Global Market Comments
February 22, 2022
Fiat Lux
Featured Trades:
(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, or BUYING AT THE SOUND OF THE CANON),
(SPY), (TLT), (TBT), (BRKB), (MSFT), (GOOGL),
(NFLX), (ZM), (DOCU), (ROKU), (VMEO)
Posts
“Buy at the sound of the canon.”
That was the sage advice Nathan Rothschild, ancestor of my former London neighbor Jacob Rothschild, gave to friends about trading stocks during the Napoleonic Wars.
Of course, information moved rather slowly back in 1812, pre-internet. Rothschild relied on carrier pigeons to gain his unfair advantage.
You have me.
Somehow, you have descended into Dante’s seventh level of hell. You have to wake up every morning now, wondering if it will be Jay Powell or Vladimir Putin who is going to eviscerate your wealth, postpone your retirement, and otherwise generally ruin your day.
Every price in the market already knows we’re in a bear market except the major indexes.
The roll call of the dead looks like a WWI casualty report: (NFLX), (ZM), (DOCU), (ROKU), (VMEO). It’s like the bid offer spread has suddenly become 25%. Companies are either reporting great earnings and seeing their shares go through the roof. Or they are sorely disappointing and getting sent to perdition on a rocket ship.
The most fascinating thing to happen last week was a new low in the bond market, since you’re all short up the wazoo, courtesy of a certain newsletter. Ten-year US Treasury yields tickled 2.05%, a two-year high, then retreated to 1.92%. That means bonds have completed their $20 swan dive from their December high, a repeat of the 2021 price action.
Trading has gotten too easy, so I think bonds will stall out here for a while. I even added a small long. And please stop calling me to ask if you should sell short bonds down $20. It’s perfect 20/20 hindsight. You can’t imagine how many such calls I’ve already received.
Our old friend, the barbarous relic, returned from the dead last week too. All it needed was for bitcoin to die a horrible death for gold to recover its bid. A prospective war in the Ukraine helped take it to a one-year high.
However, I think it’s safe to say that has lost its value as an inflation hedge for good. If a move in the CPI from 2% to 7.5% can’t elicit a pulse in the yellow metal now, it never will.
The US dollar was another puzzler last week. While the fixed income markets went from discounting three rate hikes this year to six, the greenback flatlined. It was supposed to go up, as currencies with rapidly rising interest rates usually do.
Maybe the buck just forgot how to go down. Or maybe this is the beginning of the end, when sheer over-issuance destroys the value of the US dollar. Some $30 trillion in the national debt will do that to a currency.
I know you will find this difficult to believe, but there are some outstanding money-making opportunities setting up later in the year. The crappier conditions look now, the better they will become later. But you are going to have to practice some extreme patience to get to the other side.
I hope this helps.
Goldman Sachs Chops 2022 Market Forecast, taking the S&P 500 goal from $5,100 down to $4,900. A tighter interest rate picture is to blame, with the year yields topping 2.05% on Friday. Higher interest rates devalue future corporate earnings and kill the shares of non-earning companies.
Oil Hits Seven-Year High, to $94.44 a barrel, up 3.3% on the day. Putin’s strategy of talking oil prices up with Ukrainian invasion threats is working like a charm. That’s what this is all about. Texas tea accounts for 70% of Russian government revenues.
Fed to Front-Load Rate Rises, says St. Louis Fed president Bullard. The drumbeat for a more hawkish central bank continues. Bonds were knocked for two points.
Wholesale Prices Rocket 1% in January and are up a nosebleed 9.7% YOY. Inflation has clearly not peaked yet. Look for stocks to get punished once the current short-covering rally runs out of gas.
Retail Sales Soar by 3.8%, in January indicating that the economy is stronger than it appears. The rapid shift to an online economy is accelerating. Inflation is the turbocharger. When stocks overshoot on the downside load the boat.
Weekly Jobless Claims Jump, to 248,000. The weird thing is that the economic data says the opposite, that the economy is strengthening. Expect flip-flopping data and markets all year.
US GDP Jumped by 6.9% in Q4, well above estimates. Consumers are spending like drunken sailors. Eventually, the stock market will notice this, but not before we see lower lows first.
Gold Catches a Bid, off the back of the unrelenting Ukraine crisis. This may continue as a drip for months. Watch it collapse when peace is declared.
Existing Home Sales Jump 6.7%, to 6.5 million units, far better than expected. Inventory is down to yet another record low of 16.5%, an incredibly short 1.6-month supply. The Median Home Price has risen to $350,300, with the bulk of sales on the high end. Million-dollar plus homes are up 39% YOY.
