Those who lived through the cataclysmic ?flash crash? that occurred precisely at 2:45 pm EST on May 6, 2010, have been dreading a replay ever since. Their worst nightmares may soon be realized.
That is when the Dow Index (INDU) dropped a gob smacking 650 points in minutes, wiping out nearly $1 trillion in market capitalization. On that day, some ETF?s saw intraday declines of an eye popping 75% before recovering. A flurry of litigation ensued where many sought to break trades as much as 99% down from the last indication, some successfully.
The true reasons for the crash are still a matter of contentious debate. Many see a smoking gun in the hands of the high frequency traders who account for so much of the daily trading volume. But I happen to know that many of these guys pulled the plugs on their machines and went flat as soon as the big move started.
I think that it was the obvious result of too many people following similar models in markets with declining liquidity. The ease of instant execution through the Internet was another contributing factor. It also could be a symptom of no growth economies and lost decades in the stock market. The increasing short-term orientation of many money managers also played a hand.
Mathematicians who follow chaos theory and ?long tail events? known as ?black swans? argue that the flash crash was not only inevitable, it was predictable. They are also saying that the next one could be far worse.
Since then we have suffered several mini flash crashes. These include the recent $200 collapse in gold, a $5 plunge in silver, a five-cent gyration in the Euro, and a ten-cent gap in the Swiss franc. Notice that these ?flash? events only happen on the downside, and that we don?t have flash melt ups.
In many respects, traders and portfolio managers dodged a bullet on that fateful day. What if it had happened going into the close? Then assets would have been marked to market less $1 trillion, and the Asian openings that followed hours later would have been horrific. This could have triggered a series of rolling flash crashes around the world from time zone to time zone that would have caused several trillion more in losses. Those losses eventually did happen, but they were spread over several more months at a liquidation rate that could be absorbed by the markets.
Regulators claim that they have reduced the risks of a flash crash through the enforcement of daily trading limits across a broader range of financial instruments. I am not so sure. During a real panic, preventing people from unloading risk is almost an impossible feat. I know because I have lived through many of them.
In the meantime, the S&P 500 continues its inexorable rise well above the exact point at which the last flash crash started, at 1,160. We are now 55% above that last flash point. Avoid, like the plague, shorting leveraged naked puts on anything. It is the best way to wipe out your entire equity that I know of.
Like me, you are probably too old to start life over again with a job at McDonald?s, and they probably would take you anyway.
https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/You-Tube.jpg396507Mad Hedge Fund Traderhttps://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.pngMad Hedge Fund Trader2013-11-21 11:45:492013-11-21 11:45:49The Flash Crash Risk is Rising
I often use my own profit and loss statement as a leading market indicator. Whenever I am blessed with a windfall profit, it is frequently time to sell. On those rare occasions when I take a big hit, it is invariably time to buy.
This is one of those times.
Since November 1, the Trade Alert service of the Mad Hedge Fund Trader has earned a white-hot 12.12%, taking my year to date return up to 56.62%. The last 19 consecutive Trade Alerts have been profitable.
Performance bursts like this occur, not because I have suddenly gotten a lot smarter. If anything, my advanced age assures that I am headed in the opposite direction on that front. It is far more likely that upward spikes in my P&L happen because the market is getting overheated, at least for the short term.
So I think that it is time to take my foot off the accelerator, cut back and neutralize my model trading portfolio, and sit down and smell the turkey. In any case, with 43 Trade Alerts going out this month, I am running the risk of overtrading.
It is very impressive to see how fast the options markets are crushing implied volatility. This means the market doesn?t think much is going to happen over the next few weeks. The stock market has been up for the last seven weeks in a row, a rare event. Portfolio managers are bathing in once unimagined riches and have visions of bonus checks dancing in their eyes.
This is all a nice set up for 3%-4% Thanksgiving mini correction. The market is now wildly overbought on a short-term basis, and I can?t be the only one exhausted from the sheer volume and intensity of the recent market action.
That is why I knocked out two short positions today in the form of the SPDR S&P 500 (SPY) December, 2013 $183-$186 bear put spread and a the Russell 2000 iShares (IWM) December $113-$116 bear put spread. It?s not a huge bearish bet, just a modest one. And these both take advantage of the fact that market volatility will probably die a slow death going into the holidays.
I am going to hang on to my other long positions, since they are so far in the money that the safety cushion to my breakeven point is large.
Apple (AAPL) is moving into its peak earnings period. Citibank (C) is surfing the wave of money pouring into long neglected financials. Ditto for the Industrials ETF (XLI). The Japanese yen (FXY) will probably break to new lows for the year in coming weeks, so I am looking to add on any strength. Bonds (TLT) are trading like the life has been sucked out of them, so the short side is the correct posture there.
