(TBT) Archives

Anatomy of a Great Trade

So, I'm sitting here agonizing over whether I should sell short the US Treasury bond market (TLT) once again.

Thanks to the bombshell Israel announced today alleging the existence of a secret Iranian nuclear missile program, oil has rallied by 2%, the US dollar has soared, and stocks have been crushed.

The (TLT) has popped smartly, some $2.5 points off of last week's low, taking yields down from a four-year high at 3.03% down to 2.93%.

The report is probably based on false intelligence, which is becoming a regular thing in the Middle East. Suffice it to say that the presenter, Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu, may soon be indicted on corruption charges. Clearly, they are going "American" in the Holy Land.

But for today, the market believes it.

You can understand me chomping at the bit, as selling short US government bonds has been my new rich uncle since the market last peaked in July 2017.

I just ran my Trade Alert history over the past nine months and here is what I found.

I sent you 38 Trade Alerts to sell short bonds generating 18 round trips, AND EVERY SINGLE ONE WAS PROFITABLE! In total these Alerts generated a trading profit of 216%, or 21.62% of my total portfolio return.

That means 35% of my profits over the past year came from selling short Treasuries.

You should do the same.

Falling Treasury prices have been one of the few sustainable trends in financial markets during the past year.

Stock rallied, then gave up a chunk. Gold (GLD) has gone nowhere. Only oil has surpassed as a sustainable trade, thanks to successful OPEC production quotas, which have been extended multiple times.

Texas tea is up an admirable 67% since the June $42 low. And who was loading up on crude way down there?

Absolutely no one.

Of course, I have an unfair advantage as a bond trader, as I have been doing this for nearly 50 years.

I caught the big inflation driven fixed income collapse during the 1970s, which had a major assist then from a rapidly devaluing US dollar.

That's when they brought out zero-coupon bonds, effectively increasing our leverage by 500% for virtually no cost. Principal only strips followed, another license to bring money on the short side.

The big lesson from trading this market for a half century is that trends last for a really long time. The bull market in bonds that started in 1982, when 10-year yields hit 14%, lasted for 33 years.

As we are less than three years into the current bear market the opportunities are rife. We are very early into the new game. This one could last for the rest of my life.

The reasons are quite simple. The fundamentals demand it.

1) The Global Synchronized Recovery is accelerating.

2) The Fed will start dropping on the bond market in the very near future $6 billion a month, or $200 million a day, worth of paper in its QE unwind.

3) Tax cuts will provide further stimulus for the US economy.

4) With the foreign exchange markets now laser-focused on America's exploding deficits, a weak US dollar has triggered a capital flight out of the US.

5) We also now have evidence that China has started to dump its massive $1 trillion in US Treasury bond holdings.

All are HUGELY bond negative.

All of this should take bonds down to new 2018 lows. What we could be seeing here is the setting up for the perfect head and shoulders top of the (TLT) for 2018.

As for that next Trade Alert, I think I'll hold out for a better price to sell again. What's the point in spoiling a perforce record?

Time to Stick to Your Guns

May 1, 2018/by MHFTR

April 27, 2018

Diary, Newsletter

Global Market Comments
April 27, 2018
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:
(THURSDAY, JUNE 14, 2018, NEW YORK, NY, GLOBAL STRATEGY LUNCHEON)
(APRIL 25 BIWEEKLY STRATEGY WEBINAR Q&A),
(TLT), (TBT), (GOOGL), (NVDA), (PIN),
(SPY), (C), (AMD), (EEM), (HEDJ)

April 27, 2018/by MHFTR

April 25 Biweekly Strategy Webinar Q&A

Diary, Newsletter

Below please find subscribers Q&A for the Mad Hedge Fund Trader April Global Strategy Webinar with my guest co-host Mike Pisani of Smart Option Trading.

As usual, every asset class long and short was covered. You are certainly an inquisitive lot, and keep those questions coming!

Q: Are you out of Alphabet (GOOGL) and Microsoft (MSFT)?