Bond Yields Dive to a 1.93% Yield after failing at 2.05%. There is another nice (TLT) put spread setting up here. Let’s see if war breaks out over the weekend. The threats continue.
My Ten-Year View
When we come out the other side of pandemic, we will be perfectly poised to launch into my new American Golden Age, or the next Roaring Twenties. With interest rates still at zero, oil cheap, there will be no reason not to. The Dow Average will rise by 800% to 240,000 or more in the coming decade. The American coming out the other side of the pandemic will be far more efficient and profitable than the old. Dow 240,000 here we come!
With seven options positions expiring at max profit on Friday, my February month-to-date performance rocketed to a blistering 10.37%. My 2022 year-to-date performance has exploded to an unbelievable 24.90%. The Dow Average is down -7.9% so far in 2022. It is the great outperformance on an index since Mad Hedge Fund Trader started 14 years ago.
With 30 trade alerts issued so far in 2022, there was too much going on to describe here. Check your inboxes.
That brings my 13-year total return to 537.46%, some 2.00 times the S&P 500 (SPX) over the same period. My average annualized return has ratcheted up to 44.17% for the first time. How long it will keep rising I have no idea, but as long as it is, I’m not complaining. When you’re hot, you have to be maximum aggressive. That’s me to a tee.
We need to keep an eye on the number of US Coronavirus cases at 78.5 million, down 67% from the January peak, and deaths close to 936,000, off 20% in two weeks, which you can find here.
On Monday, February 21 markets are closed for Presidents Day.
On Tuesday, February 22 at 8:30 AM, the S&P Case Shiller National Home Price Index for December is announced.
On Wednesday, February 23 at 1:30 PM, API Crude Oil Stocks are released.
On Thursday, February 24 at 8:30 AM, Weekly Jobless Claims are published. The second estimate for Q4 GDP is also disclosed.
On Friday, February 25 at 7:00 AM, Personal Income & Spending for January is printed. At 2:00 PM, the Baker Hughes Oil Rig Count is out.
As for me, in the seventies, Air America was not too choosy about who flew their airplanes at the end of the Vietnam War. If you were willing to get behind the stick and didn’t ask too many questions, you were hired.
They didn’t bother with niceties like pilot licenses, medicals, or passports. On some of their missions, the survival rate was less than 50% and there was no retirement plan. The only way to ignore the ratatatat of bullets stitching your aluminum airframe was to turn the volume up on your headphones.
Felix (no last name) taught me to fly straight and level so he could find out where we were on the map. We went out and got drunk on cheap Mekong Whiskey after every mission just to settle our nerves. I still remember the hangovers.
When I moved to London to set up Morgan Stanley’s international trading desk in the eighties, the English had other ideas about who was allowed to fly airplanes. Julie Fisher at the London School of Flying got me my basic British pilot’s license.
If my radio went out, I learned to land by flare gun and navigate by sextant. She also taught me to land at night on a grass field guided by a single red lensed flashlight. For fun, we used to fly across the channel and land at Le Touquet, taxiing over the rails for the old V-1 launching pads.
A retired Battle of Britain Spitfire pilot named Captain John Schooling taught me advanced flying techniques and aerobatics in an old 1949 RAF Chipmunk. I learned barrel rolls, loops, chandelles, whip stalls, wingovers, and Immelmann turns, everything a WWII fighter pilot needed to know.
John was a famed RAF fighter ace. Once he got shot down by a Messerschmitt 109, parachuted to safety, took a taxi back to his field, jumped into his friend’s Spit, and shot down another German. Every lesson ended with a pint of beer at the pub at the end of the runway. John paid me the ultimate compliment, calling me “a natural stick and rudder man,” no pun intended.
John believed in tirelessly practicing engine-off landings. His favorite trick was to reach down and shut off the fuel, telling me that a Messerschmitt had just shot out my engine and to land the plane. When we got within 200 feet of a good landing, he turned the fuel back on and the engine coughed back to life. We practiced this more than 200 times.
When I moved back to the US in the early nineties, it was time to go full instrument in order to get my commercial and military certifications. Emmy Michaelson nursed me through that ordeal. After 50 hours flying blindfolded in a cockpit, you get very close with someone.
Then came flight test day. Emmy gave me the grim news that I had been assigned to “One Engine Larry” the most notorious FAA examiner in Northern California. Like many military flight instructors, Larry believed that no one should be allowed to fly unless they were perfect.
