Index (VIX) at one point tickle a twice a decade high 53% level.

But could we be focusing on the wrong thing?

Is the Fed decision a simple matter of smoke and mirrors distracting us from the real market driver?

That would be the calendar.

After all the pundits predicted that the ?Sell in May, and go away? effect was utterly useless, backward looking, and little more than popular folklore, it then performed like a star.

I was certain this would be the case, and warned readers in the spring we would see a ?Sell in May, and go away? with a turbocharger, racing tires, and fuel injection.

This is why almost every S&P 500 Trade Alert I shot out since April was from the short side. My strategy thankfully delivered windfall profits for believing followers.

The problem is we may be trying to overthink the markets.

The May peak, and the 15% swoon that followed could be simply no more than further proof of the 60 year seasonal preference to sell stocks in the Spring and buy them back in the Fall.

Global growth fears, the China slowdown, stock market crash, and currency devaluation, the European refugee crisis, ISIS, the commodity collapse, saber rattling from Russia, and even share price valuations all could be nothing more than simple noise.

If I am right, then the Thursday Fed decision will be absolutely of no consequence. Whether they raise ?% and follow it up with ultra dovish talk will have no impact of the profitability of US companies whatsoever, except financials.

As we mathematicians like to say, ?it is close enough to zero to still be zero.?

The mere fact that the Fed decision is out of the way is the really important thing.

I have always believed that making money in the stock market is all about anticipating what is going to happen next.

What happens after a China crash? A China recovery.

European chaos? European stability.

An ISIS victory? An ISIS defeat.

A commodity collapse? A commodity bull market.

Russian saber rattling? Russian peace overtures.

Concern about share valuations? A return to momentum investing.

It all adds up to a global synchronized economic recovery sometime in 2016.

When do stocks start discounting this? How about right now!

You better pay attention to me, because I have been dead on right about how the stock market would play out after the August 24 flash crash.

That was my expectation of a narrowing triangle of higher lows and lower highs that reaches an apex exactly on Thursday, September 27 at 2:00 PM EDT.

After a false breakdown, the risk is we may get a stock melt up once the Fed announcement is out. It could kick off the six months a year we usually get seasonal strength for equities.

And this time, the follow up discussion will be far more important than the initial, algorithm driving headline.

Don?t get me wrong. We haven?t suddenly gotten a free pass on market turmoil.

Volatility is not about to plummet back to 10% and then sit there for four more years. We still have October to get through, which has a notorious reputation for ruining people?s lives and wealth.

However, my prediction for new all time high in American stock markets by the end of 2015 still stands.

Make your bets, and place your chips on the table please.

SPX 9-11-15

CalendarIt?s Really All About the Calendar

https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Calendar-e1442274825707.jpg 384 500 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2015-09-15 01:07:072015-09-15 01:07:07The Coming Market Reaction to the Fed Decision
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

Stress Testing the Mad Hedge Fund Trader Strategy

Diary, Newsletter

It is always a great idea to know how bomb proof your portfolio is.

Big hedge funds have teams of MIT educated mathematicians that constantly build models that stress test their holdings for every conceivable outcome.

WWIII? A Global pandemic? A 1,000 point flash crash? No problem. Analysts will tell you to the decimal point exactly how trading books will perform in every possible scenario.

The problem is that these are just predictions, which is code for ?educated guesses.?

The most notorious example of this was the Long Term Capital Management melt down where the best minds in the world constructed a portfolio that essentially vaporized in two weeks with a total loss.

S&P 500 volatility (VIX) exceeding $40? Never happen!

Oops. Better get those resumes out!

That?s why events like the Monday, August 24 1,000 flash crash are particularly valuable. While numbers and probabilities are great, they are not certainties. Nothing beats real world experience.

As markets are populated by humans, they will do things that no one can anticipate. Every machine has its programming shortcoming.

Given that standard, I think the Mad Hedge Fund Trader?s strategy did pretty well in the downdraft. I went into Monday with an aggressive ?RISK ON? portfolio that included the following:

MHFT Trading Book

The basic assumptions of this book were that the long term bull market has more to run, the housing sector would lead, interest rates would rise going into the September 17 Federal Reserve meeting, the dollar would remain strong, and that stock market volatility would stay within a 12%-20% range.

What we got was the sharpest one-day stock decline in history, a 28 basis point spike up in interest rates, a complete collapse in the dollar, and stock market volatility at an eye popping 53.85%.

Yikes! I couldn?t have been more wrong.

Now here?s the good news.

When we finally got believable options prices 30 minutes after the opening I priced my portfolio, bracing myself. My August performance plunged from +5.12% on Friday to -10%.

Hey, I never promised you a rose garden.

But that only took my performance for the year back to my June 17 figure, when I was up 23% on the year. In other words, I had only given up two months worth of profits, and that was at the low of the day.

I then sat back and watched the Dow rally an incredible 800 points. Now it was time to de risk. So I dumped my entire portfolio. The assumptions for the portfolio were no longer valid, so I unloaded the entire thing.

This was no time to be stubborn, proud, and full of hubris.

By the end of the day, I was down only -0.48% for August, and up +32.65% for the year.

Ask any manager, and they would have given their right arm to be down only -0.28% on August 24.

Of course, it helped that I had spent all month aggressively shorting the market into the crash, building up a nice 5.12% bank of profits to trade against. That is one of the reasons you subscribe to the Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader.

The biggest hit came from my short position in the Japanese yen (FXY), which was just backing off of a decade low and therefore coiled for a sharp reversal. It cost me -4.85%.