A. I'm out of Alphabet and I'm in Microsoft, but only for the very short term. I'm waiting for another big meltdown day to go back and buy everything back because I think the FANGs and technology in general are still in a secular bull market.

Q. Are Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and NVIDIA (NVDA) affected by the underperformance of Bitcoin?

A. They are. Bitcoin has been an important part of the chip story for the last two years because mining, or the creation of bitcoins, creates enormous demand for chips to do the processing. I think selling in bitcoin is over for the time being. You had a $25 billion in capital gains taxes that had to be paid by April 15.

People were paying those bills by selling their bitcoins. That's over now, and bitcoin is rallied about 30% since Tax Day because of that. So, yes, bitcoin is getting so big that it is starting to affect the chip sector meaningfully. That is another reason why we see secular long-term growth in the entire chip sector.

Mike Pisani: Interesting take on bitcoin today, and I've been with you on it. I think the worst of it is over; it's going to go. Today is the largest volume day we've seen on it so far. We're up over 15,500 contracts traded.

Q: If you're 100% cash, is now a good time to commit funds to the equity market?

A. Franz, I would say nein. Absolutely not. 2009 was the time to commit funds to the equity market. If you're 100% cash now I would stay out for the next six months. We may get a good entry point over the summer or the fall. I'll let you know when that happens because I will be jumping back in myself.

But right now, a week ahead of the worst six months of equity investment of the year, I would stay away and do research instead. Read your Mad Hedge Fund Trader letters. Build a list of names that you're going to buy on the next meltdown and practice buying meltdowns with your practice account, which doesn't use real money.

There's a lot of things you can get ready to do for the next leg up in the bull market, but buying right now, NO! I would put that in the category of, "Is it time to start shorting bonds question?" that we got a few minutes ago.

Q: Why did tech stocks sell off when they have great earnings results?

A: It's called, "Buy the rumor, sell the news." So many people already own the stocks and were expecting good earnings that there was no surprise when they were announced. These are some of the most over-owned stocks in history.

Everybody in the world owns them. Many people have multiple weightings in them, so when we enter a high-risk macro environment, which we have now, you want to get rid of the most over-owned stocks. That is exactly why all of these stocks that have had great runs are selling off, even though they have great earnings report.

Q: Are financials a good play here with interest rates rising though 3%?

A. Normally I would say yes. However, the macro background for the general market are so negative they are overwhelming any positive fundamentals specific to individual sectors like banks and stocks like Citigroup (C). By the way, financials all reported great results and got killed, so that is why I bailed out of my (C) position this morning at around cost. If you throw the best news in the world on a stock and it won't go up, it's time to get out of there.

Q: Would an unleveraged inverse ETF like the ProShares Short S&P 500 ETF (SH) be good at a spike even now?

A. Yes, but when I say spike up better expect at least 20 (SPY) points or 1,000 Dow points. All these downside ETFs are great but you've got to get in at the right price. You know as they say in trading school, the profit is always made on the "BUY" and not on the "SELL."

So, if you can get on one of these super spikes up on the short side that is a great trade. So is the ProShares Ultra Short ETF (SDS) if you want to do the 2X leverage short fund. We've recently started doing this every month. We've been shorting (SPY)s and buying (VIX) on every one of these spikes up, and it's been working like a charm.

Q: Here's the best question of the day. Your timing has been perfect says Mary in Chicago, Ill.

A: Well, I'll take that kind of question all day long. Thank you very much. You're too nice to do that.

Q: Richard is asking would you buy an NVIDIA (NVDA) LEAP?

A: I would wait for meltdown days. Remember this is a market that gives you lots of meltdown days. Just wait for the next presidential tweet and you might get another 600-700-point dip in the markets. Those are the days you buy LEAPS. You don't have to get buy writing Trade Alerts like I do. You can just enter a limit order in your account. Put it as a stupidly low level to "BUY" and you may get hit. And that's where you really make the big money in this kind of market.

Q: Is there a good one- or two-month trade in Amazon?