We headed out to the Marin County coast in an old twin-engine Beechcraft Duchess, me under my hood. Suddenly, Larry shut the fuel off, told me my engines failed, and that I had to land the plane. I found a cow pasture aligned with the wind and made a perfect approach. Then he asked, “How did you do that?” I told him. He said, “Do it again” and I did. Then he ordered me back to base. He signed me off on my multi-engine and instrument ratings as soon as we landed. Emmy was thrilled.
I now have to keep my many licenses valid by completing three takeoffs and landings every three months. I usually take my kids and make a day of it, letting them take turns flying the plane straight and level.
On my fourth landing, I warn my girls that I’m shutting the engine off at 2,000 feet. They cry “No dad, don’t.” I do it anyway, coasting in bang on the numbers every time.
A lifetime of flight instruction teaches you not only how to fly, but how to live as well. It makes you who you are. Thus, my insistence on absolute accuracy, precision, risk management, and probability analysis. I live my life by endless checklists, both short and long term. I am the ultimate planner and I have a never-ending obsession with the weather.
It passes down to your kids as well.
Julie became one of the first female British Airways pilots, got married, and had kids. John passed on to his greater reward many years ago. I don’t think there are any surviving Battle of Britain pilots left. Emmy was an early female hire as United pilot. She married another United pilot and was eventually promoted to full captain. I know because I ran into them in an elevator at San Francisco airport ten years ago, four captain’s bars adorning her uniform.
Flying is in my blood now and I’ll keep flying for life. I can now fly anything anywhere and am the backup pilot on several WWII aircraft including the B-17, B-24, and B-25 bombers and the P-51 Mustang fighter.
Over the years, I have also contributed to the restoration of a true Battle of Britain Spitfire, and this summer I’ll be taking the controls at the Red Hill Aerodrome for the first time.
Captain John Schooling would be proud.
Stay Healthy.
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
Captain John Schooling and His RAF 1949 Chipmunk
A Mitchell B-25 Bomber
A 1932 De Havilland Tiger Moth
Flying a P-51 Mustang
The Next Generation
Global Market Comments
February 18, 2022
Fiat Lux
Featured Trades:
(FEBRUARY 16 BIWEEKLY STRATEGY WEBINAR Q&A),
(NVDA), (MSFT), (VIX), (ROM), (TSLA), (GOOGL), (TLT), (TBT), (IWM), (QQQ), (FCX)
Below please find subscribers’ Q&A for the February 16 Mad Hedge Fund Trader Global Strategy Webinar broadcast from Incline Village, Nevada.
Q: Is it a mistake to try to be nimble with the ProShares UltraShort 20+ Year Treasury ETF (TBT), or is it better just to hold it through the rest of the year?
A: You should do both; have a core long position which you keep through the end of the year, and you also have a second position that you trade. A good example is how I just took profits on the short iShares 20+ Year Treasury bond ETF (TLT) even though it had a month to run because we had 91.67% of the profit in hand. So, when you get way in the money and still have a lot of time duration left, there’s no point in continuing with these put spreads to catch the last 5 or 10% in the position. The risk/reward is no good.
Q: The iShares 20+ Year Treasury bond ETF (TLT) seems washed out.
A: There is a risk of that, which is why I went long the (TLT) $127-$130 March vertical bull call spread. I think even if we get down to $130, it will take us at least a month to get down that far. There will be several short-covering rallies along the way that we can run out the clock with, and I think even my 3/$127-$130 should expire at max profit.
Q: Should we buy puts or spreads?
A: When you get the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) over 30, it’s only because you get a very sharp collapse in stocks, and there you’re looking at very deep in the money call spreads— 10-20% in the money can still make you $1,000 or $2,000 a month. And if you get extreme selloffs with (VIX) up to $40, then you’re really looking for long-term LEAPS, one-year call spreads on your favorite stocks, like Tesla (TSLA), NVIDIA (NVDA), and Microsoft (MSFT), and so on.
Q: Is it time to enter Tesla (TSLA) now?
A: I’m waiting for one more final selloff—if we get that, we could get back into the low 800s or even the 700s in Tesla. That's the figure I’m hanging on for, and that's where you get into Tesla LEAPS because Tesla is clearly expanding beyond just the electric car business. SpaceX is now worth $100 billion dollars, and the boring company could be worth just as much if they get more contracts for building underground mass transit. There is also Solar City to consider plus some other stuff they haven’t even announced yet.
Q: What are your thoughts on Google (GOOGL)?
A: The 20 to 1 split is in the price already. But any selloff and I would go back into there with call spreads because Google is a fantastic company and a legal monopoly which I love owning.