My smallest loss was found in the short Treasury bond position (TLT), where I only shed 1.52%. But the (TLT) had already rallied 9 points going into the crash, so I was only able to eke out another 4 points to the upside on a flight to safety bid.

Lennar Homes gave me a 2.59% hickey, while the S&P 500 long I added only on Friday (after all, the market was then already extremely oversold) subtracted another 1.61%.

The big lesson here is that my short option hedges were worth their weight in gold. Without them, the losses on the Monday opening would have been intolerable, some two to three times higher.

You can come back from a 10% loss. I have done so many times in my life. A 30% loss is a completely different kettle of fish, and is life threatening.

For years, readers complained that my strategy was too conservative and cautious, really suited for the old man that I have become.

Readers were able to make a lot more money following my Trade Alerts through just buying the call options and skipping the hedge, or better yet, buying the futures.

I didn?t receive a single one of those complaints on Monday.

I?ll tell you who you didn?t hear from on Monday, and that was friends who pursued the moronic trading strategies you often find touted on the Internet.

That includes approaches like leveraged naked shorting of puts that are always advertising fantastic track records...when they work.

You didn?t hear from them because they were on the phone pleading with their brokers while they were forcibly liquidating portfolio showing 100% losses.

Any idiot can look like a genius shorting puts until it blows up in their face on a day like Monday and they lose everything they have. I know this because many of these people end up buying my service after getting wiped out by others.

I work on the theory that I am too old to go broke and start over. Besides, Morgan Stanley probably wouldn?t have me back anyway. It?s a different firm now.

Would I have made more money just sitting tight and doing nothing?

Absolutely!

But the risks involved would have been unacceptable. I would have failed my own test of not being able to sleep at night. That is not what this service is all about.

In any case, I know I can go back to the market and make money anytime I want. That makes the hits easier to swallow.

You can?t do this without any capital.

With the stress test of stress tests behind us, the rest of the years should be a piece of cake.

Good luck, and good trading.

FXY 8-27-15

TLT 8-27-15

LEN 8-27-15

SPY 8-27-15

John ThomasSometimes It Pays to Be Old

https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/John-Thomas5-e1440701902348.jpg 322 400 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2015-08-28 01:07:202015-08-28 01:07:20Stress Testing the Mad Hedge Fund Trader Strategy
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

The Volatility Peak is In

Diary, Newsletter

Well, I certainly earned my crust of bread today.

This was truly one of those mornings when you couldn?t believe your screens.

When I went to sell short the Volatility Index (VIX), I discovered that it wasn?t trading. Volatility in fact didn?t trade at all for the first 15 minutes of Monday.

Unbelievable!

So I rushed to buy the short volatility ETF?s the Velocity Shares Daily Inverse VIX Short Term ETN (XIV) and the ProShares Short VIX Short Term Futures ETN (SVXY). But they had already started running. It was basically a chase all day.

Despite the enormous volume, it was actually quite hard to trade on Monday. Apple (AAPL) at $92?

I am one of those cheapskates who buys Christmas ornaments by the bucket load from Costco in January for ten cents on the dollar, because my eleven month theoretical return on capital comes close to 1,000%.

I also like buying flood insurance in the middle of the summer when the forecast here in California is for endless days of sunshine.

That is what we are facing now with the volatility index (VIX) where premiums finally did trade at opened at the $53 handle, a six-year high. The iPath S&P 500 VIX (VXX) Short Term Futures ETN actually doubled in three days!

Yikes!

Get this one right, and the profits you can realize are spectacular.

It gets better. If the top in volatility exactly coincides with the bottom in the ten year Treasury bond yields today at 1.92%, volatility could be headed back down to the 12% level where it will remain mired for months.

I double dare you to look at the charts below and tell me this isn?t happening.

Watch carefully for other confirming trends to affirm this trade is unfolding. Those would include a strong dollar, stocks, and oil, and a weak Japanese yen, Euro, and fixed income instruments of any kind.

The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) is a measure of the implied volatility of the S&P 500 stock index, which has been rallying hard since oil began its precipitous slide three weeks ago.

You may know of this from the many clueless talking heads, beginners, and newbies who call this the ?Fear Index?. Long-term followers of my Trade Alert Service profited handsomely after I urged them to sell short this index three years ago with the heady altitude of 47% several years ago.

For those of you who have a PhD in higher mathematics from MIT, the (VIX) is simply a weighted blend of prices for a range of options on the S&P 500 index. The formula uses a kernel-smoothed estimator that takes as inputs the current market prices for all out-of-the-money calls and puts for the front month and second month expirations.

The (VIX) is the square root of the par variance swap rate for a 30 day term initiated today. To get into the pricing of the individual options, please go look up your handy dandy and ever useful Black-Scholes equation. You will recall that this is the equation that derives from the Brownian motion of heat transference in metals. Got all that?

For the rest of you who do not possess a PhD in higher mathematics from MIT, and maybe scored a 450 on your math SAT test, or who don?t know what an SAT test is, this is what you need to know. When the market goes up, the (VIX) goes down. When the market goes down, the (VIX) goes up. End of story. Class dismissed.

The (VIX) is expressed in terms of the annualized movement in the S&P 500, which today is at 1,800. So a (VIX) of $14 means that the market expects the index to move 4.0%, or 72 S&P 500 points, over the next 30 days.

You get this by calculating $14/3.46 = 4.0%, where the square root of 12 months is 3.46. The volatility index doesn?t really care which way the stock index moves. If the S&P 500 moves more than the projected 4.0%, you make a profit on your long (VIX) positions.