A: Yeah, Paul, with this volatility you can pick a big winner like Amazon and you know to buy the 250-point dips and sell the rallies. These ranges are so wide now that even a beginner can make money. So, I would say you have to wait until after tomorrow on Amazon and let them get their earnings out. We know they're going to be great. They're doing home deliveries now to your car.

Q: Can long bond interest rates go up to 4%, and if that happens what would the market do?

A: Yes, they can go up to 4%, and I expect them to probably do that next year. What will it do to the market? Answer: Cause a bear market and a recession. Is that answer clear enough? My bet is that interest rates cap in this cycle much lower than they did in past cycles, maybe 4%-5%. We have been used to zero cost of money for so long that a move to 4% would be like stabbing somebody in the chest. People are much less able to deal with rising rates than they ever have been in the past, so watch this space.

Q: Should I buy the ProShares Ultra Short Treasury ETF (TBT) or the iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond Fund (TLT)?

A: Brad, it's really is a leverage question for you. The (TLT) is 1X; the TBT is 2X, so I would be taking profits on the (TBT) here and then buying a couple of points lower. Or if you want to keep it for the long term you can but remember the cost of carry on the TBT is around 7% a year.

Q: Yves in Paris, France is asking: What possible scenario will you see material wage growth that could lead to higher inflation?

A: We're starting to see that now with the ultra-low unemployment rates. People are having great difficulty hiring anyone in technology. But at the minimum wage level there seems to be plenty of supply. The other possibility is that the cost of everything else goes up but wages, because technology is replacing jobs so fast there may never be any increase in wages.

So, we will get inflation, but nothing like the inflation we saw in the past driven by rising wages, commodity prices, oil prices, and interest rates. Yes, money is a commodity, which can add quite a lot to the cost of leveraged companies like airlines, REITs, and so on.

Q: Will rising interest rates force the US dollar up?

A. The answer is yes! It has been a long time coming, but if rates continue to rise from here, you can expect that to lead to a continuously rising dollar and falling foreign currencies, and that will become a major drag on the economy and corporate earnings going forward.

Q: When is a good time to buy TIPS?

A: Just like your Treasury bond short, I would buy Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS) on the next rally in bond prices (TLT) and dip in yields. That will give you a decent entry point. That said, TIPS have been a horrible performer for the last 10 years because there has just been no inflation. A lot of people just keep TIPS as a hedge in their portfolio and it just costs them money every year.

Q: Which could blow up, Brad wants to know, TBT or TLT?

A: The easy answer there is probably neither. But if I had to pick between the two, the (TBT) would be the one to blow up because it's a 2X and has a lot less liquidity. So, I can't image in what world has (TBT) blowing up, but then I don't watch zombie TV shows either.

Q: I think US equities are expensive. Are emerging markets (EEM) or Europe (HEDJ) a better bet for the rest of the year?

A: I would say yes. Because if interest rates here in the US go higher that means a stronger dollar. That means a weaker US stock market. Because US companies are punished by a rising dollar. And European and Asian companies benefit from a rising dollar and falling home currencies, so that makes Europe the first choice of any of the global markets.

Q: Does oil going to $100 have a chance of bringing down the US economy?

A: Absolutely yes. If oil prices don't start to slow down, they will start having a big impact on the economy because that means rising prices for any energy consumer, which is you and me.

With no ability to offset that by rising prices of your products that would put a squeeze on any oil consuming industry, which is why things like the transports and consumer staples have been performing so poorly. If we get to $100, then you're really looking at a full-on recession and bear market for stocks. By bear market I mean down 25% or more in stocks.

Q: How do you see the India ETF?

A: We like it. India is the No. 1 pick of any hedge fund investor in emerging markets, and the ETF you can buy there is the PowerShares India Portfolio ETF (PIN).