Whatever pause in the market action we get will be a brief one. Take a look at the chart below put together by my friends at Business Insider. Despite all the bubble talk by the clueless media, we are in fact still at the bottom of the range for the S&P 500 forward 12-month PE ratios for the past 15 years.
Assume that corporate earnings rise 10% a year for the next four years. Then assume that earnings multiples also rise by 10% a year, taking us back up to the 22 times found at the top of the 15 year multiple range. That gets the (SPX) up to 3,732 by the end of 2017, a near double from today?s 1,790.
Not only has 2013 been a great year, so will 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017. We are in the midst of a new Golden Age of equity investment.
https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Bathtub-Girl-Money.jpg259575Mad Hedge Fund Traderhttps://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.pngMad Hedge Fund Trader2013-11-20 01:05:282013-11-20 01:05:28The Market Takes a Break
Today, many followers of the Mad Hedge Fund Trader?sTrade Alert service have up to eight November option spreads expiring at their maximum potential profit.
My strategy of taking advantage of the short November expiration calendar and betting that the markets stay in narrow ranges turned out to be wildly successful. At this stage I am batting eight for eight. If these all work, then I will have issued 15 consecutive profitable Trade Alerts since October, something most hedge fund managers would die for at this time of the year.
I have already taken profits on five of my November positions, but judging from the email traffic, many of you are hanging on to the bitter end and have asked me how to handle these.
It?s really easy. You don?t have to do anything. Nada, Squat.
Trading in the underlying ceases today, Friday, November 15 at 4:00 PM EST. The contracts legally expire on Saturday night, November 16. The cash profit is then credited to your account on Monday, November 18, the margin freed up, and the position disappears into thin air.
Only the (SPY) November 2013 $180-$183 bear put spread is giving us a run for our money. As I write this, the (SPY) is trading at$179.27, and we are a mere 73 cents in the money on the $180 puts that we are short.
If the (SPY) closes on Friday over $180, then you will be short 100 shares for every contract of the November $180 puts that you are short. Your long position in the November, $183 puts expired on Friday, so you will be naked short. This is not a position you want to have.
It is always best to cover this at the opening on Monday morning to limit your losses and keep your risk from running away. You may also not have sufficient margin to run a naked short, so If you don?t liquidate, your broker will, probably at a worse price.
Don?t try to trade a leveraged short (SPY) position in a bull market. It?s probably beyond your pay grade, and I doubt you?ll sleep at night.
I?m betting that the (SPY) will close on Friday below $180, so I am hanging on to my position. With only one single day to expiration, it is a coin toss what will happen. But with the markets this sluggish, if I am wrong, it will only be by pennies. Quite honestly, being up 56% on the year I don?t mind taking a gamble here.
I know all of this sounds very complicated to the beginners among you. Don?t worry, this all becomes second nature after you?ve done the first few thousand of these.
If you have any doubts, call your broker and they will tell you what to do, especially the part about you needing to do a thousand more trades.? Here, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Then it?s on to the next trade.
In the meantime, take your winnings and plan your winter Caribbean holiday with your significant other. Or plan a ski vacation at Incline Village in Nevada. They?ve already had two nice dumps of snow. If you do, drop me a line and I?ll take you out for coffee at Starbucks.
https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Expiring-TA-Nov.-Opt..jpg772555Mad Hedge Fund Traderhttps://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.pngMad Hedge Fund Trader2013-11-15 01:05:072013-11-15 01:05:07Watching the Cash Roll In
The Trade Alert service of the Mad Hedge Fund Trader has posted a new all time high in performance, taking in 46.05% so far in 2013. The three-year return is an eye popping 101.7%, taking the averaged annualized return to 35%. That compares to a far more modest increase for the Dow Average during the same period of 19%.
This has been the profit since the groundbreaking trade mentoring service was launched 35 months ago. These numbers place me at the absolute apex of all hedge fund managers, where the year to date gains have been a far more pedestrian 3%.
These numbers come off the back of a blistering week in the market where I added 5% in value to my model-trading portfolio. I called the top in the bond market on Monday, shorted the Treasury bond ETF (TLT), and bought the short Treasury ETF (TBT). Prices then collapsed, taking the ten-year Treasury bond yield from 2.47% to 2.63%.
I then pegged the top of the Euro (FXE) against the dollar, betting that the European Central Bank would have to cut interest rates to head off another recession. Since then, the beleaguered continental currency has plunged from $1.3700 to $1.3350 to the buck.
I then bet that the stock market would enter another tedious sideways correction going into the Thanksgiving holidays. I bought an in the money put spread on the S&P 500, and then bracketed the index through buying an in the money call spread.
Carving out the 2013 trades alone, 57 out of 71 have made money, a success rate of 80%. It is a track record that most big hedge funds would kill for.