Probability statistics suggest that there is a 68% chance (one standard deviation) that the next monthly market move will stay within the 4.0% range. I am going into this detail because I always get a million questions whenever I raise this subject with volatility-deprived investors.

It gets better. Futures contracts began trading on the (VIX) in 2004, and options on the futures since 2006. Since then, these instruments have provided a vital means through which hedge funds control risk in their portfolios, thus providing the ?hedge? in hedge fund.

But wait, there?s more. Now, erase the blackboard and start all over. Why should you care? If you sell short the (VIX) here at $24, you are picking up a derivative at a nice overbought level. Only prolonged, ?buy and hold? bull markets see volatility stay under $14 for any appreciable amount of time. That?s probably what we have now.

If you are a trader you can sell short the (VIX) futures somewhere over $20 and expect an easy profit sometime in the coming weeks. If we get another 5% rally somewhere along that way, that would do it.

If you don?t want to sell the (VIX) futures or options outright, then you can always sell short the iPath S&P 500 VIX Short Term Futures ETN (VXX). Better yet, you can buy a short (VIX) ETN outright, the Velocity Shares Daily Inverse VIX Short Term ETN (XIV).

If you make money on this trade, it will offset losses on other long positions.

No one who buys fire insurance ever complains when their house doesn?t burn down.

VXX 8-24-15

VXX 8-24-15

XIV 8-24-15

PHO 8-24-15 SVXY 8-24-15

VXX 12-17-14

TLT 12-17-14

XIV 12-17-14

tiger-swimming-2Make Volatility Your Friend, Not Your Enemy

 

https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/tiger-swimming-2-e1440506453468.jpg 258 400 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2015-08-25 01:07:172015-08-25 01:07:17The Volatility Peak is In
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

Cashing in on the Greek Crisis

Diary, Newsletter

Try as I may, there is absolutely no way to escape a financial crisis in the modern world anymore, not even in the dusty, remote Western Sahara village of Taghazout, Morocco.

There is an Ebola Virus outbreak 1,000 miles to the south, and 35 British tourists were massacred on a beach in neighboring Tunisia last week. There were exactly four passengers on my flight from Lisbon to Morocco.

Was it a warning, or a confirmation of hubris?

Starving stray dogs and cats wander the street, garbage lines the beach, and raw sewage seeps into the ocean. Rangy, two humped camels vainly await riders at the edge of town.

But satellite dishes sprout from the rooftop of even the most forlorn, impoverished, broken down cinder block structures, and the hum of the global markets is never more than a few channels away.

The CNBC here is available only in Arabic, and is fiercely competing with Omani soap operas and the Iraqi Business Channel (yes, despite ISIS, there is such a thing).

But it didn?t take me long to figure out that the people of Greece rejected the ECB latest bailout proposal by an overwhelming 61.5% to 38.5% margin.

It was no surprise to me.

You would think that voting against punishingly higher taxes and an excruciatingly longer recession was a no brainer. But the markets were expecting otherwise, and have been caught seriously wrong footed. Poor summer liquidity is exacerbating the moves.

My somewhat passable French enabled me to discern that the prices were taking it on the nose. Japan and China each dove 2%, while Australia and the Euro pared 1% apiece.

This was going to be a ?RISK OFF? day on steroids.

Suddenly, I smell opportunity everywhere.

Now we know the kneejerk response to an imminent Greek default.

However, the cold, harsh reality of the situation requires a little deeper analysis.

CNN was utterly useless, choosing instead to focus on the human side of the tragedy, the freshly impoverished Greek goat herder and the island hotel operator who can?t pay his staff.

No great insight there.

Greek citizens are now limited to withdrawing 60 Euros a day from an ATM, if they can find one that has any cash at all. To head off a certain run and Armageddon, the Greek banks have all been closed for a week, with no reopening in sight.

Thousands of foreign tourists are now stranded in the land of moussaka, retsina, and Zorba, cursing their vacation destination choice.

So I?ll refer to my May conversation with former Greek Prime Minister, George Papandreou, who ran the country from 2009 to 2011, and shepherded the country through the post financial crisis 2010 debacle.

His late father, Andreas, was also a Prime Minister, as was his grandfather, Georgio, who spent time in jail for his services, consider running this ungovernable country the family business.

To a large extent, the ECB (read the Germans) are in a subprime crisis entirely of their own making.

German banks provided funds to their Greek counterparts, initially to build the $8 billion 2000 Athens Olympics, which was almost entirely subcontracted to German engineering firms.

They then fueled the economic boom that followed, making possible the export of tens of thousands of Mercedes, BMW?s and Volkswagens. That bankrolled a major increase in the Greek standard of living, while adding several points to German GDP growth.

When dubious financial statements were presented to justify this lending binge, bankers simply winked, and looked the other way.

A decade and a half later, they are ?shocked, shocked? that some of the accompanying disclosures were inaccurate, as police inspector Claude Rains might have said in Casablanca (which, by the way, is only 400 miles north of here).

?Gambling in the casino? Perish the thought.? How do you say that in German?

The reality is that this is all a storm in a teacup. Accounting for only 2% of European GDP, it is neither here nor there whether the country stays or goes from the European Community or the Euro.

Total Greek debt to the ECB is now $3.5 billion, a drop in the bucket in the global scheme of things.

What?s more, this crisis is far less serious than the ones that occurred in 2010 and 2012. This time around, Greek bonds have already been taken off the books of German and French banks at cost, and placed with numerous multinational agencies, largely the ECB itself.

What is almost completely lacking here is private risk, unless you happen to own a Greek bank, or the shares of other Greek companies.

