GOING CLEAN — GIVING UP DRUGS

I sold out of CRON today, officially ending my spate as a Canadian drug dealer. I booked 11.2% profits in the process.

Also, I stopped out of NANO for a very evil 6.66% loss.

More interestingly, I compiled the new Exodus Quant portfolio for September, all allocated to small caps. Wish me luck.

Finally, I am 55% cash, uninterested in rushing trades, eagerly awaiting in the tall grass for an opportune to rip into some bloody flesh.

I don’t even need to click on the news — it’s bait. Trump doesn’t like Canada and will etch out a deal with Mexico first just to fuck with Trudeau. He’s a very spiteful and vindictive man, as are most billionaire megalomaniacs.

Futures are soft ahead of trading — but Canadian pot stocks are smoking higher — as apathy washes over Canada and the people take to bong hits to suppress their wanton melancholy over being out of Trump’s good graces.

CRON is higher by 10%+. Lucky for me, I’m long.

I have some family matters to attend to today, so my blogging will be hit or miss. I will, however, being managing my portfolio via Exodus.

God damn some of you people, fools playing with charts in the digital age. Let me guess, you drive to work in a horse and carriage too — apply leeches to your face when you’re feeling ill, and you drink large tallboys filled with buttermilk in the morning — because it’s good for you.

The Sharpe ratio is a metric often met with widespread ridicule — because it’s not properly used. In portfolio management, it expresses how much risk and skill a manager exhibits. On an individual stock level, it’s merely a technical indicator — a damned good one too.

You know damned well financial advisors suck the dicks off anything with high Sharpes, so you might as well become familiar with how it works and what it produces.

In Exodus, we apply the Sharpe to everything. It’s the Swiss army knife of technical indicators. Check this out. Year to date returns of stocks with Sharpe’s above 2 versus under 1.

Sharpe over 2: +60%

Sharpe under 1: -4.5%

Congratulations, you played yourself.

Don’t worry, this time will be different.

I’d like to interrupt your Labor Day weekend with a grim blog post, one that paints a lovely picture of acute catastrophe.

We’ve all been blessed with a stock market that has behaved abnormally to the upside. It’s a circus freak show, with side show clowns like Citron Research attempting to juggle clay jars of nitroglycerine, only to find themselves armless nuggets with their heads on fire.

Gone are the days of concern, an adult prescription for handling excess. We drive into the fire with our cars loaded with dynamite sticks and come out the other end in sail boats drinking gimlets and donning sea captain attire, hats and all.

Traditionally the month of September has been a ruinous one for NasdaqFAGS. As you can see by the graph above, it’s the one month of the year that should be feared. As such, Le Fly enters September 100% long in his Quant account, and almost 50% cash in his active. I endeavor to invest it all during the first week of September, however, since the stock Gods are shit and have zero control over my fate. I do this in the name of winship. Nothing can ever stop me, ever.

Back to your Labor Day BBQ, grillFAGS.

Some of you are reading me for the first time in a few months, having summered off the coast somewhere — exacting your manifest upon property and consuming anything in your path — leading the hedonistic lifestyle you were born to enjoy. Champagne’d flutes and lobster’d rolls. The good times have been enjoyable and money has helped make life easier, better.

Whilst gone, the account did splendidly and now you’re ready for Autumn trading. As the leaves brown and the weather teases into frost, your intention is to accelerate the summer returns and sled thru the winter months into a rich, fat, Santa Claus.

Another segment of you are angry, having spent the entire summer indoors — watching bad teevee, drinking stale beer, dry roasted beef. For whatever reason, you were unable to vacation and now you hate the taste of everything. The people are drab and the iced cream ordinary. Nothing pleases you now because you wanted more before. You’re getting older, fatter, and disappointment seems to lurk around every bend.

Your summer trading was mediocre at best, having missed out on most of the gains busy being cynical and malevolent — and now you’re taking your work home with you — ruining the mood in the house with your dark, brooding presence.

I just described two extremes, one person happy and euphoric, optimistically rolling into Autumn with a head filled with blue steam — because life is pleasant and the results of optimism have yielded a truly bountiful harvest.

The other person is bogged down in the dreary amber of melancholy. Life is filled with toil, hard knocks, and failed attempts, which often breaks spirits and causes a once dreamful person to settle for less.

I know it’s hard to do, easier said than done — but you have to extricate yourselves from whatever mood you’re in when trading. My biggest mistakes have always happened after a dour mood, or a euphoric rise, leading to excess risk taking, or the opposite — zero participation in a tape filled with opportunity.

This isn’t canned re-purposed life advice from someone without experience. I’ve been harassed by the black dog my entire life and understand the blazing intoxication that is often paired with outstanding outperformance. Consistency is the most important attribute in any business, so figure out how to do it. Be conscience of it and work towards equanimity.

Happy Saturday and drink some gimlets for the sake of preventing scurvy — a celebration of good health.

The cyber ark — you fucking clowns.