This performance was only made possible by correctly calling the near term direction of stocks, bonds, foreign currencies, energy, precious metals and the agricultural products. It all sounds easy, until you try it.
My esteemed colleague, Mad Day Trader Jim Parker, has also been coining it. He caught a spike up in the volatility index (VIX) by both lapels. He also was a major player on the short side in bonds.
The coming winter promises to deliver a harvest of new trading opportunities. The big driver will be a global synchronized recovery that promises to drive markets into the stratosphere in 2014. The Trade Alerts should be coming hot and heavy.
Global Trading Dispatch, my highly innovative and successful trade-mentoring program, earned a net return for readers of 40.17% in 2011 and 14.87% in 2012. The service includes my Trade Alert Service and my daily newsletter, the Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader. You also get a real-time trading portfolio, an enormous trading idea database, and live biweekly strategy webinars, order?Global Trading Dispatch PRO?adds Jim Parker?s?Mad Day Trader?service.
To subscribe, please go to my website at www.madhedgefundtrader.com, find the ?Global Trading Dispatch? or "Mad Hedge Fund Trader PRO" box on the right, and click on the blue ?SUBSCRIBE NOW? button.
https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/TA-Performance-YTD.jpg699490Mad Hedge Fund Traderhttps://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.pngMad Hedge Fund Trader2013-11-08 10:10:562013-11-08 10:10:56Mad Hedge Fund Trader Blasts to new All Time High
So much BS is flying about over the Obamacare issue that I can?t resist the temptation to put in my two cents worth.
There was no chance this was going to work on day one, and I warned senior administration officials as much on many different occasions. Even the Massachusetts health care plan only saw 100 sign ups in the first month, and it was supported by both parties.
The fatal flaw? They believed the website developer, which anyone who runs on online business, such as myself, will tell you, is a great way to ruin your life.
The truly shocking revelation is that the lead development contract was handed out to a Canadian company. Hey, we out here in Silicon Valley have web development companies! One wonders why the government didn?t hand the whole project over to Google.
While the administration has applauded the millions who rushed to sign up in the early days, I believe that the headline we will see in six months or a year is that almost of them were already sick and uninsured, with diabetes, hypertension, or even cancer. Why the rush?
The government is essentially attempting to create 50 Amazon?s overnight with the many state insurance exchanges. It took Amazon, itself, 20 years to create just one Amazon, and that?s with my old friend, the brilliant Jeff Bezos, calling the shots and taking huge risks.
Having worked with the US military for 40 years, I can tell you that the government never throws anything away, not old tanks, old fighters, old weapons, and yes, old software. I can?t tell you how many times I jumped into a Navy or Marine cockpit, looked at the instrument panel, and said to myself ?You?ve got to be kidding. This thing belongs in a museum.?
For example, the B-52 Stratofortress intercontinental bomber, which was first designed in 1946 and built in 1952, is not scheduled for retirement until 2050, when it will be nearly 100 years old. Thank goodness for preventative maintenance!
So it is no surprise then to hear that the root of Obamacare?s software problems lies with its inter platform communication. ?Some of the software is brand new, some is 10 years old, and some 20 years old, and custom written by programmers who are probably dead by now. But it all has to talk to each other to function. Good luck with that!
Health care accounts for 12% of our GDP, or about $2 trillion, and employs about 18 million people. That amount of money generates gargantuan fees for lobbyists to maintain the gravy train for the private companies who run the system. This is an industry that has been sheltered from competition until now, which is why costs have been running away for 30 years.
As a result, virtually all information about Obamacare disseminated by the media is inaccurate.? You see kids being interviewed on the street asked how much more they will have to spend on Obamacare compared to no coverage at all, and the figure comes to about $2,500 a year.
This is for kids who make $30,000-$40,000 a year. It is a big hit to be sure. But no one asks what will happen if they get hit by a car, or fall off their skateboards. That?s because there is only one answer: go to county hospital, and then file for bankruptcy. Still, most will end up paying the first year fine, which is $85.
This week?s talking point, manufactured by political consultants working in ill lit rooms for unknown companies funded by anonymous donors, is about the millions of cancellation letters that have been sent out by insurance companies individual alarmed private policyholders. I have read a few of these letters.
It turns out that the insured in question had bargain basement policies that really didn?t cover them for anything. They don?t find this out until they try to make a claim, which then gets denied. By setting new, higher standards to fit in the round holes of the public exchanges, the government is forcing the providers to raise the quality of care or quit the business, which they are doing in droves. Somehow, Obama was supposed to know they were going to do this when the law was written five years ago.
The policyholders don?t know this because they have never read their own policies, and are unaware of what the government plan offers. They are having to comparative shop for health care for the first time in their lives, and they don?t like it. Most just paid up for the annual price increases without question.