What?s more, all of this is happening in the face of a massive 60 billion a month ECB quantitative easing program. The amount Greece owes comes to less than two days worth of this amount.

Never take a liquidity crisis in the middle of a structural global cash glut too seriously.

Even this paltry amount can be easily refinanced by the International Monetary Fund on a slow day. That?s what they are there for.

This pales in comparison to the 39 billion euros spent to bail out the Spanish banking system a few years ago, or the $4 billion IMF rescue of the United Kingdom in 1976.

In the end, the amounts are sofa change to the Chinese, who are starved for high yield investments. It was they who nailed the top of the last European bond yield spike (on my advice, I might add), acting as the buyer of last resort then.

In the end this will be solved, as have all international debt crises since time immemorial, since the British seized the Suez Canal from the French as collateral for bad debts in 1882. Extend and pretend. Move debt maturities out another ten years and hope everything gets solved by then.

It always works.

What all of this does do is create a great buying opportunity for the assets not directly involved in this crisis, notably US equities. Modest over valuation has encumbered main indexes with declining volumes, narrowing breadth, and shrinking volatility for all of 2015.

At the very least, the Euro crisis du jour will present a second test of the (SPY) 200-day moving average at $205.74. The best case is that it gives us a real gift, a visit to a full 10% retreat to $193, a pullback whose ferociousness has not been seen since October.

That?s where you load the boat for a rally to new index highs at yearend.

You can expect similar moves in other assets classes.

In this scenario, volatility (VIX) will rocket to 30%. The Euro (FXE) collapses to $103 once more, and the Japanese yen (FXY) revisits $82. Treasury bonds (TLT) enjoy a flight to safety bid that takes yields at least back to 2.30%. Gold (GLD) and silver (SLV) do nothing, as usual.

For followers of my Trade Alert service, this is all a dream come true. Having made 26.71%, or much more, in the first half of this year, you now have the opportunity to repeat this feat in the second half.

Going into a crisis like this with 100% cash and only dry powder is every trader?s wildest fantasy. Make sure you let the current Greek debt crisis play out before you commit.

This is what you all pay me for. At least I?ll get something for suffering through the hell holes and gin joints of West Africa.

I think I?ll go give those camels some business.

SPX 7-2-15

TLT 7-2-15

VIX 7-2-15

FXE 7-2-15

George Papandreou

RetsinaRetsina

John Thomas

https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/George-Papandreou.jpg 356 326 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2015-07-06 10:27:462015-07-06 10:27:46Cashing in on the Greek Crisis
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

Why Stocks Hated the May Nonfarm Payroll

Diary, Newsletter

When the US Department of Labor announced its blockbuster May nonfarm payroll showing a 280,000 gain, stocks behaved like the world had just ended.

The 32,000 in March and April upward revisions didn?t help either.

You would think data showing that the economy is improving much faster than many realized would be positive for ?RISK ON? equity investments.

It wasn?t.

Now, the laser focus is on the bond market, which is collapsing globally. The complete disappearance of liquidity is exacerbating the moves.

Bond traders are now hyper sensitive to any news of a stronger American economy, which will soon lead to higher interest rate rises by Janet Yellen?s Federal Reserve.

A world is ending, but not the one you think. The zero interest rate regime on which we have all become heavily addicted over the last eight years is about to go into the history books.

Welcome to the looking glass world of investment these days. Good new is bad news and bad news good.

Players are in a manic depressive mood, expecting the economy to plunge into recession one month, and then discounting a robust recovery the next.

Then there?s Greece, which threatens to default on its debt on alternate days, and then offers to pay on the others. This has prompted the Euro (FXE) to undergo more gyrations than a circus contortionist.

Not a friendly environment for a trader. Sturm und drang with no net movement in the indexes doesn?t pave the road to trading riches. Even staying long volatility (VIX) is not working, unless you have the fastest finger in Chicago.

This is why I am keeping the Mad Hedge Fund Trader model trading portfolio to an absolute minimum bare bones of positions, a single 10% weighting in the S&P 500 that I snapped up at the Friday lows. And even that one has me edgy.

After polling many of my most loyal, long-term readers, I learned that they would rather see a small number of great trades than a large number of positions that include a few losers.

So, cherry picking it is, at least, for now.

To say that the nonfarm was fantastic is something of an under statement.

Private nonfarm jobs jumped by a dynamic 262,000. High paying professional and business services employment increased by a runaway 63,000. Leisure and hospitality ramped up to 57,000. Health care picked up 47,000.

The big loser was mining (coal, gold, silver), which shed 17,000 jobs. Headline unemployment held steady at 5.5%, while average hourly earnings rose by 0.3%.

It was almost a perfect report.

It certainly reinforces my own forecast of a hot 3% GDP growth rate for the final three quarters of 2015. The question bedeviling traders and investors alike now is, ?How much of this growth is already discounted in today?s prices??

You almost wonder if stocks are tired of going up, which have been appreciating for more than six years. Stock buyers need a new story.

With a discount Euro beckoning, it sounds like this summer will be the best ever to take a long vacation.

UST10Y 6-6-15

SPX 6-6-15

INDU 6-6-15

IWM 6-6-15

Pogo StickLooks Like This is a Down Day

https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Pogo-Stick.jpg 390 168 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2015-06-08 09:22:402015-06-08 09:22:40Why Stocks Hated the May Nonfarm Payroll
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

A Note on the Friday Options Expiration

Diary, Free Research, Newsletter

We have several options positions that expire on Friday, and I just want to explain to the newbies how to best maximize their profits.