Q: What about the ProShares Ultra Technology ETF (ROM)?
A: Yes, I’m watching very closely. It had a huge dive in January, then made back nearly half its losses. So again, I'm waiting for another dip to go back into (ROM) with lots of leverage.
Q: Do we get Volatility Index (VIX) over $30 within 2 months?
A: Yes, I think we probably will. We’re pretty close to it now; we got up to $26 this morning. So yes, I’d be a buyer of that.
Q: Is a (TLT) $128-$131 call spread for March still ok?
A: Yes, I kind of like that. I don’t think we’ll get down below $131 in four weeks, and at the very least we’ll get one rally of several points, and that’ll be your chance to get out of that position.
Q: Is it too early for (TLT) LEAPS?
A: No, it’s too late for TLT LEAPS. You should have been doing put LEAPS in November, and everybody who did that got profits of nearly 100% on that position. I don’t see a call side LEAPS in TLT for at least 5 to 10 years when interest rates get up over 6% on 10 year US Treasury bonds. We are a long way from a (TLT) call LEAP.
Q: Are we at a Bitcoin bottom?
A: Possibly, 50/50 chance we go back and retest the lows. We’ll just have to see how Bitcoin behaves in a rising interest rates scenario because ever since Bitcoin was invented, interest rates have been falling. Rising rates are a new thing for Bitcoin and no one knows what that will look like.
Q: When will you update your long-term portfolio?
A: Soon; things have been kind of busy issuing 30 trade alerts a month.
Q: How high will the ProShares UltraShort 20+ Year Treasury bond fund (TBT) go?
A: Looking for $26 from current levels, so yes, much higher to go. And we have a double in three months on (TBT) at the $28 level.
Q: If one believes in the war in Ukraine happening soon, what companies or sectors do you invest in for the short term?
A: None; if we actually do get a war, everything gets absolutely slaughtered, and then you’re looking for the buy. And that will be buys in tech especially. I don’t think there’s going to be a war in Ukraine, but the only things that go up in a Ukraine war scenario are energy stocks (USO), oil companies, and so on.
Q: Do you like China EV stocks?
A: No, I don’t. I visited BYD Motors 15 years ago and they just don’t have the technology, the battery lengths are poor, and they tend to catch on fire. They have never been able to reach American quality standards on any of their cars, not only the EVs but also the conventional internal combustion engines as well..
Q: Which index will outperform in the second half, the Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ) or iShares Russell 2000 ETF (IWM)?
A: I vote (QQQ). I think we have a technology-led bull market in the second half, and the Russel will be lagging.
Q: What’s better, copper or copper miners?
A: You always go for the miners like Freeport McMoRan (FCX)—they will outperform the physical metal by at least three or four to one, to the upside. That’s also true with gold miners and other derivative plays; the miners always outperform the metals.
Q: What is a bond vigilante?
A: That is a term we heard from the ‘70s and ‘80s when you would get enormous selling of bonds on even the slightest negative piece of economic data or inflation data. They called the bond traders the bond vigilantes because they just crushed the bond market for the slightest transgression on the inflation/economic front. And they are back, by the way, hugely punishing the market as we have seen ($20 points in two months is a lot of punishment) on even the slightest increase in inflation.
Q: Do you have a yearend price for Freeport McMoRan (FCX)?
A: Over $50—just rallied from $30 in September.
Q: Isn’t inflation wildly understated?
A: Yes, you can find individual items that are up 30 or 50%, but the inflation calculation is actually based on 105 different items, and some of them are going down in price. For example, you had an enormous increase in used car prices in December, but they actually went down last month. So, whenever you get a basket this big, eight groups of 80,000 items, you get smaller moves. As anyone will tell you who trades baskets of stocks against the individual stocks, the same mathematical effect happens in the calculation. And while it is being wildly understated now, it’ll be wildly overstated in a few months when we get back to the 3% level, which I am expecting.
Q: What is your TLT prediction after the next 3 or 4 interest rate hikes?
A: Remember, the interest rate hikes only affect the overnight rate. TLT is a 10 to 20-year basket of bonds, so they don’t trade one for one. We may reach a bottom by the end of the year in the (TLT) somewhere in the $120s, but it’s not going to 100 this year and it’s not going to zero like some people are predicting.
Q: The inflation measure is a joke.
A: Yes, it has always been a joke. Any collection of data among 330 million people is going to be inaccurate, late, and have huge lags—but you trade the data you have, not what you wish you had, and that is the real world. I've been trading economic data for 50 years and that is my conclusion.