April 27, 2018/by MHFTR

April 13, 2018

Diary, Newsletter

Global Market Comments
April 13, 2018
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:
(ANNOUNCING THE MAD HEDGE LAKE TAHOE, NEVADA, CONFERENCE, OCTOBER 26-27, 2018),
(APRIL 11 GLOBAL STRATEGY WEBINAR Q&A),
(TLT), (TBT), (GOOGL), (MU), (LRCX), (NVDA) (IBM),
(GLD), (AMZN), (MSFT), (XOM), (SPY), (QQQ)

April 13, 2018/by MHFTR

April 11 Global Strategy Webinar Q&A

Diary, Newsletter

Below please find subscribers' Q&A for the Mad Hedge Fund Trader April Global Strategy Webinar with my guest co-host Bill Davis of the Mad Day Trader.

As usual, every asset class long and short was covered. You are certainly an inquisitive lot, and keep those questions coming!

Q: Many of your April positions are now profitable. Is there any reason to close out before expiration?

A: No one ever got fired for taking a profit. If you feel like you have enough in hand - like 50% of the maximum potential profit in the position, which we do have in more than half of our current positions - go ahead and take it.

I'll probably run all of our April expirations into expiration day because they are very deep in the money. Also, because of the higher volatility and because of higher implied volatility on individual stock options, you're being paid a lot more to run these into expiration than you ever have been before, so that is another benefit.

Of course, one good reason to take profits now is to roll into another position, and when we find them, that may be exactly what we do.

Q: What do you think will be the impact of the US hitting Syria with missiles?

A: Initially, probably a 3-, 4-, or 500-point drop, and then a very rapid recovery. While the Russians have threatened to shoot down our missiles, in actual fact they can't hit the broad side of a barn. When Russians fired their cruise missiles at Syrian targets, half of them landed in Iran.

At the end of the day, it doesn't really impact the US economy, but you will see a big move in gold, which we're already starting to see, and which is why we're long in gold - as a hedge against all our other positions against this kind of geopolitical event.

Q: Will 2018 be a bull market or a bear market?

A: We are still in a bull market, but we may see only half the returns of last year - in other words we'll get a 10% profit in stocks this year instead of a 20% profit, which means it has to rise 12% from here to hit that 10% up by year-end.

Q: What is your take on the ProShares Ultra Short 20+ Year Treasury Bond Fund (TBT)?

A: I am a big buyer here. I think that interest rates (TLT) are going to move down sharply for the rest of the year. The (TBT) here, in the mid $30s, is a great entry point - I would be buying it right now.

Q: How do you expect Google (GOOGL) to trade when the spread is so wide?

A: It will go up. Google is probably the best-quality technology company in the market, after Facebook (FB). We'll get some money moving out of Facebook into Google for exactly that reason; Google is Facebook without the political risk, the regulatory risk, and the security risks.

Q: Are any positions still a buy now?

A: All of them are buys now. But, do not chase the market on any conditions whatsoever. The market has an endless supply of sudden shocks coming out of Washington, which will give you that down-400-points-day. That is the day you jump in and buy. When you're buying on a 400-down-day, the risk reward is much better than buying on a 400-point up day.

Q: What is "sell in May and go away?"

A: It means take profits in all your positions in May when markets start to face historical headwinds for six months and either A) Wait for another major crash in the market (at the very least we'll get another test of the bottom of the recent range), or B) Just stay away completely; go spend all the money you made in the first half of 2018.

Q: Paul Ryan (the Republican Speaker of the House) resigned today; is he setting up for a presidential run against Trump in 2020?

A: I would say yes. Paul Ryan has been on the short list of presidential candidates for a long time. And Ryan may also be looking to leave Washington before the new Robert Mueller situation gets really unpleasant.

Q: What reaction do you expect if Trump resigns or is impeached?

A: I have Watergate to look back to; the stock market sold off 45% going into the Nixon resignation. It's a different world now, and there were a lot more things going wrong with the US economy in 1975 than there are now, like oil shocks, Vietnam, race riots, and recessions.