These include:

The Currency Shares Japanese Yen Trust (FXY) February $84-$87 vertical bear put spread

The Gilead Sciences (GILD) February $87.50-$92.50 vertical bull call spread

The S&P 500 (SPY) February $199-$202 vertical bull call spread

My bets that (GILD) and the (SPY) would rise, and that the (FXY) would fall during January and February proved dead on accurate. We got a further kicker with the two stock positions in that we captured a dramatic plunge in volatility (VIX).

Provided that some 9/11 type event doesn?t occur today, all three positions should expire at their maximum profit point. In that case, your profits on these positions will amount to 13% for the (FXY), 19% for (GILD) and 20% for the (SPY).

This will bring us a fabulous 5.58% profit so far for February, and a market beating 6.11% for year-to-date 2015.

Many of you have already emailed me asking what to do with these winning positions. The answer is very simple. You take your left hand, grab your right wrist, pull it behind your neck and pat yourself on the back for a job well done. You don?t have to do anything.

Your broker (are they still called that?) will automatically use your long put position to cover the short put position, cancelling out the total holding. Ditto for the call spreads. The profit will be credited to your account on Monday morning, and he margin freed up.

If you don?t see the cash show up in you account on Monday, get on the blower immediately. Although the expiration process is now supposed to be fully automated, occasionally mistakes do occur. Better to sort out any confusion before losses ensue.

I don?t usually run positions into expiration like this, preferring to take profits two weeks ahead of time, as the risk reward is no longer that favorable.

But we have a ton of cash right now, and I don?t see any other great entry points for the moment. Better to keep the cash working and duck the double commissions. This time being a pig paid off handsomely.

If you want to wimp out and close the position before the expiration, it may be expensive to do so. Keep in mind that the liquidity in the options market disappears, and the spreads substantially widen, when a security has only hours, or minutes until expiration. This is known in the trade as the ?expiration risk.?

One way or the other, I?m sure you?ll do OK, as long as I am looking over your shoulder, as I will be.

This expiration will leave me with a very rare 100% cash position. I am going to hang back and wait for good entry points before jumping back in. It?s all about getting that ?buy low, sell high? thing going again.

There are already interesting trades setting up in bonds (TLT), the (SPY), the Russell 2000 (IWM), NASDAQ (QQQ), solar stocks (SCTY), oil (USO), and gold (GLD).

The currencies seem to have gone dead for the time being, so I?ll stay away.

Well done, and on to the next trade.

FXY 2-19-15

GILD 2-19-15

SPY 2-19-15

Pat on the backPat Yourself on the Back

https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Pat-on-the-back-e1424375419249.jpg 259 400 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2015-02-20 01:04:322015-02-20 01:04:32A Note on the Friday Options Expiration
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

2014 Trade Alert Review

Diary, Free Research, Newsletter

When is the Mad Hedge Fund Trader a genius, and when is he a complete moron?

That is the question readers have to ask themselves whenever their smart phones ping, and a new Trade Alert appears on their screens.

I have to confess that I wonder myself sometimes.

So I thought I would run my 2014 numbers to find out when I was a hero, and when I was a goat.

The good news is that I was a hero most of the time, and a goat only occasionally. Here is the cumulative profit and loss for the 75 Trade Alerts that I closed during calendar 2014, listed by asset class.

Profit by Asset Class

Foreign Exchange 15.12%
Equities 12.52%
Fixed Income 7.28%
Energy 1.4%
Volatility -1.68%

Total 37.64%

Foreign exchange trading was my big winner for 2014, accounting for nearly half of my profits. My most successful trade of the year was in my short position in the Euro (FXE), (EUO).

I piled on a double position at the end of July, just as it became apparent that the beleaguered European currency was about to break out of a multi month sideway move into a pronounced new downtrend.

I then kept rolling the strikes down every month. Those who bought the short Euro 2X ETF (EUO) made even more.

The fundamentals for the Euro were bad and steadily worsening. It helped that I was there for two months during the summer and could clearly see how grotesquely overvalued the currency was. $20 for a cappuccino? Mama mia!

Nothing beats on the ground, first hand research.

Stocks generated another third of my profits last year and also accounted for my largest number of Trade Alerts.

I correctly identified technology and biotech as the lead sectors for the year, weaving in and out of Apple (AAPL) and Gilead Sciences (GILD) on many occasions. I also nailed the recovery of the US auto industry (GM), (F).

I safely stayed away from the energy sector until the very end of the year, when oil hit the $50 handle. I also prudently avoided commodities like the plague.

Unfortunately, I was wrong on the bond market for the entire year. That didn?t stop me from making money on the short side on price spikes, with fixed income chipping a healthy 7.28% into the kitty.

It was only at the end of the year, when the prices accelerated their northward trend that they started to cost me money. My saving grace was that I kept positions small throughout, doubling up on a single occasion and then coming right back out.

My one trade in the energy sector for the year was on the short side, in natural gas (UNG), selling the simple molecule at the $5.50 level. With gas now plumbing the depths at $2.90, I should have followed up with more Trade Alerts. But hey, a 1.4% gain is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

In which asset class was I wrong every single time? Both of the volatility (VIX) trades I did in 2014 lost money, for a total of -1.68%. I got caught in one of many downdrafts that saw volatility hugging the floor for most of the year, giving it to me in the shorts with the (VXX).

All in all, it was a pretty good year.

What was my best trade of 2014? I made 2.75% with a short position in the S&P 500 in July, during one of the market?s periodic 5% corrections.

And my worst trade of 2014? I got hit with a 6.63% speeding ticket with a long position in the same index. But I lived to fight another day.