Q: Martial Law was declared in Canada— is there anything to trade off of that news?
A: No; even a major international event only gets a stock market reaction of usually one day or two at the most. Whatever’s happening on a bridge in Canada, nobody here really cares.
Q: Are you doing a cruise?
A: Yes, I’m doing a Norwegian cruise. Just go to the lunches section on the madhedgefundtrader.com website, and you can still buy tickets. We would love to have you for lunch on the Queen Victoria, a Norwegian Fjord cruise. We’re coming up to payment time on the tickets.
Q: Will there be earnings disappointment in April?
A: Yes, the year-on-year comparisons are going to be difficult. That will be another problem for the market in the spring in addition to the Fed.
Q: What happens with the FOMC out today at 2:00?
A: It will show a heightened fear of inflation and a greater urgency to raise interest rates.
To watch a replay of this webinar with all the charts, bells, whistles, and classic rock music, just log in to www.madhedgefundtrader.com , go to MY ACCOUNT, click on GLOBAL TRADING DISPATCH, then WEBINARS, and all the webinars from the last ten years are there in all their glory.
Good Luck and Stay Healthy.
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
1932 De Havilland Tiger Moth
Mad Hedge Bitcoin Letter
February 17, 2022
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(ANOTHER 130 MILLION PEOPLE JUMP ON THE CRYPTO WAGON)
(BTC), (AMZN), (GOOGL), (MSFT)
First Turkey and now Ukraine.
Yes, these are two sovereign currencies, the lira and the hryvnia, that have absolutely lost any credibility whatsoever.
We forget that there are many of these banana republics out there that might as well adopt some sort of alternative currency.
El Salvador anointed Bitcoin their national currency and now that isn’t as bizarre as it first seemed.
Americans sometimes forget that the pandemic ripped through emerging nations like a hot knife through butter and there were no stimuli or handouts, let alone handouts for corporations, and there has never been a longer queue for U.S. green cards.
Well, Russia is on Ukraine’s doorstep and the threat of it crowding the Ukraine border means that no foreign capital or investment will penetrate Ukraine for the foreseeable future.
Every Ukrainian under 40 years old is now making a mad dash for higher ground to the European Union or if they can, the United States, United Kingdom, or Canada.
The Ukrainian hryvnia has lost 10% of its value in a few days and this could be a beginning of a much bigger collapse in purchasing power for Ukrainians who don’t leave.
It could trigger a vicious cycle all the way to zero where like a hot potato, Ukrainian citizens try to rid themselves of local currency as fast as possible.
Like I said, there are others out there, pretty much every ex-Soviet republic not in the European Union of the likes of Georgia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Azerbaijan, and Armenia of the South Caucasus.
When you add up the population of the likes of Uzbekistan and such, then that totals roughly 130 million people.
These 130 million people, like El Salvadoreans, would be foolish not to adopt Bitcoin if they can’t secure US dollars.
For people who haven’t traveled to these esoteric places, US dollars are in high demand and hard to find and families hold on to them for dear life.
So if the choices are Bitcoin or worthless paper, then between those two, the decision is rather straightforward.
Ukrainians are slowly coming to the realization that these are their options.
Don’t think that any one of these similar countries is immune to political strife or war either.
Georgia has already given up a sliver of their country to Russia already.
And in an incredible set of events, the Government of Ukraine has passed a law that legalizes Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
The law grants legal status to virtual assets. The law not only grants users the right to operate cryptocurrencies but also defines the clear rights and duties of all market participants.
The Ukraine’s government also approved the law on cloud services as a whole. The bill’s goal is to create conditions for the processing and protection of data when using cloud computing technology, as well as providing cloud services and determining the specifics of public authorities’ use of cloud services, as well as more efficient use of public resources through the introduction of new technologies.
The new law will expedite the entry in Ukraine of the world’s top cloud service providers – Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon Web Services (AMZN), and Google (GOOGL) Cloud – and encourage the construction of data centers.
The Ministry of Digital Development has previously said that it planned to expand the market for “virtual assets.”
Virtual assets are divided into two categories in the draught law: secured and unsecured virtual assets.
A secured VA is an asset that verifies property or non-property rights, such as the right of claim on other objects like stable coins, and is secured by fiat currency, securities, or any sort of offline asset.
All other sorts of cryptocurrencies and crypto-based assets, such as non-stable coins like Bitcoin, non-fungible tokens, and so on, are classified as unsecured VAs.
Therefore, it’s not surprising to find out in the latest data that adoption into Bitcoin and other crypto in Ukraine has skyrocketed.