The alternative, of course, is to then go out and get an Obamacare policy, which offers more care at a cheaper price than these cancelled policies. Yes, it is true that polices in rural constituencies may cost more. But that?s as it should be. It always costs more to provide service in the middle of nowhere than it a city.
There has been a lot of hand wringing about the higher cost of Obamacare policies. Everyone I have talked to here in California is seeing a savings of about 50%. A part time schoolteacher friend of mine was just given notice that her Blue Cross policy was doubling from $200 to $400 a month. She then went to https://www.healthcare.gov and got a better, more comprehensive policy for $220 a month.
Finally, I have had no insurance for six years. I loyally paid $500 a month into Blue Cross for one of their high-end policies for 20 years. When I shifted coverage from one of my companies to another to get a tax benefit, I was told I had to file as a new applicant. What was my new rate? $3,500 a month. So I asked to restore my old coverage. Blue Cross said no, because I had pre existing conditions. What was my pre existing condition? I was then a 55-year-old white male.
So I called around to find out what my health care actually cost. A broken leg ran $50,000, while a heart attack was $250,000. But if I paid cash, they would cut the bill by half. So I told Blue Cross to get lost. My total health care costs have run about $500 a year since then, mostly for bandaging my sore feet from 50 miles a week of mountainous backpacking and an annual commercial pilot?s physical. I reckon that I am one heart attack ahead of the game by now.
Now Obamacare is requiring me to get health insurance once again. If I don?t sign up, the fine is 1% of my gross income in the first year, and 2.5% in the second. Oops! Don?t want to go there! I?d end up buying the government a new hospital every year. So I signed up for Obamacare. Their lowest level ?Bronze? plan will cost me $235 a month. That I can handle.
The Affordable Health Care Act will probably bring more positive changes to the US economy since the slaves were freed in 1863. As with Thomas Edison?s introduction of electricity, Steve Job?s personal computer, and Tim Berners-Lee?s World Wide Web, its impact will be so broad that it is impossible to predict the ultimate impact.
For sure, it will allow US companies to get out of the health care business once and for all, which has left them at a globally competitive disadvantage for decades. This is why Fortune 500 CEO?s have been conspicuously mum on the issue.
You can bet that the next time your firm has a bad quarter, they will cancel your Cadillac plan to cut costs, boost profits, give you the https://www.healthcare.gov website address, and say ?Good Luck? (click here to see if you can open it. You should).
In any case, the premiums on company provided plans costing more than $10,000 a year are now taxable as ordinary income. I know from my own experience that investment bank and oil major plans cost over $25,000. So goodbye to another tax free benefit.
There will be other momentous changes. Innovation and streamlining of the health care industry is accelerating at an exponential pace as companies, spurred on by competition for the first time, rise to the challenge. We, as the consumers will only benefit, with lower costs for a higher quality product.
The new plan will create 2 million new jobs, and add 0.5% a year to US GDP growth. That assumes that the same number of people are used to provide care that we currently see, or one health care provider for every 15 people.
The great misperception about Obamacare is that it is government provided health care. It has not taken over the hospitals and required doctors to go to work for it, as has been the case in Europe. The government is only facilitating the exchanges, much as it has already done for the stock and commodity exchanges through the SEC and the CFTC, and then paying for the poorest participants.
If you took the name ?Obama? out of Obamacare, you would think that it was a program designed by the Republican Party. Free market capitalism, competition, and open exchanges are supposed to be what they are all about. Obama is only giving them what they have been asking for during the last 30 years, and was already implemented by a Republican governor in Massachusetts, Mitt Romney. Maybe if it were called Obamacare on the coasts, and ?Tea Party Care? or ?Cruz Care? in the Midwest and in Texas it would be less controversial.
Every industrialized country already has national health care. They have been able to limit the growth of health care?s share of their economy to only 8% of GDP, compared to our 12%, but enjoy life spans 5-10 years longer. They had the wisdom to do it when it was cheap in the late 1940?s and early 1950?s.
Unfortunately, the US suffered from fears of a communist takeover then and was undergoing the McCarthy hearings, so there was no chance of adopting socialized medicine. We are supposed to be the smartest people in the world, so we have a better shot at making this work than anyone.
There is a huge investment story here. The health care industry is about to get 30-40 million more customers with government guaranteed payments. This is one of the best free lunches granted to any industry in decades and will be great for business. This is why I have been recommending the Health Care Select SPDR ETF (XLV) since the summer, recently one of the market?s top performing sectors.
Anyone who knows anything about the mathematics of insurance exchanges, such as Lloyds of London, already knows that Obamacare is going to work. Yes, it is possible to insure more people for less cost with the per capita burden carried by a greater number of people. This is why insurance is one of the oldest forms of commerce, originating in London in the mid 17th century, back when they still had to deal with the black plague.