After a rocky start, 2015 promises to be another great year. That is, provided you ignore my advice on volatility.

FXE 12-31-14

SPY 12-31-14

TLT 12-31-14

WTIC 12-31-14

VIX 12-31-14

Here is a complete list of every trade I closed last year, sorted by asset class, from best to worse.

Date

Position

Asset Class

Long/short

?

?

?

?

?

?

7/25/14

(SPY) 8/$202.50 - $202.50 put spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

2.75%

10/16/14

(GILD) 11/$80-$85 call spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

2.57%

5/19/14

(TLT) 7/$116-$119 put spread

fixed income

long

?

?

?

?

?

2.48%

4/4/14

(IWM) 8/$113 puts

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

2.38%

7/10/14

(AAPL) 8/$85-$90 call spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

2.30%

2/3/14

(TLT) 6/$106 puts

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

2.27%

9/19/14

(IWM) 11/$117-$120 put spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

2.26%

10/7/14

(FXE) 11/$127-$129 put spread

foreign exchange

long

?

?

?

?

?

2.22%

9/26/14

(IWM) 11/$116-$119 put spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

2.21%

4/17/14

(TLT) 5/$114-$117 put spread

fixed income

long

?

?

?

?

?

2.10%

8/7/14

(FXE) 9/$133-$135 put spread

foreign exchange

long

?

?

?

?

?

2.07%

10/2/14

(BAC) 11/$15-$16 call spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

2.04%

4/9/14

(SPY) 5/$191-$194 put spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

2.02%

10/15/14

(DAL) 11/$25-$27 call spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

1.89%

9/25/14

(FXE) 11/$128-$130 put spread

foreign exchange

long

?

?

?

?

?

1.86%

6/6/14

(JPM) 7/$52.50-$55.00 call spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

1.81%

4/4/14

(SPY) 5/$193-$196 put spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

1.81%

3/14/14

(TLT) 4/$111-$114 put spread

fixed income

long

?

?

?

?

?

1.68%

10/17/14

(AAPL) 11/$87.50-$92.50 call spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

1.56%

10/15/14

(SPY) 11/$168-$173 call spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

1.51%

7/3/14

(FXE) 8/$138 put spread

foreign exchange

long

?

?

?

?

?

1.51%

10/9/14

(FXE) 11/$128-$130 put spread

foreign exchange

long

?

?

?

?

?

1.48%

9/19/14

(FXE) 10/$128-$130 put spread

foreign exchange

long

?

?

?

?

?

1.45%

10/22/14

(SPY) 11/$179-$183 call spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

1.44%

5/29/14

(TLT) 7/$118-$121 put spread

fixed income

long

?

?

?

?

?

1.44%

2/24/14

(UNG) 7/$26 puts

energy

long

?

?

?

?

?

1.40%

2/24/14

(BAC) 3/$15-$16 call spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

1.39%

6/23/14

(SPY) 7/$202 put spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

1.37%

9/29/14

(SPY) 10/$202-$205 Put spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

1.29%

5/20/14

(AAPL) 7/$540 $570 call spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

1.22%

9/26/14

(SPY) 10/$202-$205 Put spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

1.22%

5/22/14

(GOOGL) 7/$480-$520 call spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

1.16%

5/19/14

(FXY) 7/$98-$101 put spread

foreign exchange

long

?

?

?

?

?

1.14%

1/15/14

(T) 2/$35-$37 put spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

1.08%

3/3/14

(TLT) 3/$111-$114 put spread

fixed income

long

?

?

?

?

?

1.07%

1/28/14

(AAPL) 2/$460-$490 call spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

1.06%

4/24/14

(SPY) 5/$192-$195 put spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

1.05%

6/6/14

(CAT) 7/$97.50-$100 call spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

1.04%

7/23/14

(FXE) 8/$134-$136 put spread

foreign exchange

long

?

?

?

?

?

0.99%

8/18/14

(FXE) 9/$133-$135 put spread

foreign exchange

long

?

?

?

?

?

0.94%

11/4/14

(BAC) 12/$15-$16 call spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

0.88%

4/9/14

(SPY) 6/$193-$196 put spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

0.88%

7/25/14

(SPY) 8/$202.50 -205 put spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

0.88%

6/6/14

(MSFT) 7/$38-$40 call spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

0.87%

10/23/14

(FXY) 11/$92-$95 puts spread

foreign exchange

long

?

?

?

?

?

0.86%

7/23/14

(TLT) 8/$117-$120 put spread

fixed income

long

?

?

?

?

?

0.81%

3/5/14

(DAL) 4/$30-$32 Call spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

0.76%

4/10/14

(VXX) long volatility ETN

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

0.76%

1/30/14

(UNG) 7/$23 puts

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

0.66%

4/1/14

(FXY) 5/$96-$99 put spread

foreign currency

long

?

?

?

?

?

0.60%

1/15/14

(TLT) 2/$108-$111 put spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

0.47%

3/6/14

(EBAY) 4/$52.50- $55 call spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

0.24%

10/14/14

(TBT) short Treasury Bond ETF

fixed income

long

?

?

?

?

?

0.22%

3/28/14

(VXX) long volatility ETN

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

0.20%

7/17/14

(TBT) short Treasury Bond ETF

fixed income

long

?

?

?

?

?

0.08%

3/26/14

(VXX) long volatility ETN

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

0.06%

7/8/14

(TLT) 8/$115-$118 put spread

fixed income

long

?

?

?

?

?

