SUPER BULLISH INTO MONDAY

I went in light for the session, after achieving robust gains on Thursday and didn’t begin my trading until after 1pm, at which point markets traded lower. You might’ve been in a position like this before, whereby the session looks great but you got in late and at the onset of any material intraday pullback, you yourself feel retarded for entering trades.

Truth is, there is nothing we can do about these things. It happens. There isn’t a need to panic, unless of course you feel something has changed. In my case, I ended the session at my lows down 54bps. My Quant was +104bps and my strategic +65bps. For the week, I had limited gains in trading, but up 2 to 4% in Quant and Strategic. My trading performance is usually less than those static accounts during gigantic bounces, because I am usually not partaking in wanton losses when markets trade down. On the whole, I do better than the static accounts, as indicated by my +13% gain vs the 4 to 6% YTD returns in the other accounts.

I’d like to become better, braver, at delving into oversold tapes and the irony of me having an oversold algorithm at my disposal is not lost on me. I’ve gotten so accustomed to my trading method that I am sometimes stubborn and do not like to deviate. But if I could time this mean reversions better I could likely double my annual gains, which is something for me to think about.

I haven’t lost confidence in spite of underperforming this week. I know my methods work and it’s only a matter of time before I bust loose again.

I ended the week 109% leveraged long. Before you ponder about how I could be so grim one second and the next fantasyland ecstatic about stocks, you should know that I express myself in a hyperbolic way and often do not actually mean what I say in the literal sense. Those who are in Stocklabs understand that COLLAPSE is always occurring, often at the same time I am 100% long. There is a difference between how my soul feels and what my mind makes my body do, if you can grasp that, which I doubt since most of you are 95 IQ NPCs who get angry when woken up.

At any rate, for the time being, I am bullish. But, if you must know, I can change my mind quite literally in minutes, as I am entitled to do so since I am master of my domain and you’re just a peasant reader.

Have a pleasant weekend.

It appears markers are sashaying towards new highs, seemingly immune to all of the horrors. The earnings are all that matters, after all and America the Empire is global and wide and pervasive. Our largest companies profit from the hegemony and bring back their earnings and convert them back into robust dollars.

Meanwhile, the oversold algorithms in Stocklabs appears to have called a bottom last week. I must admit, it’s never easy blindly following these oversold signals, as it feels akin to walking into a building on fire. ‘Why the fuck should I buy now, because the computer said so? No thanks, pal.’

But here we are spinning higher.

Our 12mo duration for the $QQQ is the one I was waiting to see materialize but had in mind we might be seeing a character change in markets and had prepared for an even lower algo reading. When I see these signals my chief concern is always ‘is this dip like the others or unique, like COVID or the financial crisis or even the Russian invasion rout?’ Every so often markets will blow through the oversold and COLLAPSE the fuck lower and it’s because of those occurrences that I remain on edge about them.

All in all, the data is pretty convincing over the past 5 years.

My assessment is, markets should continue higher into mid next week.

Your cortisol is through the roof, river boat gambling like a degenerate on earnings that you glean zero edge, totally bereft of insider information. The difference between a person, such as myself, and you is that I bet on sure things.

I closed the session +161bps in what will only be described here as ‘controlled and persistent excellence’, totally washing away yesterdays tragedy.

As I approached the final hour of trade I was faced with a dilemma: ‘should I press the press the gas and go full steam into an array of earnings announcements or comport myself like a gentleman?’

Some of you are glibly reading this saying to yourself ‘well I played $GOOGL and won’. But it’s your behavior and the habits you repeat that will be your eventual downfall. Because next time instead of dropping $30k on $GOOGL earnings, it’ll be $INTC and your shadow will be cast and plastered on a building after nuking yourself to zero.

I can speak like this to you, because I am entitled and quite frankly none of you are better than me.

Good day.

Only long, 64% cash.

Doing my scans last night I noticed serious technical damage in a number of seemingly well to do companies, which got me thinking about the market. Last year the market was 100% shit until November, with gains only concentrated the “Mag 7.” I haven’t thought about whether these stocks are ‘deals’ or a forward looking indicator into what might eventually lead to a much worse broader market.

Here are some that stood out for me.

1mo losses

$ULTA down 25%
$CELH down 22%
$LULU down 22%
$AMD down 19%
$ADSK down 15%
$BMY down 15%
$EQIX down 13%
$OKTA down 12%
$CRL down 12%

3mo losses

$ZS down 23%
$ADBE down 20%
$SNOW down 18%
$MELI down 17%
$TEAM down 16%
$AKAM down 14%
$PANW down 12%
$SHOP down 12%

6mo losses

$ON down 27%
$BABA down 11%
$DEO down 10%
$NTES down 10%
$ILMN down 9%

Obviously the Gods were toying with me yesterday and gave back all of my losses and left a tip for me today. With Zuck getting CLEAVED and markets spiraling lower, my $UVIX and $TZA positions skyrockets. And, at the open of trade, even the $ERX went higher, netting me a gain of +153bps.

I am now nestled in 100% cash, watching all of you race back and forth, attempting to make sense of it all. Some of us struggle from birth to grave, and others lead charmed lives. I am of the latter and tell you this as a reminder to never bet against me when it comes to the stock market. The wins just come very easily for me and it’s extremely rare when I am not winning on a continuous basis.

At any rate, I am in no rush to spoil the big victory and will bide my time reentering the tape. Things look dreadful, but I doubt they won’t stay that way, especially when considering the dollar carry trade and all of the foreign money being applied here to jimmy stocks higher.