Bought CYBR here without fear, two balls on the table speed chopping one carrot as fast as I can.

Now that I’m no longer in the business, I relish the idea of destroying financial advisory firms, leaving them in tatters and also in ruins. Naturally, if you adopt my quantitive models or your own inside Exodus — you are exempt from my wrath and I’ll also assist you in using it to raise assets.

All that aside, I’m proud to announce the Exodus Quant Alpha Strategy crushed the market again in August, netting a return over 5% — more than 200bps better than the SPY. If you’re curious about it and want to know how I’m doing it — take a free trial and request a demo. I’ll talk your ear off about it and extol its virtues live and in person.

Here are the returns per month, YTD.

August: 5.1% (not final)
July: 2.25%
June: -0.41%
May: +4.5%
April: +1.04%
March: +0.5%
February: -6.1%
January: +6.1%

Net return YTD: +13.2%
SPY return: +8.6%

My active account is up much more than that and I enjoy doing it a lot more — but this isn’t designed for outrageous returns, simply an unemotional approach to asset management using big data and AI to navigate markets, in an attempt to trend follow as well as front run big asset allocations.

So far, so good.

I’ve got a new store and I sell nothing but Lulu Lemon fagWEAR, maple syrup, and of course cannabis. I sell it for medicinal purposes, so that people could get stoned and laugh at things that aren’t really funny.

It’s healthy to smoke pot — because it kills your braincells and ensures you’re not smart enough to worry about life. As you know, stress is the #1 killer, responsible for all sorts of ailments. Do yourselves a favor, go to your local dispensary and acquire some drugs. You can eat them in food, inject them, or simply smoke them. The young whipper snappers like to vape these days, get stoned, and then eat a lot of Mexican food or sloppy Joes. Back when I was a teen, we’d roll blunts and then eat Chinese food, watch some movies, and morph into philosophers and men of letters.

Now that I am old and an odious monster of a man, I do not have an interest in getting high. It’s not becoming of a man of 42, ugly, and bald. Instead, I am the proud owner of shares of CRON and will now profit from the demise of Canadian braincells on an industrial scale.

The trade is simple: sell after this move has exhausted itself, not a second sooner. Stop is at $9. Other stocks in sector moving include TLRY and CGC.

I don’t give a fuck and have no problem riding this into parabolic territory, which would be above $14.

I talk a lot of shop here and I like to boast and brag about my victories; but here’s some advice that will cost you money and without the specter of profit.

Do something fun this weekend.

If you have a family, it’s easy to decide what to do. Visit a park with rides, a beach resort, or take a trip to see something beautiful. But many of you are also single, internet creatures who haven’t the slightest idea what to do with your spare time. I am here to help.

If you live inside a major city, go enjoy the arts, museums, galleries, and then treat yourself to a 3 star Michelin dinner. While single, you might as well improve yourselves with a little culture and experience.

If you live in a suburban hell-zone, might I suggest hopping on an airplane to a major city and doing exactly what I just suggested above?

Other things to do:

Visit mansion museums of historical relevance (Newport, RI, Asheville, NC)
Best beaches in America (Florida, Maine, Cape May, NJ, Delaware, Carolinas)
Golf
Go on tour to find the best lobster rolls in the Northeast
Visit a great park and go for a long hike or bike ride
White water rafting
Paint gun shooting
Zip lines

Botton line: go outside and get some sun. It’s good for you and you’ll feel better for it. Add a little variety to your otherwise monotonous schedule.

As an aside, markets look fine. Exodus Quant returned upwards of 5.5% for August, 200bps better than SPY. Come take a free trial or join now and get the picks for September, which will be executed on Tuesday of next week.

No one knows what exactly is the end game here with the tariffs. I am beginning to suspect he doesn’t want to broker deal, but instead have the taxes in order to reduce the deficit. If you recall, Trump is the one who wanted to remove tariffs with the EU — now it isn’t good enough.

The European Union is coming to Washington tomorrow to negotiate a deal on Trade. I have an idea for them. Both the U.S. and the E.U. drop all Tariffs, Barriers and Subsidies! That would finally be called Free Market and Fair Trade! Hope they do it, we are ready – but they won’t!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 25, 2018

Source: ZH

EU olive branch.

“We said that we are ready from the EU side to go to zero tariffs on all industrial goods, of course if the U.S. does the same, so it would be on a reciprocal basis,” Malmström told the European Parliament’s trade committee. Sending the ball in the Trump’s court, she said that “we are willing to bring down even our car tariffs down to zero … if the U.S. does the same,” adding that “it would be good for us economically, and for them.”

And Trump garbage can.

“It’s not good enough,” Trump told Bloomberg News during his extended interview, in response to the EU proposal. The reason: “their consumer habits are to buy their cars, not to buy our cars.”

Trump then said that the “the European Union is almost as bad as China, just smaller.”

If we are to go down this road and protectionism is truly the narrative for 2019, you’re gonna want to allocate into small caps, who are largely exposed to the domestic market, immune to the pangs of trade war.