Assessing Risk

Let’s quickly analyze risk.

Are FX crosses wonky?

No

Are commodity prices out of control?

Mixed.

Sugar is +31% YTD, Cocoa +16%, and Coffee +15%. However, natty is -50% YTD, nickel -21%, and wheat -14%.

The most important commodity oil is about flat.

Are yields spiking, potentially causing more bank failures and potential housing collapse?

NOT ANYMORE.

The US 10yr is at 3.43% and TLT is now +7.4% for 2023.

As far as I can tell, we have two things that can derail markets and send them into another panic.

1. Ukrainian war

2. Major earnings misses.

The latter should not be ignored and although the major factors that determine risk have abated — these things can move quickly should earnings come in much worse than expected. We will shift from inflation fears to deflation overnight and the Fed will then be expected to cut rates, which may or may not be applauded by Wall St — wholly dependent on the severity of the drawdowns.

For now, and ahead of any major reports, markets will trade on momentum.

Listen to me. You were warned in advance of an impending rally from America’s biggest bear and did nothing about it. Now your losses are strewn across your portfolios as you listen to former hedge fund managers on acid for your top ideas. The past of maximum resistance is the path we’re on. The spring mud will soon harden under drought and the wheels of war will hasten, so you ought to be ready for breakouts.

My gains amount to +225bps for the session and it would’ve been a lot more — had I actually traded from the open. Nevertheless, the indices might not be ripping higher — but the smaller capped high risk plays are indeud soaring and at the vanguard is BTC. To play this, I had some IREN at the open but have now moved onto others, such as WULF and SDIG. I have hedged my portfolio with a 20% SQQQ position to arb the divergence between oil stocks/higher risk and large cap tech. This week’s quant is heavily leaning towards oil stocks.

When you’re reading me and following me you’re also following a consummate professional — a man very capable of making money in any market at any time. It’s not very hard and if you’d only listen and shut the fuck up — you too can set aside your feeeeeeelings and trade well.

Expect marginally healthy markets from now until June, at which point the war in Europe will take a turn for the worse and jitters will creep back into the equity valuations. We have a small window available to us, in between inflation scares, bank scares, and war scares. The incompetency of the US ruling class all but ensures an eventual cataclysmic ending to this story. However difficult to understand, you will need to accept that the fact that we have been, and have always been, the bad guys.

I closed +118bps for the session. With a portion of the proceeds, I will venture off to COST to procure dry goods for the coming fires. Know that I have your best interest at heart and will help anyone, providing they ask.

127% leveraged long into the close, no hedges.

You might be Mcfooled into shorting stocks — but not me. I see pennies are +1.4% for the session and Bitcoin is busting loose to the upside. On top of that, seasonal factors demand we pretend Pax American is back in vogue.

Into the final hours, I am likely to leverage up long without hedges. This is hubris speaking and I know it, but I don’t see how anyone can stop me.

Mega and Tera caps are weak — but this is a trap. The risk part of the market is on fire and the bears have had ample time to bring down the market and have failed. I’m afraid time has run out for the bears and they’ll soon be hunted with gunpowder and sent to the taxidermist for a proper stuffing.

Morning dips will always rip. Morning rips will always dip.

Remember these words for the remainder of your lives. I sold out of my entire portfolio in the morning, as I do each Monday, with exception to BTC which is a permanent long. I’m up 52bps thanks to my very large short positions. However, markets are now recovering from early losses and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it go green.

The news is almost immaterial. There is nothing to celebrate other than the mechanical process of wanting higher stock prices. In a perfect world, stocks would plummet and never recover. But we live in a post modernist hellscape where trannies rule over us and fashionable dinner parties now serve Bud Light.

I am eternally bearish, but constructive.

I’ll be reinvesting the Stocklabs trading account after 12pm.

Happy Easter lads, lassies.

I wanted to remind many of you that success, like all things, withers and eventually wanes. No matter how good you are, even me, over a long enough time line — you will falter. Knowing this and taking into account the various ways a man can draw down, the most important thing for you to remember is to never place yourself in a position to BLOW THE FUCK UP.

Men usually do this out of greed or desperation. You might’ve lost a million and now only have $50k and feeeeel the only way back is to take outsized risk. The more likely scenario is you’ll zero out that $50k attempting a gambit. You’d be wise to proceed according to ze plan and grow it over the next decade — trying to achieve 30-50% returns per annum.

For example, if you invested $50k and added $1,000 per mo to it for the next decade, returning 35% per annum, your account will be $1.7m by 2033.

Whilst 35% is an outrageous 10 year average, it’s certainly achievable — unlike the 10,000% option gambits that so many of you try and flop out of — zeroing out unceremoniously in true vagabond fashion.

Let us take this season of renewal to reset expectations and goals and attempt to build real wealth over many years. I, as always, will be here attempting to figure it out with you and excel in a manner that appears to the layman to be nothing short of magical.

My allergies have receded and my health is once again excellent, my mood superb. I will see you troglodytes tomorrow during the trading session.

It’s a very cold and rainy day in NC. This is a good thing since it means my seasonal allergies will be relieved and I can get back to trading well on Monday. I’ve dispatched the Indians to redesign iBankCoin — but it’s taking much longer than expected. Hopefully we can finish the job before May and finally get a new look around here.