I would expect to get a decline, much less than that - maybe only a couple 1,000 points (or 10% or so), and then a strong Snapback Rally after that. We, in effect, have been discounting a Trump impeachment ever since he got in office. Thus far, the market has ignored it; now it's ignoring it a lot less.

Q: Thoughts on Micron Technology (MU), Lam Research (LRCX), and Nvidia (NVDA)?

A: It's all the same story: a UBS analyst who had never covered the chip sector before initiated coverage and issued a negative report on Micron Technology, which triggered a 10% sell-off in Micron, and 5% drops in every other chip company.

He took down maybe 20 different stocks based on the argument that the historically volatile chip cycle is ending now, and prices will fall through the end of the year. I think UBS is completely wrong, that the chip cycle has another 6 to 12 months to go before prices weaken.

All the research we've done through the Mad Hedge Technology Letter shows that UBS is entirely off base and that prices still remain quite strong. The chip shortage still lives! That makes the entire chip sector a buy here.

Q: Can Trump bring an antitrust action against Amazon?

A: No, no chance whatsoever. It is all political bluff. If you look at any definition of antitrust, is the consumer being harmed by Amazon (AMZN)?

Absolutely not - if they're getting the lowest prices and they're getting products delivered to their door for free, the consumer is not being harmed by lower prices.

Second is market share; normally, antitrust cases are brought when market shares get up to 70 or 80%. That's what we had with Microsoft (MSFT) in the 1990s and IBM (IBM) in the 1980s. The largest share Amazon has in any single market is 4%, so no there is basis whatsoever.

By the way, no president has ever attacked a private company on a daily basis for personal reasons like this one. Thank the president for giving us a great entry point for a stock that has basically gone up every day for two years. It's a rare opportunity.

Q: How will the trade war end?

A: I think the model for the China trade war is the US steel tariffs, where we announced tariffs against the entire world, and then exempted 75% of the world, declaring victory. That's exactly what's going to happen with China: We'll announce massive tariffs, do nothing for a while, and then negotiate modest token tariffs within a few areas. The US will declare victory, and the stock market rallies 2,000 points. That's why I have been adding risk almost every day for the last two weeks.

Q: Would you be buying ExonMobil (XOM) here, hoping for an oil breakout?

A: No, I think it's much more likely that oil is peaking out here, especially given the slowing economic data and a huge onslaught in supply from US fracking. We're getting big increases now in fracking numbers - that is very bad for prices a couple of months out. The only reason oil is this high is because Iran-sponsored Houthi rebels have been firing missiles at Saudi Arabia, which are completely harmless. In the old days, this would have caused oil to spike $50.

Q: Would you be selling stock into the rally (SPY), (QQQ)?

A: Not yet. I think the market has more to go on the upside, but you can still expect a lot of inter-day volatility depending on what comes out of Washington.

Q: Do you ever use stops on your option spreads?

A: I use mental stops. They don't take stop losses on call spreads and put spreads, and if they did they would absolutely take you to the cleaners. These are positions you never want to execute on market orders, which is what stop losses do. You always want to be working the middle of the spread. So, I use my mental stop. And when we do send out stop loss trade alerts, that's exactly where they're coming from.

Q: Will the Middle East uncertainty raise the price of oil?

A: Yes, if the Cold War with Iran turns hot, you could expect oil to go up $10 or $20 dollars higher, fairly quickly, regardless of what the fundamentals are. It's tough to be blowing up oil supplies as a great push on oil prices. But that's a big "if."

Hello from the Italian Riviera!

April 13, 2018/by MHFTR

The Crash Coming to a Market Near You

Diary, Newsletter, Research

I'm sure that most of you are spending your free time devouring the utterly fascinating pages of "Fire and Fury" these days, now in its 12th week on the New York Times best-seller list.

I, however, am reading slightly different subject matter.

As obscure, academic, and abstruse the "Global Dollar Credit: Links to US Monetary Policy and Leverage" may sound, published by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), it has been an absolute blockbuster among strategists at the major hedge funds.