Competition should reign in health care costs. As it matures in a decade or so, Obamacare will become actuarially sound and cost the government nothing. The payoff will be lower overheads and higher profits for US corporations. This is probably what the stock market is trying to tell us by going up almost every day. Since the Obamacare launch on October 1, stock S&P 500 (SPY) has tacked on an astonishing 5.5%, in what is historically a terrible month for stocks.
Obamacare distills down individual policies to plain vanilla securities, which can be traded like stocks, sucking in capital at market prices, much like the derivatives markets do today. You can bet that Wall Street will soon get in on the act as well. They will rapidly introduce hedging strategies, customized securitizations, and even ETF?s, so risks can be laid off here and abroad, creating new profit streams. In a decade the health insurance markets will become unrecognizable and far more efficient than they are today.
I don?t side with either party on this issue. A pox on both their houses. I?m on my side first, then your side, as a paying reader. Hence, this analysis. Overall, the plan is brilliant.
In fact, I wish I had thought of it first.
Bitch all you want about Obamacare, but it?s here to stay. In the meantime, I?m going to make hay why the sun shines, and stay healthy.
https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Obamacare-site.jpg374566Mad Hedge Fund Traderhttps://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.pngMad Hedge Fund Trader2013-10-31 09:05:342013-10-31 09:05:34My Take on Obamacare
After 16 days of high drama, bluster, and handwringing, the Great Washington Shutdown of 2013 is finally over. President Obama held fast and won. The Republicans kept changing their goals by the day and lost.
But what we got was anything but a resolution. The next shutdown is now scheduled for January 15, and the Treasury bond default has been pushed back to March, 2014.
The big winners in all of this have been stock investors. In the wake of the midnight deal, the S&P 500 blasted through to a new all time high. Those who called Republican bluff to crash the economy if Obamacare wasn?t ditched were richly rewarded.
The world was hoping for a Washington induced 10% sell off in shares so they could buy more. In the end, they only got a 4.6% dip, and were forced to chase for the umpteenth time this year. It all has the hallmark of a market that seriously wants to go higher.
So are we going to have to endure all of this again in the New Year?
I doubt it. The Republicans have been severely chastened and are unlikely to push their luck so far next time. Their standing in opinion polls has fallen to all time lows. According to Arizona Senator John McCain, ?we are now down to only paid staff and close family members.? The Democrats have been rewarded for standing fast, and therefore will continue to do so. Missing here is the detonator basis for another freeze in government spending.
The market may be so strong in January that investors may not even notice further antics in our nation?s capitol. Individuals and institutions are still massively underweight equities. The great rotation out of bonds into stocks never really happened this year. Instead, investors sold bonds, but moved the money into cash. Next year, the Great Rotation may really begin in earnest.
This presages a tidal wave of capital flows into stock in the New Year, which could run all the way until March. Expect a strong December, as traders try to front run this move. Extra juice will come from the Federal Reserve, which now has to postpone any taper for another 6-9 months, thanks to the economic slowdown induced by the shutdown. It seems that Ben Bernanke saw it all coming.
All of this makes my yearend target for the S&P 500 of 1,780 a chip shot. It also makes 2014 look pretty good, when I think the index could possibly run up to 2,000.
https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Arm-Wrestling.jpg334456Mad Hedge Fund Traderhttps://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.pngMad Hedge Fund Trader2013-10-18 01:05:182013-10-18 01:05:18The Shutdown is Over?.For Now
If it hasn?t happened by today, then it is no more than a week away. The deep discount suffered by American stocks is about to go away. Thanks to the manufactured uncertainty emanating from the nation?s capital created by the government shutdown, stocks have been selling at a 10% or more discount to where they should be.
As things stand, the shutdown is chopping about 1/8% a week from America?s GDP growth. If it runs for another week, it will add up to a 0.25%. What economists haven?t considered in these figures is the additional 0.25% loss that will come from a restart of the government. People are so afraid of the shocking cessation of many government services that they are cleaning out ATM?s, forcing the banks to maintain higher than normal cash levels.
The 2013 Federal budget provides for $3.8 trillion in government spending out of a $16.5 trillion GDP, some 23%. I tried to get more precise figures by clicking the link for the Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis website (http://www.bea.gov/index.htm ), and was greeted by the closest thing you can imagine for a middle fingered salute. You just don?t snap your fingers and expect a quarter of the economy to sprint out of the blocks.
There is another cost to consider. All government statistics have been rendered meaningless for the rest of the year. Even if the government restarts tomorrow, aberrations in the data will plague us well into next year, making economic forecasts more difficult and less meaningful than usual. This is when the moving averages for data series will really earn their pay.
My political theory for the past three years has been that the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party will act unimaginably stupid, dragging governance to new lows, wreaking the maximum amount of damage possible. They feel that if they can?t own the government, they must break it.