My original assumption was correct, to be long staples like $PEP and $KO. But because in the morning I saw high beta rallying whilst low beta took on water, I assumed, incorrectly, that a rotation into risk was underway. Everything I did exacerbated my losses and I closed at rock bottom session lows of down 145bps.

When I had rallied midday to down 88bps, I knew then that I’d slink back to the lows and even lower. It wasn’t because I was an idiot or because I had suddenly forgotten how to trade, but because I knew it was my fate.

I am often regaled with ceremonial COLLAPSES in my portfolio, greatly maligned by the Gods, mocked even, during periods of transition. Because I could not figure it out, I went from cash to highly leveraged and right back to cash, with longs only in the oil ETF $ERX and the rest in $TZA and $UVIX. If the Gods are truly evil, then they’ll crush oil lower and run up the small caps on me, all but cementing my losses for April. At the present, I am down 1% for the month, after early on achieving gains of +5%.

I guess what you’re reading for is more my take on things and less on whatever the fuck problems I am having seeing this tape. But I don’t give a fuck what you want and do as I please when I want to do it.

If you must know, I hated today’s tape and truly despise everything about the idea of stocks climbing higher as bonds get smacked. No, this is not how it’s supposed to be. You do not get to eat your cakes and have them too. You will eat that cake, you fat fuck, and get fatter and slower and then I’ll beat you to death because you weren’t agile enough to defend yourselves against the onslaught.

I want vengeance and I want it to be primordial, cosmic even. The Middle Ages Catherine wheel stuff doesn’t do it for me anymore. I want your planet vaporized and sucked into a fucking black hole, matter crushed under the forces of extreme gravity, planets tossed into one each other like they were tennis balls, bouncing off the moon and directly into the fucking sun at the speed of light.

Tesla is up sharply post earnings, after the company reported a much larger than expected FCF beat and pitched the idea of the company not being an auto company but a robotic AI play. On the news, shares of $UBER are sharply lower, since Tesla is focusing on ROBOTAXIS. I don’t see how this adversely affects $UBER but the stock is lower and so the fuck am I.

We are seeing a very odd rotation out of secular/risk off names and mildly into high beta, but not quite. We are vacillating here, churning up fools like me and spitting them out like sunflower seeds. I am hammered lower 118bps and wit each move I make, I exacerbate the situation.

Presently, both my longs and shorts have moved against me in unison, as the Gods punish me for sport. If I sold everything right now, they’d all trade up, long and shorts together. All of the things I rotated into this morning is down more than 1.5%, whilst the secular stuff I sold is slightly higher. Clearly the move was premature and now I pay for the sins in spades.

I just moved to 57% cash and sold the losers from the morning, which is likely to now spike the market due to my 18% short position in the inverses. I’ve endured these pangs before and will endure them again. The market is an unforgiving bitch when wrong and if I was smart I’d get real small real fast and try to avoid thinking I could make it all back today because clearly I haven’t the slightest fucking clue about this tape right now.

Some of my peers are obsessed with their returns on a day to day basis. My view is: life is long and many things can happen. What might appear to be a gift today is an albatross tomorrow. I used to compare myself to others, benchmarks like the $QQQ and become morose when underperforming. But once you’ve achieved an unshakable confidence in your abilities fully knowing that on a long enough time frame things will spill your way – the only benchmark you have to measure against is time.

Today I made only 59bps, giving up 40bps in gains from an intraday peak. My longer term accounts, which are static, were higher by 1.5%. On the surface, this is miserable performance. But on a longer time horizon, my trading is +0.4% for April, compared to down 5.5% for my strategic and +13.5% for 2024 vs +4.5%.

Today could’ve been a +5% day for me had I concluded yesterday this was going to happen. I could’ve placed my entire account in $TNA and bask in my riches today. But that would be poor form and decorum, an unsustainable trading method that will undoubtedly lead to ruin.

Everyone has their methods and we are teeming with strong opinions about the future. But one thing about trading which is universal and not up for debate is position sizing portfolio volatility. I’ve said it a million times and I’ll say it once more for sincerity: position sizes should not be more than 5 to 7% for pros and for amateurs 3%. Overall portfolio beta should not be greater than 2 and more often, even for aggressive trading, be more than 1.5x.

Into tomorrow, I am 6% cash, 5% hedged via $LABD and the rest long, looking for a bit more in this bounce.

It’s very pathetic that us humans allow you bears to still be free amongst civilized folk. You have been messing things up for some time now and it’s not fair for the rest of us that you exist, freely. Might I propose we send you back to whence you came or perhaps hold you in a zoo so that you can shit all over the place and be amongst like minded bears?

The marker rout has ended. Anyone pretending the bears will make a miraculous comeback are deluded and should be sent to the zoo as well.

There is in fact ZERO chance stocks will trade down this week. With the breakout clean and picking up steam, you should expect nothing less than exuberance into the close.

As much as it pains me to admit it, markets are breaking out again. Barring this post timing an exact top in markets, it appears to me, an expert eye, markets are readying to bust loose to the upside again.

Many of you zealots are already in and might be taking profits here and that’s fine. But I was waiting for an 80% up day with breakouts across multiple sectors and here we are. I’m 80% deployed with 20% reserved for an afternoon dip.

God willing tricks are not played on me and my visions are accurate. If not, I’ll figure it out one way or another.