And given the apocalyptic conclusions of the report, it might well rank as one of the best horror stories of the year, worthy of the bloodiest zombie flick.

I'll give it to you in a nutshell.

Corporate borrowers outside the US have ramped up their borrowing astronomically over the past 17 years, from $2 trillion to $9 trillion.

This makes them extraordinarily sensitive to any rise in US interest rates and the dollar. Emerging market debt alone has doubled to $4.5 trillion.

Easy money has encouraged mal investment and overinvestment in projects that never would have seen the light of day if unlimited financing were not available at 1%. In other words, it is all a giant house of cards ready to collapse.

I know a lot of you thrive on folk-based economic theories you picked up on the Internet based on monetarism, Austrian economics, and the theories of Friedrich August von Hayek, that all have the dollar collapsing under a mountain of debt.

In fact, the complete opposite has come true. The global economy has become "dollarized," with companies and governments in almost all nations relying on the buck as their principal means of financing.

The end result of all this has been to vastly expand the power of the Federal Reserve far beyond America's borders. Even the smallest rise in US interest rates, such as the 1/4% hike mooted for June, could trigger a cascade of corporate defaults around the world.

Think of subprime, with a turbocharger, running on pure nitro.

This is having a huge deflationary effect on the economies of many emerging nations.

Malaysia's sovereign wealth fund has almost gone under after a series of bad bets against the dollar. There is thought to be another troubled dollar short coming out of Hong Kong worth $900 million.

This is forcing countries to liquidate their US Treasury Bonds to cover local losses.

Further exacerbating the situation has been the crash of the price of oil, which has turned producing countries from suppliers to takers of liquidity to the global credit markets. Even after last year's monster rally, oil is still trading at 60% below the 2011 peak.

The net net of all of this is to increase the risk of surprise blowups overseas, both by banks and the private borrowers. This will increase the volatility of financial instruments everywhere.

The Bank for International Settlements is an exclusive club of the world's central banks. It is based in Basel, Switzerland (great swimming in the Rhine there), with further offices in Hong Kong and Mexico City. Its goal is it to coordinate policies among different nations.

The BIS was originally founded in 1930 to facilitate payment of German reparations following the Versailles Treaty ending WWI.

As a regular groupie on the central banking scene, I have been reading the research publications for many decades.

It All Started Here in Versailles

April 5, 2018/by MHFTR

April 3, 2018

Diary, Newsletter

Global Market Comments
April 3, 2018
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:
(TUESDAY, JUNE 12, NEW ORLEANS, LA, GLOBAL STRATEGY LUNCHEON),
(MARCH 28 BIWEEKLY STRATEGY WEBINAR Q&A),
(TLT), (TBT), (FXY), (GS), (FCX), (CSCO), (INTC), (NEM),
(RIGHTSIZING YOUR TRADING)

April 3, 2018/by MHFTR

March 27, 2018

Diary, Newsletter

Global Market Comments
March 27, 2018
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:
(DON'T MISS THE MARCH 28 GLOBAL STRATEGY WEBINAR),
(TEN MORE UGLY MESSAGES FROM THE BOND MARKET),
(TLT), (TBT), (USO), (GLD), (GS), (SPY)
(FRIENDS WHO WILL EXECUTE MY TRADE ALERTS FOR YOU)

March 27, 2018/by MHFTR

March 23, 2018

Diary, Newsletter

Global Market Comments
March 23, 2018
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:
(DON'T MISS THE MARCH 28 GLOBAL STRATEGY WEBINAR),
(FRIDAY, APRIL 6, INCLINE VILLAGE, NEVADA, STRATEGY LUNCHEON)
(WHY US BONDS LOVE CHINESE TARIFFS),
(TLT), (TBT), (SOYB), (BA), (GM)

March 23, 2018/by MHFTR

The Passive/Aggressive Portfolio

Diary, Newsletter, Research

What if you want to be a little more aggressive with your investment strategy, say twice as aggressive? What if markets don't deliver any year on year change?