Non-profit donors looking for donations are also being paid via Bitcoin.
The rapid legislation of course would not have occurred if not for the Russian situation, but either way, adoption is adoption and add another 50 million or so Ukrainians to Bitcoin’s growth story.
Eventually, Africa and South America will join the adoption phase as they also preside over rapidly depreciating fiat currency.
I’m shocked that Argentina hasn’t ventured this way yet, put them down for the next country in the crypto queue.
Even if Bitcoin is suffering a bout of weakness due to exogenous shocks, the long-term price trajectory is well above $100,000.
Global Market Comments
February 15, 2022
Fiat Lux
Featured Trades:
(HOW TO HANDLE THE FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 18 OPTIONS EXPIRATION),
(TLT), (SPY), (BRKB), (TSLA), (MSFT), (AMZN)
Happy and newly enriched followers of the Mad Hedge Fund Trader Alert Service have the good fortune to own a record ten deep in-the-money options positions that expire on Friday, February 18 at the stock market close in three days.
I have to admit that I traded like a Wildman this month, pedal to the metal, and 100% invested. This will take our 2022 year-to-date performance to over 24%. I like to think that is the end result of my 53 years investment in researching trading strategies.
Sometimes overconfidence works.
It is therefore time to explain to the newbies how to best maximize their profits.
These involve the:
Risk On
World is Getting Better
(TLT) 2/$149-$152 put spread 10.00%
(TLT) 2/$147-$150 put spread 10.00%
(TLT) 3/$150-$153 put spread 10.00%
(BRKB) 2/$270-$280 call spread 10.00%
(TSLA) 2/$600-$650 call spread 10.00%
Risk Off
World is Getting Worse
(MSFT) 2/$340-$350 put spread -10.00%
(SPY) 2/$465-$475 put spread -10.00%
(SPY) 3/$470-$480 put spread -10.00%
(AMZN) 2/$3400-$3500 put spread -10.00%
(TLT) 3/$127-$130 call spread -10.00%
Total Net Position 0.00%
Total Aggregate Position 100.00%
Provided that we don’t have another 2,000-point move down in the market in the next three days, these positions should expire at their maximum profit points.
So far, so good.
I’ll do the math for you on our deepest in-the-money position, the Tesla (TSLA) February 18 $600-$650 vertical bull call spread, which 50% in the money from its lower strike price which I almost certainly will run into expiration. Your profit can be calculated as follows:
Profit: $50.00 expiration value - $43.00 cost = $7.00 net profit
(2 contacts X 100 contracts per option X $7.00 profit per option)
= $1,400 or 16.28% in 15 trading days.
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 position to cover your short position, canceling out the total holdings.
The entire profit will be credited to your account on Monday morning February 21 and the margin freed up.
Some firms charge you a modest $10 or $15 fee for performing this service.
If you don’t see the cash show up in your account on Monday, get on the blower immediately and make your broker find it.
Although the expiration process is now supposed to be fully automated, occasionally machines do make mistakes. Better to sort out any confusion before losses ensue.
If you want to wimp out and close the position before the expiration, it may be expensive to do so. You can probably unload them pennies below their maximum expiration value.
Keep in mind that the liquidity in the options market understandably disappears, and the spreads substantially widen, when a security has only hours, or minutes until expiration on Friday, February 18. So, if you plan to exit, do so well before the final expiration at the Friday market close.
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, always. Think of me as your trading guardian angel.
I am going to hang back and wait for good entry points before jumping back in. It’s all about keeping that “Buy low, sell high” thing going.
I’m looking to cherry-pick my new positions going into the next month-end.
Take your winnings and go out and buy yourself a well-earned dinner. Just make sure it’s take-out. I want you to stick around.
Well done, and on to the next trade.
You Can’t Do Enough Research
Global Market Comments
February 14, 2022
Fiat Lux
Featured Trades:
(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, or WELCOME TO WORLD WAR III),
(TLT), (SPY), (MSFT), (AMZN), (BKKB), (AAPL)
The market finally found something worse than inflation to rattle it: WWIII.
I’m not expecting my call-up papers from the Marine Corps anytime soon. After all, there isn’t a war that is about to happen. In any case, if the defense of the nation relies upon me as a pilot, we are in big trouble.
The market clearly thought otherwise last week, when the Dow swooned 1,200 points in two days. The Friday close was a dog’s breakfast.
It gets worse.
