Saturday, July 21, 2012

Watch the Animals - Vix alert up

No one comments when I say "WATCH THE ANIMALS"

But I think we are reaching an incredible amount of mammal social stress.   This would be a massive drop in the market. 

However, the Dem market ramp up into election is also very strong.

Perchance these factor fight each other until January, whoever wins. 

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/06/28/bear-slaughters-70-sheep-captured-with-cub-and-relocated/?intcmp=obnetwork

Funny, if you observe, bears are extemely human like if you observe them in nature (tough, only seen  a few), or in zoos.   In fact, I would say bears have more human traits than any other mammal.

Don't be a bear, in a bull market!  LOL  

This ain't a bull market, but the market can go to S&P 1600 easy, based on silliness.

Time to flee?

It is hard to see a bubble when you are in it, but you can.    When I was in the bubble, saw it, I believed that because I was so smart and a successful businessman, that the stock market "owed me" $18M.   No joke.    My wife had phantom stock in a Japanese mutual fund company (she was part of it) that could have been sold for maybe $1.5M USD, but we were in the bubble,  and now hope to get .35M from it.    Some has already been extracted, not nearly the max though.   
 Reality now---those with any money at retirement age may flee, and thus laws against such will start coming.   The Gov is slow, so there is time.

Without going into a rant … we live in rural Clark County, NV outside Las Vegas, and are in that group of former middle class folks that have lost it all … having invested our life savings in this property (peak month Jul, 2006) we have not been able to sell. To view the place Precious and I were behind the fox, go to the home’s website and see the view from the “Perch” seating area. We gave up selling. We have it for rent with option to buy. We hang on but face BK or foreclosure like so many others. When we leave we are moving out of the country. At 65, unemployed since 2007 in a small town, and with a disabled wife, there is no starting over here. We will be able to save more than half my small government pension/her social security in Chiang Mai, Thailand. I am not bitter, but I no longer believe in capitalism or democracy as I once did; not the way they are being practiced now. Read more at http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/07/is-a-great-grey-exodus-from-american-starting.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher#VzoQGK1Qyv0ATvJL.99

Time to flee?

It is hard to see a bubble when you are in it, but you can.    When I was in the bubble, saw it, I believed that because I was so smart and a successful businessman, that the stock market "owed me" $18M.   No joke.    My wife had phantom stock in a Japanese mutual fund company (she was part of it) that could have been sold for maybe $1.5M USD, but we were in the bubble,  and now hope to get .35M from it.    Some has already been extracted, not nearly the max though.   
 Reality now---those with any money at retirement age may flee, and thus laws against such will start coming.   The Gov is slow, so there is time.

Without going into a rant … we live in rural Clark County, NV outside Las Vegas, and are in that group of former middle class folks that have lost it all … having invested our life savings in this property (peak month Jul, 2006) we have not been able to sell. To view the place Precious and I were behind the fox, go to the home’s website and see the view from the “Perch” seating area. We gave up selling. We have it for rent with option to buy. We hang on but face BK or foreclosure like so many others. When we leave we are moving out of the country. At 65, unemployed since 2007 in a small town, and with a disabled wife, there is no starting over here. We will be able to save more than half my small government pension/her social security in Chiang Mai, Thailand. I am not bitter, but I no longer believe in capitalism or democracy as I once did; not the way they are being practiced now. Read more at http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/07/is-a-great-grey-exodus-from-american-starting.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher#VzoQGK1Qyv0ATvJL.99

Stealth Currency

When Euro countries start issuing "legal tender" bonds or notes, that will be a fair forewarning that the shit is about to hit the fan. It may not happen, but if it does, then time to go into endgame mode. What it will mean is that they are about to leave the Euro and the new bonds will become the new currency, and the powers that be, will already be heavily transitioned into the "bonds". Watch for this.

Thursday, July 19, 2012

CORN

CORN


HOG short, DVN long close part, TSLA, Cable

Made a great move on Cable....not revenge trading, simply recognizing a stop raid expedition when I see one.    Got stopped on a raid, saw it in real time (nighttime here), and went back in long, but double size.    That is working very nice.

 DVN Closed August calls, on a nice gain.     Don't want to pay front month Theta.    Could reopen another position although already holding October calls.
 HOG with a perfect H&S backtest

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

No Carb Rant from Tawas City

What has America become?   From Tawas City Michigan paper

Editor,

Has America become the land of special interest and home of the double standard?
Lets see: if we lie to the Congress, it's a felony and if the Congress lies to us its just politics; if we dislike a black person, we're racist and if a black person dislikes whites, its their 1st Amendment right;

the government spends millions to rehabilitate criminals and they do almost nothing for the victims;

 in public schools you can teach that homosexuality is OK, but you better not use the word God in the process;

you can kill an unborn child, but it is wrong to execute a mass murderer;

we don't burn books in America, we now rewrite them; we got rid of communist and socialist threats by renaming them progressive;

we are unable to close our border with Mexico, but have no problem protecting the 38th parallel in Korea;

if you protest against President Obama's policies you're a terrorist, but if you burned an American flag or George Bush in effigy it was your 1st Amendment right.

You can have pornography on TV or the internet, but you better not put a nativity scene in a public park during Christmas;

we have eliminated all criminals in America, they are now called sick people;

we can use a human fetus for medical research, but it is wrong to use an animal.

We take money from those who work hard for it and give it to those who don't want to work;

we all support the Constitution, but only when it supports our political ideology;

we still have freedom of speech, but only if we are being politically correct;

parenting has been replaced with Ritalin and video games;

the land of opportunity is now the land of hand outs; the similarity between Hurricane Katrina and the gulf oil spill is that neither president did anything to help.