Then you need a little more pizzazz in your portfolio, and some extra leverage to earn your crust of bread and secure your retirement.

It turns out that I have just the solution for you. This would be my "Passive/Aggressive Portfolio".

I call it passive in that you just purchase these positions and leave them alone and not trade them. I call it aggressive as it involves a basket of 2x leveraged ETF's issued by ProShares, based Bethesda, MD (click here for their link).

The volatility of this portfolio will be higher. But the returns will be double what you would get with an index fund, and possibly much more. It is a "Do not open until 2035" kind of investment strategy.

Here is the makeup of the portfolio:

(ROM) - ProShares Ultra Technology Fund - The three largest single stock holdings are Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), and Facebook (FB). It was up 80.95% last year. For more details on the fund, please click here.

(UYG) - ProShares Ultra Financials Fund - The three largest single stock holdings are Wells Fargo (WFC), Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B), and JP Morgan Chase (JPM). It was up 38.42% last year. For more details on the fund, please click here.

(UCC) - ProShares Ultra Consumer Services Fund - The three largest single stock holdings are Amazon (AMZN), Walt Disney (DIS), and Home Depot (HD). It was up 3.71% last year. For more details on the fund, please click here.

(DIG)- ProShares Ultra Oil & Gas Fund - The three largest single stock holdings are ExxonMobil (XOM), Chevron (CVX), and Schlumberger (SLB). It was DOWN 9.20% last year. For more details on the fund, please click here.

(BIB) - ProShares Ultra NASDAQ Biotechnology Fund - The three largest single stock holdings are Amgen (AMGN), Regeneron (REGN), and Gilead Sciences (GILD). It was up 40.49% last year, please click here.

You can play around with the sector mix at your own discretion. Just focus on the fastest growing sectors of the US economy, which the Mad Hedge Fund Trader does on a daily basis.

It is tempting to add more leveraged ETF's for sectors like gold (UGL), to act as an additional hedge.

There is also the 2X short Treasury bond fund (TBT), which I have been trading in and out of for years, a bet that long-term bonds will go down, interest rates rise.

There are a couple of provisos to mention here.

This is absolutely NOT a portfolio you want to own going into a recession. So, you will need to exercise some kind of market timing, however occasional.

The good news is that I make more money in bear markets than I do in bull markets because the volatility is so high. However, to benefit from this skill set, you have to keep reading the Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader.

There is also a problem with leveraged ETF's in that management and other fees can be high, dealing spreads wide, and tracking error huge.

This is why I am limiting the portfolio to 2X ETF's, and avoiding their much more costly and inefficient 3X cousins, which are really only good for intraday trading. The 3X ETF's are really just a broker enrichment vehicle.

There are also going to be certain days when you might want to just go out and watch a long movie, like Gone With the Wind, with an all ETF portfolio, rather than monitor their performance, no matter how temporary it may be.

A good example was the flash crash, when the complete absence of liquidity drove all of these funds to huge discounts to their asset values.

Check out the long-term charts, and you can see the damage that was wrought by high frequency traders on that cataclysmic day, down -53% in the case of the (ROM). Notice that all of these discounts disappeared within hours. It was really just a function of the pricing mechanism being broken.

I have found the portfolio above quite useful when close friends and family members ask me for stock tips for their retirement funds.

It was perfect for my daughter, who won't be tapping her teacher's pension accounts for another 45 years, when I will be long gone. She mentions her blockbuster returns every time I see her, and she has only been in them for five years.

Imagine what technology, financial services, consumer discretionaries, biotechnology, and oil and gas will be worth then? It boggles the mind. My guess is up 100-fold from today's levels.

You won't want to put all of your money into a single portfolio like this. But it might be worth carving out 10% of your capital and just leaving it there.

That will certainly be a recommendation for financial advisors besieged with clients complaining about paying high fees for negative returns in a year that is unchanged, or up only 1%-2%. Virtually everyone has them right now.

Adding some spice, and a little leverage to their portfolios might be just the ticket for them.