The collapse sets up a perfect “head and shoulders” top which the hedge fund community has been gunning for all year. That beckons eventual lows that will finally bring us into decent LEAPS territory, especially if the Volatility Index (VIX) leaps over $40.
Biden actually has a pretty good strategy going in the Ukraine. By announcing the time and date of the Russian invasion in advance, he boxes Putin into a corner, forcing him to put up or shut up.
It's really all one big chess game, with the two countries attempting to each gain maximum security advantages at minimum cost. Putin would love the Ukraine if he could get it. So did Hitler, Napoleon, and Genghis Khan before him.
Biden hopes to make the price so high it’s not worth it. After all, Hitler, Napoleon, and Genghis Khan didn’t come to good endings.
It’s really meaningless to fight this battle when modern national borders are rapidly dissolving anyway. Modern borders are increasingly being drawn by operating systems, apps, and security suites rather than lines on a map.
Of course, bonds were discounting a completely different scenario, that of peace, prosperity, and booming economies that demand more capital at higher interest rates. Fed members are now playing a game of competitive hawkishness, talking interest rates up and bond prices down.
It all sounds like a great short bond environment to me, which is why I have been running a triple short position since the beginning of the year. The best is yet to come.
So we flipped from being long everything in 2021 to short the works in 2022. That’s just the way markets work now. So, if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
Fed Now Pushing a Half-Point Hike, tanking the markets, and could deliver 100 basis points by July. Competitive hawkishness has broken out at the Fed. Looks like a bond short will be the trade of the year. Who knew? (You did).
Core CPI Comes in Hot at 7.5%, the highest since 1982, and hotter than expected. The news finally took bond prices to new multi-year lows and ten-year yields to 2.0%. One-third of this number is rent, which is rising at a record rate. Wages are up an eye-popping 5% YOY. Used car prices were up massively. Stocks took it on the news. It’s going to get worse before it gets better. The chances of a 50-basis point hike in March.
Real Yields Turn Positive, for the first time in a decade, at least for 30-year US treasury bonds. That is the real inflation-adjusted yield for TIPS, or Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities, which now yield 0.08%. Expect real yields to soar from here. Yes, positive returns for bonds at last!
JGB Yields Approach Five Year High, at 0.25%, so will the Bank of Japan be forced to raise rates for the first time in 21 years to come in line with the market. Quantitative Easing is also ending. Gee, do you think zero rates have worked? It's all part of an accelerating trend for more expensive global money.
Pfizer Hauls in $32 Billion From Covid, and another $22 billion for its antiviral Paxlovid. Still, the stock market is a “What have you done for me lately,” and the shares are off 20% since December.
NVIDIA Cancels ARM Purchase, ending its $66 billion attempt to buy market share. UK regulatory opposition was the issue. Buy (NVDA) on dips. The best-run company in the market has just suffered a 40% selloff.
GM to Ramp Up EV Production Sixfold This Year. Electric Escalade SUVs and trucks are the top priority. But while saying is one thing, doing is another. No mention has been made of how they will obtain the extra chips and batteries. Avoid (GM) a never-ending font of disappointment.
Weekly Jobless Claims Prints at 223,000, well above the post-pandemic low of 188,000 in December. Continuing Claims post at 1,621,000.
Foreclosures are Soaring now that the pandemic relief is over. They were up 29% in January, double YOY levels. Florida leads in this troubled category. The numbers would be higher save for enormous rises in home prices which permit cash out refis.
My Ten-Year View
When we come out the other side of pandemic, we will be perfectly poised to launch into my new American Golden Age, or the next Roaring Twenties. With interest rates still at zero, oil cheap, there will be no reason not to. The Dow Average will rise by 800% to 240,000 or more in the coming decade. The American coming out the other side of the pandemic will be far more efficient and profitable than the old. Dow 240,000 here we come!
With near record volatility fading fast, my February month to date performance rocketed to a blistering 8.71% in only nine days. My 2022 year-to-date performance has exploded to an unbelievable 23.30%. The Dow Average is down -4.3% so far in 2022. It is the great outperformance on an index since Mad Hedge Fund Trader started 14 years ago.
With 30 trade alerts issued so far in 2022, there was too much going on to describe here. Check your inboxes.
That brings my 13-year total return to 535.86%, some 2.00 times the S&P 500 (SPX) over the same period. My average annualized return has ratcheted up to 44.04% for the first time. How long it will keep rising I have no idea, but as long as it is, I’m not complaining. When you’re hot, you have to be maximum aggressive.
We need to keep an eye on the number of US Coronavirus cases at 78 million and rising quickly and deaths topping 919,000, which you can find here.