As for stocks: I offer no predictions because they’re meaningless. We know the market is bad and we know it can also rally, so we have to play it day by day.

Come May, I depart for Europe to see it before it gets destroyed. I figured now is a nice opportunity to take pictures in front of Harrods, Eiffel Tower, and the Tower of Pisa before they’re gone.

On other areas of concern, I am still reading avidly, now into Le Carre novels, Camille by Dumas — and several others. There is never a pause in my reading.

The news out there is pretty fucking wild in America, as the trannies bust loose from their mental asylums and wreak havoc across the landscape. There isn’t a political solution to any of our decadent problems, so I’d rather not engage with people with different views in an effort to change them. I don’t want to change anyone — but I can live in equanimity amongst nearly anyone — providing you are peaceful and don’t partake in wanton acts of degeneracy.

On the war front, it appears Ukraine is plotting for its next big adventure to defeat Russian forces. Imagine being tasked with the job to dislodge a far superior foe in fortified zones in a war that is systemic to them. It’s hard to see how we don’t get involved with this war at some point, with troops on the ground.

Since the weather is shitty, I’ll use the day to read, shop for food, and clean up.

We can only hope and pray that over the weekend something truly dreadful afflicts US markets and we open LIMIT DOWN come Monday. Due to my allergies, I shed 1.4% today and ended the week -3% for the week. My YTD returns have been REDUCED to just 36.2%.

What’s important to understand about trading is the emotional tumult of being in a slump and needing to do certain things to trade out of it. You will never trade out of it by being in cash or “taking some time off” like an extreme pussy.

When it comes to trading out of slumps, I am a foremost expert. In all of the slumps I’ve ever traded out of, zero of them occurred whilst being cautious. I had to take the lumps and continue to take the lumps until muscle memory kicked in and forced survival instincts to kick in.

If you want mediocre returns, just buy the indices and fuck off. If you want to make 50%+ returns per annum, you’ll need to slowly cultivate and carefully curate your methods to both appreciate and accentuate the subtle nuances that makes a great trader. I am a great trader, only because I am a sponge and consume information like no one else. If I wasn’t a sponge and curious about everything, I’d probably get mugged during every downturn and relegate myself to ETFs like many men who pretend they don’t have enough time to focus on their fucking life savings.

Next week I will make it back, and much more.

I am hedged about market neutral to slight short bias into the very long and tumultuous weekend to come.

Do not worry, I am still trading poorly. I had a hedge on from the open and kept it for most of the morning run, and it negated all of my gains and kept me down for the session — off by 85bps. If we should dive lower from here, I might find myself either revisiting SQQQ for a second clubbing or perhaps none at all and just preside, if you will, over my portfolio as it swims lower.

It is true, I am flippant about my losses — only because I realize my slump is temporary — the result of being afflicted by seasonal allergies which has caused me to be disabled. I will be parking in handicap spots for the foreseeable future.

Easter is coming which means I go to church, pretend to enjoy the taste of communion, and pretend to be religious. I do this about once per annum. When I was a boy I was an altar boy and the whole nine yards. I used to help priests at mass and in return they’d be discourteous to me. It was a good relationship — until I got older and said “fuck this shit” and never went back again. Then I became what some might describe agnostic and then an atheist and now I’m back to agnostic — only because being an aethiest is also a religion and I’m not a fan of organized religions. I have a personal credo which speaks to morality and treating others as you would expect to be treated.

For example: If someone broke into my home, I’d shoot them and that’s exactly how I’d expect to be treated if I wandered into your home to help myself to some of your personal belongings. It’s important to be fair to one another, help when possible, and try not to get in anyone’s way. If you’re getting into the way of others, you should fuck off and become an altar boy or something equally useless.

Everyone is talking about the dollar collapsing, which is voodoo for us professionals. Now that you’ve said it, it won’t happen. The dollar is relatively stable, considering the FOMC will likely pause before the ECB. It doesn’t matter if BRICS establishes their own trading block without dollars, as long as the main centers of wealth (Europe and Japan) still use dollars.

I cowered in my bed until 11am because I was afflicted with severe seasonal allergies. I find that when I am like this, it’s best to pretend being dead aka sleeping — because when that happens I suffer less. When I was awoken by a dream of mine of car horns bellowing out — I immediately sneezed and saw I was down 1.57%.

I did a little of this, little of that — and closed down 89bps for the session — placing me DOWN 1.57% for April. I am officially in a trading slump. Oh no — how will I ever get my mojo back?

Maybe I should read some books on charts or perhaps SIFT THROUGH 5,000 of them tonight over a bottle of wine to find patterns that will make me money! Or, maybe I’ll listen to some experts on a podcast and then listen to some hedge fund professionals about their secrets to success!

The market did an interesting thing today and I feeeeeeel like I was wrong to be bearish early on. Rates collapsing means less pressure on banks means higher prices. With rates dropping, this is also bullish for secular stocks.

So I did two things.

1. Eliminated all hedges.
2. LEVERAGED THE FUCK UP ON SECULAR STOCKS and a few banks.

I closed at 140% leveraged long into the final day of this holiday festooned week.