Gerrymandering means they can?t be dislodged by elections. These people are being cheered by supporters for their appalling behavior back home in the heartland of America. This will ultimately lead to the destruction of the Republican Party, and is why President Obama is quite happy to sit on his hands and do nothing. Why interfere when your opponent is committing suicide?
So far I have been right on the money. An accurate political read has been a major element in delivering my 100% gain since the end of 2010, no matter how unpopular it may be.
This analysis has the government shutdown lasting until October 17, little more than a week from today, and vastly longer than expected. That?s the day the government shutdown rolls into the debt ceiling crisis. With far more cataclysmic consequences at stake, this crisis has a greater likelihood of getting solved.
This is all spectacular news for investors, who have recently been boning up on their history. The 17 government shutdowns since 1975 have averaged six days. After each one, stock rose by an average 7.8% in the following six months, and by 13.2% over the following year. We could be in for similar returns in this round. ?It looks like its going to be off to the races once again, and my yearend target of 1,780 for the (SPY) is looking good.
The 0.5% in growth we are losing this quarter will get rolled into the next. Q1, 2014 was already setting up to be hot, thanks to a global synchronized recovery in the US, Europe, Japan, China, and even Australia. Some 60% of world GDP is now enjoying unprecedented easy money. This concentration of more growth into the next quarter could take the US GDP figure as high as an annualized 3.5%.
Portfolio managers have already figured this out, which is why they are relentlessly buying every dip, and explains the modest 3.5% drop in the S&P 500 we have seen since the shutdown began. Providing additional rocket fuel is the fact that many firms are under the gun to get new money into the market by the end of the year.
There is one certainty here. The shutdown firmly takes a taper by the Federal Reserve off the table for 2013. It turns out that Ben Bernanke correctly read that the Tea Party would drive the economy off a cliff, and that the safety net of continued monetary stimulus was needed. Nice call, Ben! This will give the bulls the fodder they need to take stock prices up all the way until next spring, when we may finally get a real taper.
I would be using the down days from here on to scale into the hottest sectors of the market, especially the 2X leveraged ETF?s. You can do this with consumer discretionary stocks with the (XLY), (UCC), industrials with (XLI), (UXI), technology with (XLK), (ROM), and with health care through the (XLV), (RXL).
This is what I really want to know. Last Sunday, the hit TV drug show, Breaking Bad, saw its series finale. The cult terrorism drama, Homeland, delivered its third season opener at the same time. The next day, the government closed.
https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/National-Parks-Closed.jpg357541Mad Hedge Fund Traderhttps://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.pngMad Hedge Fund Trader2013-10-07 01:04:392013-10-07 01:04:39Say Goodbye to the Washington Discount
When I first heard about Larry Summers decision to withdraw his name from consideration as the next Chairman of the Federal Reserve, I thought ?Whoa! ?RISK ON, here we come.? I knew immediately that global stock (SPY), bond (TLT), and commodity markets would rocket and the dollar would crash (FXA), except against the Japanese yen (FXY), (YCS). That?s what we got in spades at the Monday morning opening.
This has to be one of the greatest left-handed compliments of all time. Who knew Summers choice to remain in the private sector would add 20 points to the S&P 500 and slash 10 basis points off ten year Treasury yields? The markets are saying ?Thank you for staying away,? in the loudest possible voice. It reminds me of the huge pop in Microsoft (MSFT) stock we saw in the wake of CEO Steve Ballmer?s retirement announcement. Is Summers really that bad?
You have to wonder if the guy who got fired as the president of Harvard University for his cantankerousness was the ideal pick to build a consensus among the sitting Fed governors, a group already known for outsized egos. The financial markets were afraid that he would deep six Ben Bernanke?s quantitative easing policy because it might reignite the inflationary fires far down the road.
After all, it wasn?t his idea, and his public comments about the hyper expansionary monetary policy were neutral at best. ?Not invented here? would have been a great reason to end the stimulus once the new governor takes up his post in January. This is why I have been predicting that a Summers pick by Obama would have chopped 10% off the Dow in a matter of days.
My long time friend, Federal Reserve co-chairperson, Janet Yellen, is now the no brainer winner here. For a start, her co-chair position makes it an easy transition to the top job that will be welcomed by the markets. She is widely loved and respected at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, where she taught for many years, and where I also have been known to address the occasional class.
She is already viewed as an ultra dove who will keep QE initiative alive and well. Fed governors tend to be more representative of their local economy than national trends. Texas governors reflect what is happening in the oil industry. As the most populous state in the nation, California governors are a mirror image of what is going on in the housing market, the Golden State?s largest industry. Education and technology are not far behind.