-0.18%

4/28/14

(SPY) 5/$189-$192 put spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

-0.45%

3/5/14

(GE) 4/$24-$25 call spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

-0.73%

4/28/14

(VXX) long volatility ETN

volatility

long

?

?

?

?

?

-0.81%

4/24/14

(TLT) 5/$113-$116 put spread

fixed income

long

?

?

?

?

?

-0.87%

4/28/14

(VXX) long volatility ETN

volatility

long

?

?

?

?

?

-0.87%

6/6/14

(IBM) 7/$180-$185 call spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

-1.27%

9/30/14

(SPY) 11/$185-$190 call spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

-1.51%

10/9/14

(TLT) 11/$122-$125 put spread

fixed income

long

?

?

?

?

?

-1.55%

9/24/14

(TSLA) 11/$200 call spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

-1.62%

2/27/14

(SPY) 3/$189-$192 put spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

-1.67%

3/6/14

(BAC) 4/$16 calls

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

-2.01%

10/14/14

(SPY) 10/$180-$184 call spread

equities

short

?

?

?

?

?

-2.13%

11/14/14

(BABA) 12/$100-$105 call spread

equities

short

?

?

?

?

?

-2.38%

10/20/14

(SPY) 11/$197-$202 call spread

equities

short

?

?

?

?

?

-2.72%

7/3/14

(GM) 8/$33-$35 call spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

-2.91%

3/7/14

(GM) 4/$34-$36 call spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

-2.96%

11/25/14

(SCTY) 12/47.50-$52.50 call spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

-3.63%

10/20/14

(SPY) 11/$197-$202 call spread

equities

short

?

?

?

?

?

-4.22%

4/14/14

(SPY) 5/$188-$191 put spread

equities

long

?

?

?

?

?

-6.63%

 

John Thomas - BeachWhat a Year!

https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/John-Thomas-Beach-e1416856744606.png 400 276 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2015-01-15 09:01:572015-01-15 09:01:572014 Trade Alert Review
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

Mad Day Trader Jim Parker?s Q1, 2015 Views

Diary, Newsletter, Research

Mad Day Trader Jim Parker is expecting the first quarter of 2015 to offer plenty of volatility and loads of great trading opportunities. He thinks the scariest moves may already be behind us.

After a ferocious week of decidedly ?RISK OFF? markets, the sweet spots going forward will be of the ?RISK ON? variety. Sector leadership could change daily, with a brutal rotation, depending on whether the price of oil is up, down, or sideways.

The market is paying the price of having pulled forward too much performance from 2015 back into the final month of 2014, when we all watched the December melt up slack jawed.

Jim is a 40-year veteran of the financial markets and has long made a living as an independent trader in the pits at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. He worked his way up from a junior floor runner to advisor to some of the world?s largest hedge funds. We are lucky to have him on our team and gain access to his experience, knowledge and expertise.

Jim uses a dozen proprietary short-term technical and momentum indicators to generate buy and sell signals. Below are his specific views for the new quarter according to each asset class.

Stocks

The S&P 500 (SPY) and NASDAQ have met all of Jim?s short-term downside targets, and a sustainable move up from here is in the cards. But if NASDAQ breaks 4,100 to the downside, all bets are off.

His favorite sector is health care (XLV), which seems immune to all troubles, and may have already seen its low for the year. Jim is also enamored with technology stocks (XLK).

The coming year will be a great one for single stock pickers. Priceline (PCLN) is a great short, dragged down by the weak Euro, where they get much of their business. Ford Motors (F) probably bottomed yesterday, and is a good offsetting long.

Bonds

Jim is not inclined to stand in front of a moving train, so he likes the Treasury bond market (TLT), (TBT). He thinks the 30-year yield could reach an eye popping 2.25%. A break there is worth another 10 basis points. Bonds are getting a strong push from a flight to safety, huge US capital inflows, and an endlessly strong dollar.

Foreign Currencies

A short position in the Euro (FXE), (EUO) is the no brainer here. The problem is one of good new entry points. Real traders always have trouble selling into a free fall. But you might see profit taking as we approach $1.16 in the cash market.

The Aussie (FXA) is being dragged down by the commodity collapse and an indifferent government. The British pound (FXB) is has yet to recover from the erosion of confidence ignited by the Scotland independence vote and has further mud splattered upon it by the weak Euro.


Precious Metals

GOLD (GLD) could be in a good range pivoting off of the recent $1,140 bottom. The gold miners (GDX) present the best opportunity at catching some volatility. The barbarous relic is pulling up the price of silver (SLV) as well. Buy the hard breaks, and then take quick profits. In a deflationary world, there is no long-term trade here. It is a real field of broken dreams.

Energy

Jim is not willing to catch a falling knife in the oil space (USO). He has too few fingers as it is. It has become too difficult to trade, as the algorithms are now in charge, and a lot of gap moves take place in the overnight markets. Don?t bother with fundamentals as they are irrelevant. No one really knows where the bottom in oil is.

Agriculturals

Jim is friendly to the ags (CORN), (SOYB), (DBA), but only on sudden pullbacks. However, there are no new immediate signals here. So he is just going to wait. The next directional guidance will come with the big USDA report at the end of January. The ags are further clouded by a murky international picture, with the collapse of the Russian ruble allowing the rogue nation to undercut prices on the international market.

Volatility

Volatility (VIX), (VXX) is probably going to peak out her soon in the $23-$25 range. The next week or so will tell for sure. A lot hangs on Friday?s December nonfarm payroll report. Every trader out there remembers that the last three visits to this level were all great shorts. However, the next bottom will be higher, probably around the $16 handle.