On Monday, February 14 at 8:00 AM EST, US Consumer Inflation Expectations are out.
On Tuesday, February 15 at 8:30 AM, the New York Empire State Manufacturing Index is printed.
On Wednesday, February 16 at 8:30 AM, US Retail Sales for January are announced.
On Thursday, February 17 at 8:30 AM, Weekly Jobless Claims are published. Housing Starts and Building Permits for January are announced.
On Friday, February 18 at 7:00 AM, Existing Home Sales for January are disclosed. At 2:00 PM, the Baker Hughes Oil Rig Count are out.
As for me, I made the most unlikely of entries into journalism 50 years ago, thanks to basketball, Mensa, and the kindness of complete strangers.
Struggling as a part-time English teacher in Tokyo for Toyota, Sony, and Meiji Shipping, I noticed one day in the Japan Times an ad for a Mensa meeting, the organization for geniuses.
I joined and, after a few meetings, was invited to give a presentation on the subject of my choice at the next meeting. Since I had just obtained a degree in Biochemistry from UCLA, I spoke on the effects of THC (tetra hydro cannabinol) on the human brain. The meeting was exceptionally well attended by detectives from the Tokyo Police Department, as THC was then highly illegal.
At the end of the meeting, famed Australian journalist Murray Sayle approached me and said he could get me into the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan. The big attraction was access to the Club’s substantial English language library.
Except for a few well-worn Playboy magazines coming out of the local US Air Force bases, there were almost no English language publications in Japan in those days.
So I joined as a corporate member at 22, the youngest of the 2,000-man club, eating lunch daily with the foreign correspondents on the 20th floor of the Yurakcho Denki Building in central Tokyo. It was just across the street from General Douglas MacArthur’s WWII occupation headquarters.
Many correspondents were holdovers from WWII and had fought their way to Japan on the long island-hopping campaign. Once in Tokyo, they never left, were treated like visiting royalty, paid well, and besieged by beautiful women.
At 6’4” it was only weeks before I was recruited for the club’s basketball team. We played the team from the US Embassy Marine Corps guard, which regularly kicked our butts every week. After all, they had nothing to do all day but play basketball. But they also gave us access to the Tokyo PX where you could get a bottle of Johnny Walker Red for $3.00, versus the local retail price of $100.00.
I managed to eventually get a job at Dai Nana Securities to teach English to the sales staff there. The first oil shock had just taken place and the sole buyers of shares in the world were all in the Middle East.
After two weeks of trying, I met with the president of the company, Mr. Saito, and told him his staff would never learn English. They just lacked the language gene. But if he taught me the stock business, I would sell the shares for him.
He said OK.
Thus, I ensued on a crash course on securities analysis, relying heavily on the firm’s only copies of the 1934 book, Securities Analysis by Benjamin Graham, and his 1949 tome, The Intelligent Investor. I still have a copy of the first research report I wrote on electric tool maker Makita.
It wasn’t long before I became the top salesman at Dai Nana, eventually selling up to 5% holdings in the top 200 Japanese companies to the Saudi Arabia Monetary Authority, the Kuwait Investment Authority, and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.
Then the stock market crashed. I lost my job. So, I started asking around the Press Club if anyone had any work. I was broke and nearly homeless.
At the time, most of the correspondents had just returned from covering the Vietnam War. In Japan, they wanted to cover politics, geisha girls, and Emperor Hirohito. Business was at the very bottom of the list. Besides, no one cared what happened in Japan anyway.
It turned out that all the members of the Press Club basketball team were business journalists. There was Mike Tharpe from the Wall Street Journal, Tracy Dalby from the New York Times, and Richard Hanson from the Associated Press, all NCAA college athletes.
Then one team member, The Economist correspondent, Doug Ramsey, asked me if I could write a story about the Japanese steel industry, which was then aggressively dumping product in the US, killing American jobs and creating a political firestorm. Using my stock market contacts, I spent a week diligently researching the subject.
The editors in London loved the story and said they’d take two a week at $75 each. Then the Financial Times heard about me and said they’d also take two a week. All of a sudden, I had a full-time job paying the princely sum of $1,200 a month!
I eventually built up a global syndicate of 40 business publications in ten countries. By 26, I was earning $100,000 a year and published several books. At my peak I accounted for about half of all business news coming out of Japan, along with stringer jobs with the British Broadcasting Corp. in London and NBC in New York.
This was all from a person whose only “C” in college was in English. Officially, I didn’t know how to write back then.
Officially, I still don’t.
Stay Healthy,
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