That is great news for the rest of us. A housing priority means keeping interest rates lower for longer. It will not only help the real estate market, but all ?RISK ON? assets as well. It makes our jobs as traders easy. You just close your eyes and BUY. That?s why stocks are inches short of all time highs as I write this.
I have been ramping up risk in my model-trading portfolio all month, as have most other hedge fund managers. But I was doing so for different reasons. I did not believe Bernanke would taper this month, as the economic data are lukewarm, at best. I thought a taper no show would send markets soaring, and was positioned accordingly. It turns out that a Summers no show has the same effect. It?s all a classic example of ?The harder I work, the luckier I get.?
Which begs us to ask the question, ?Is Yellen really that good?? the permabulls shouldn?t get too deep over their heads here. The things that Janet looks at to track the health of business activity are starting to light up. Housing in San Francisco is up a blistering 32% YOY. And Silicon Valley is probably the only part of the country that is seeing real wage inflation. There are rampant bidding wars here for competent computer programmers and engineers. Soaring asset and wage prices are the traditional reason for the Fed to throttle back and raise interest rates. Therefore, the ultra easy monetary policy the markets expect from Yellen may, like Larry Summers, be dead on arrival.
Obama also has an opportunity here to address a frequent complaint from his base, that he hasn?t been appointing enough women in senior positions in his administration. Here is a great one all tied up with a bow and ready to go.
Janet Yellen grew up in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, New York, from which the Italian branch of my OWN family originates. She graduated summa cum laude from Brown University (I thought they didn?t give grades?), and went on to get a PhD from Yale, where she rubbed shoulders with Hillary Clinton.
She started work as an economist at the Federal Reserve in 1977. Her first political appointment came in 1997 when Bill Clinton named her to the Council of Economic Advisors. From 2004-2010 she was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, where she was a voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee. In 2010, Obama made her vice chairperson of the Federal Reserve.
Oh, and for good measure, her husband, George Akerlof, has a Nobel Prize in economics. The kitchen talk must be fascinating.
A woman in charge of the national purse strings? Yikes! There goes my bowling allowance!
https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Janet-Yellen.jpg315473Mad Hedge Fund Traderhttps://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.pngMad Hedge Fund Trader2013-09-17 01:04:032013-09-17 01:04:03It?s All About Larry
It?s time to put on your buying boots and throw caution to the wind. The S&P 500 (SPY) is likely to rebound as much as 9% from the recent 1,630 low to as high as 1,780 by the end of December. What?s more, stocks could add another 10%-20% in 2014. The nimble and the aggressive here will be rewarded handsomely. Those who keep their hands in their pockets will sadly watch the train leave the station without them, and shortly be exploring career options on Craigslist.
The move will be driven by the double-barreled improvement in valuation parameters, rising earnings and expanding earnings multiples. S&P 500 earnings are likely to come in this year around $107, modestly above the New Year forecasts. An improving economy could take that number as high as $117 next year.
This is encouraging underweight investors to pay up for stocks for the first time in a very long time. Today?s (SPX) 1,660 print gives you a 15.5 multiple. Boost that to 16.5 times, and the 1,780 number is served up to you like a Christmas turkey on as silver platter. Maintain that multiple, and the (SPX) grinds up to 1,930 by the end of 2014. With earning multiples smack dab in the middle of an historic 9-22 range, this is not an outrageous expectation. This is known in trading parlance as a ?win-win,? and creates a positive hockey stick effect on your P&L.
Of course, there are still many non-believers out there. Reveal yourself as a bull in the wrong quarters, and a torrent of abuse piles upon you. The taper, Syria, the debt ceiling crisis, and another sequester will demolish the economy and send stocks tumbling. There are plenty of Dow 3,000 forecasts out there. Thank you Dr. Doom.
Here?s the wakeup call: you are reading about these risks in this newsletter, and thousands more out there. None of these risks have the ability to surprise the market, as they have been so belabored by the media. They will most likely be solved fairly quickly. Everyone is planning on using these events as a buying opportunity. They are fully priced in. That?s why stocks have failed to pull back more than 7.4% since November, when the Obama reelection shock pared 10% off share prices.
What will be the short-term triggers for the next leg up? I?ll round up the most likely suspects for you.
1) Ben Bernanke?s taper of the largest quantitative easing program in history will either come in smaller than expected, or won?t show up at all. Concerns over weak jobs progress, flaccid economic growth, Syria, zero inflation, and the debt ceiling have cut the knees out from more substantial action. Here?s some quickie math. A $10 billion a month taper leave $75 billion a month on net federal bond buying in place for at least another quarter.
2) Bonds have been falling since April, taking interest rates up. Once the taper is announced, they will rally and limit moves to a new, higher 2.50%-3% range on the ten-year Treasury (TLT).