If you are not already getting Jim?s dynamite Mad Day Trader service, please get yourself the unfair advantage you deserve. Just email Nancy in customer support at support@madhedgefundtrader.com and ask for the $1,500 a year upgrade to your existing Global Trading Dispatch service.

 

Volatility WeeklyVolatility Weekly

 

Volatility Monthly (2)Volatility Monthly

 

Euro to the DollarEuro to the Dollar

 

PCLN 1-7-15

F 1-7-15

Jim Parker

https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Volatility-Weekly.jpg 325 579 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2015-01-08 09:44:082015-01-08 09:44:08Mad Day Trader Jim Parker?s Q1, 2015 Views
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

Trade Alert Drought Explanation and My Market Take

Diary, Newsletter, Research

Those of you who recently purchased the Mad Hedge Fund Trader?s mentoring service may have noticed a sudden drop off in Trade Alerts.

During October, I sent out a record 44 Alerts and Updates. As a result, that month was my best of the year, bringing in a gain of 6.69%. This month, only 5 Trade Alerts have gone out.

What gives?

I assure you, I have not been basking in the sun on a yacht in the Caribbean. Nor have I been catching the end of the ski season on New Zealand?s South Island. I have not even taken off on a hundred mile snowshoe across the High Sierras (that is not scheduled until Thanksgiving week).

No, I?m afraid that I have to tell you that the problem has been the market. I like to focus on sending out Trade Alerts that have an overwhelming chance of success. The fundamentals, the technical?s, the sun, moon, and stars all have to line up perfectly.

When they don?t, I don?t trade. It?s called maintaining discipline. The same is true for my friend, Mad Day Trader, Jim Parker. Sometimes, the best trades are the ones you think about, but never do, because your models say ?Stay away!?

When I ran my big hedge fund during the 1990?s I developed a perfect leading indicator. It was based my own clients? cash flows. When money poured in, it reliably signaled a market top. When it flowed out, it presciently indicated a market bottom.

It made absolutely no difference what my own performance was. If I was up 40% on the year, and the stock market dove 10%, investors wanted their money back?and now! No excuses, no explanations.

When investors wanted to redeem, I bought them out with my own money. Eventually, over the years, I ended up owning the entire hedge fund, which I then sold at a big premium at the market top to a group of foreign investors.

The closing date was January 1, 2000, four months before the beginning of the Great Dotcom crash. People told me I was stupid for four months?then I never heard from them again, except to occasionally see their resumes put in front of me by hopeful headhunters.

I am seeing the same sort of behavior in the newsletter business. Market surges bring in large numbers of new subscribers, who then expect immediate gratification in the form of a ton of Trade Alerts. At market bottoms the PayPal account goes completely dormant.

If I met new subscriber expectations, I would create a perfect money destruction machine, one that mechanically buys tops and sells bottoms. That is a great way to buy a spanking brand new mega yacht for your broker, but not for yourself.

So what should you expect from the Mad Hedge Fund Trader? To get buried in Trade Alerts when conditions are ideal, and sit on your hands when they aren?t.

That is when you?re supposed to be reading those deep, insightful research pieces that I send you every day, and drawing up short lists of things to do when the call to action arises. Chance rewards the prepared.

Keeping you out of a high risk/low return market is a far more valuable service that I can provide than tying you to a low risk/high return one.

Hint: Just because you bought a new subscription to the Global Trading Dispatch doesn?t mean that trading conditions have suddenly become ideal.

If you have to wait for an entire market cycle for the sweet spots to start appearing in large numbers, that is the best way to protect and expand your wealth. Market discipline is the most valuable thing I can teach you.

With all that said, let?s talk about the markets.

This is a particularly tricky place for traders. The lowest risk day of the year to buy stocks was October 15. Since then, the risks have increased daily. We are now at the top of one of the extended runs in market history. Should we throw caution to the wind and buy with reckless abandon?

Hell no!

So maybe we should consider flipping to the short side?

We have just entered the six-month period when stocks are traditionally the strongest. You can add to this big upward influence the end of the year run up.

In fact, I think we will close 2014 at the high of the year. Looking at the way the Volatility Index (VIX) is trading, it could be another three years before we see another full 10% correction.

So I don?t think that selling short any risk asset is a good idea here either.

That leaves us the small weekly 1%-2% mini corrections we have been getting to get involved with on the long side. But since we are running into the annual book closing, you have to use tight stop losses to protect your investment.

The high frequency traders all know this, and will program their algorithms to trigger as many stop losses as possible before reversing markets. That?s how I lost my long vertical call spread in Alibaba (BABA) this year, for a -2.38% hickey.

This is why I wrote in the Trade Alert that short term traders should sell, but long-term investors should hold. I think the stock is going to $140 next year.

Long-term investors have no problem. My fundamental economic call remains unchanged. Analysts and investors alike are underestimating the strength of the US economy.

Almost every data point confirms my convictions. Everyone else is shocked, befuddled, and bemused. Not me.

So, this bull market could continue for three or more years, and all they need to do is take an extended cruise when the markets suffer their periodic corrections.

This is why those owning the deepest discount Vanguard index funds have outperformed both active and hedge fund mangers for the third year running.

Sometimes it pays to be lazy.

 

SPY 11-20-14

BAC 11-20-14

VIX 11-20-14

BABA 11-20-14

GolferSometimes It Pays to be Lazy

https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Golfer.jpg 430 320 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2014-11-21 01:04:592014-11-21 01:04:59Trade Alert Drought Explanation and My Market Take
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