And how do we handle a major crisis today? The government appoints a committee to determine who's at fault, then threatens them, passes a law, raises our taxes; tells us the problem is solved so they can get back to their reelection campaign.

What has happened to the land of the free and home of the brave?

- Ken Huber

Tawas City

Justification to do nothing

Fear factor is saying that these drops today are just a stop chase down expedition, related to expiry
week but also to the cover of the Bernank, and a message to the Bernank.   

Message to Bernanke from Wallstreet---We want our QE

Monday, July 16, 2012

Hedging

Point Blank here---most "hedges" that are done by normal people are  inspired as a means of protection or out a sense of being responsible, when in fact they are the opposite.   It sounds so cool at your neighborhood BBQ...I placed a hedge on my long Cable position....wow you must be an expert.

In reality, placing a hedge exposes you to 2 large bets that may both lose.  And sometimes it just protects your ego from having to admit that you were wrong and close the trade.  Thus a hedge can be counterproductive.   Mostly hedging is "betting against yourself" and if you understand "intellectual capital or mental capital" in the trading game, betting against yourself as well as holding a losing position for too long can be very damaging to your weekly profitability curve.   It might take you a long time to get your mojo back.

There are a few cases where I see a hedge as justified-

Let's say you have long 100 call contracts of Apple and just say that they report earning after the close.   It is after the close and they report godawful earnings.    You can expect your calls to be crushed in value.   You can also expect the Nasdaq to drop significantly.   So the hedge is to sell the futures, sell /NQ.    Picking the amount to sell is then the question and the answer will depend on your call Delta and other Greeks.

Let say you have 10000 shares of various equities long into the weekend and you can't trade until Monday AM.    Greek Prime Minister spouts off on Sunday afternoon EST...take your Euro and shove it.   When you wake up on Monday you will be in a shit storm of selling and maybe at terrible prices, so you short 10 contracts /ES to try to counteract act obvious losses.  

So using futures to Hedge market moving events when the equities market is closed is an OK Hedge, but they don't always work out.  

Or lets you picked up some DVN calls, and they are thinly traded, meaning there just isn't that much open interest and daily volume, and also the spread between bid and ask is pretty large.  Now lets say some bad market news hits, like Bernanke gets on stage tomorrow and says "I am in league with the Devil", of course stocks will tank but your thinly traded calls may nearly evaporate in value, so to sell them would be like taking a massive loss in an illiquid market.  But you think your long term (October) calls are still a good bet and you don't want to sell into an abyss..  sell some ES futures (S&P 500) or maybe even sell /CL (Oil futures) since DVN is an energy stock.  At some point when the think the near term selling is done or overdone, then remove your hedge.    Again the tricky part, hedges don't always work out.

Or Marketsniper gives a good example of TK having a Boatload of positions, and rather than trying to close them all down (perhaps at the worst time), simple put on an opposite hedge.  Then you can address them at a time and rate of your choosing, or maybe just ride through a blip.  

I rarely have more than 4 to 7 positions, for me between watching the positions and watching the market "guts", the internals and other custom indicators I have developed, it just doesn't work for me to try to run more positions.   I would rather run fewer and bigger positions in more liquid issues.

And you don't have to use futures to hedge, you could use an equity index, or options.   But with futures you get a lot of bang for your buck and you can put them on after hours and on Sunday.

Cable still a long

Check this Egg and Bernoulli Bounce YaHOoooo!   just doesn't get any more clearcut than that.


TSLA 10% gainer and all green

Rare day, got 7 positions and they are all green, the longs AND the shorts.
AFter posting that....I saw that BPT had updated their TSLA chart and put it on their blog....good heads up on the potential gap fill, now in the gap. Make it more likely to take some off table or tight stop in for the AM Or maybe do a "stink sell" in afterhours and see if someone really really wants to buy this stock.
I got this whole post from TF metals, me and my historian friend started in 2005 with the "sure looks like the end of an empire" a few people thought we were nuts, and we knew most people weren't even ready to here that as the dance twirled on. Tainter's video lecture on "Collapse of Complex societies" - easy to listen, interesting and highly recommended. No easy ways out of the decline of complex society-either radically new cheaper energy source now or pillage (increasing the empire). Current synapse of his book from 1988 I recommended earlier: I put the video links in the right order, from 1 to 5, each about 14 minutes, very easy to understand/interesting to listen. Includes debasement of currency in ancient Rome before collapse and its today's analogies, but that is not the main point. I buy his explanation in diminishing returns and needs for subsidies (free lunch aka fossil fuels giving access to accumulated solar energy) to sustain increasingly complex societies and grow them economically: 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) I think in our fast connected global environment things are happening and will happen faster, including increase of complexity to maintain status quo and inability to carry the costs. I will put it in my chart forum so that these basic concepts are easy to find.

Sunday, July 15, 2012

3 trade ideas from BPT

Really think about signing up for Breakpoint Trades service, well worth it. Use the link on the right side of this blog, they extend my monthly term, I appreciate that.


Steve from BPT posted these at 10PM on Sunday night, hard workers those guys, and many of these turn into profits, 60% to 80%, so if you are managing risk OK, that can lead to good and fairly consistent results.

WOW! Dabama of all time

Obama Tells Business Owners
'You Didn't Build That' in Speech

  • Obama suggests business owners owe their success to government investment in infrastructure and other projects in speech to supporters, saying 'if you've got a business, you didn't build that.' 

    As business owner/developer, I am aghast that any human with a pulse could make a statement like this.    The entrepreneurs deserve nearly no credit, and all credit should be given to the govertnment.     What an incredible insult.

    We need to cut government size by 40% immediately.   

    Anyone this out of touch with reality should be removed from office, without waiting for an election to do so.

Long Cable, Long TSLA