3) Syria will go away pretty soon, peacefully or otherwise. Despite the humanitarian disaster, nobody here really cares what happens on the other side of the world.
4) The debt ceiling crisis will generate headlines and sound bites for a few weeks, and then get resolved or end with a second sequester. This year?s sequester proved highly stock market positive, as it sent the government?s budget deficit plunging at the fastest rate in history, with the first serious cuts in military spending since the end of the cold war.
5) The economic data flow from Europe is modestly improving. Crises are becoming fewer and farther between.
6) The already great data from Japan is coming in even hotter than expected.
All of this makes US equities the world?s most attractive asset class. For a listing of longer term positive factors which few in the market currently appreciate, please read my early piece (?Why US Stocks Are Dirt Cheap? by clicking here).
This is not your father?s bull market. While interest rates have been moving up at the long end, they are still half of what they were at this point in past market cycles. Five years of balance sheet repair since the financial crisis mean that corporations are carrying only half the debt and leverage seen at previous market peaks.
There will also be no new tax increases for the foreseeable future. The fiscal drag on the economy, which knocked 1% off GDP growth this year, is diminishing rapidly. Remove the dead weight, and US growth could rebound to 3.5% next year.
Dividend yields are far higher, with nearly half of the S&P 500 still yielding more than the 10-year Treasury bond. Investment in stocks, particularly large caps, is safer now than it has been at any time since the Great Depression.
Another big bullish factor could be president Obama?s decision regarding Ben Bernanke?s replacement as chairman of the Federal Reserve. Naming co-chairperson, the ultra dovish Janet Yellen, could add another 20% to the (SPX), with investor expectations of ?QE forever? taking earnings multiples even higher. If mildly hawkish Larry Summers gets the nod, it might chop 10% off the index.
Which sectors will take the lead? Technology is still the area that the world wants to own. Profits are rising faster than in the main market, and they boast large amounts of cash. Look no further than Apple?s (AAPL) $150 billion wad, a third of its total capitalization. It is selling the bottom end of its historical multiple range and at a market discount. I?m not just talking Apple (AAPL), the behemoth that could make it up to $600 next year. Cloud and mobile plays will also be highly sought after.
For those with more pedestrian tastes, you can?t go wrong with plain vanilla industrials and cyclicals, which will continue to appreciate off the back of a stronger economy. Even financials should do well, given an assist from a steepening yield curve, their traditional bread and butter.
What could pee on this parade? Washington, what else? If the government shuts down and stays closed, this could give you your long awaited 10% correction, or more. The last time they threatened this, stocks gave up 25% in just two months. Will this happen? I doubt it. But no one ever went broke underestimating stupidity in our nation?s capitol.
https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Wall-Street-Bull.jpg439367Mad Hedge Fund Traderhttps://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.pngMad Hedge Fund Trader2013-09-11 08:01:352013-09-11 08:01:35My 2013 Stock Market Outlook
The great thing about the sudden $5 pop is the price of oil since Monday is that it battle tests your portfolio. You really don't know what you own and the risks it entails until something like this comes along. I'll explain why.
For a start, you get a very clear idea of which of your assets are of the "RISK ON" variety, and which are of the "RISK OFF" persuasion. This is easier said than done because asset classes often change gender, flipping from "RISK ON" to "RISK OFF" without warning. Knowing which is which is crucial in hedging portfolios and measuring your risk. It is not unusual for a trader to believe he has a safe bet on, only to watch his portfolio completely blow up because the cross asset relationships have changed.
Look at Tuesday's market action. Traditional "RISK ON" assets, like stocks (SPY), got pounded. The traditional flight to safety assets, such as bonds (TLT) and gold, did well. This is where a typical balanced portfolio does well. Oil (USO) is usually a "RISK ON" asset, but not this time. Fears of a supply interruption, no matter how unfounded they may be, sent prices for Texas tea through the roof. On this round, oil clearly fell out of the "RISK ON"/"RISK OFF" model.
Not only do assets show their true colors in conditions like this. They also demonstrate their character. Look at the gold/silver ratio. Historically, silver (SLV) moves twice as fast has gold (GLD), with double the beta. Since the last low, it has doubled gold's move. When the barbarous relic gained 17% from the recent $1,175 low, silver roared some 36%. Thus the relationships have been maintained.
How did my own model trading portfolio do? I took it on the nose with my oil short, moving from a profit to a loss. But my short positions in the yen and the euro did well, nearly offsetting those losses. So overall, my 35% year to date performance has been protected, and the volatility kept down. This is whyy I always try to run a book of counterbalancing "RISK ON" and "RISK OFF" positions, or stay very small. You should do the same.
Mad Hedge Fund Traderhttps://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.pngMad Hedge Fund Trader2013-08-29 09:12:432013-08-29 09:12:43Battle Testing Your Portfolio
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