Greetings and Happy pagan Eater lads!

Floods coming.

But enough of the doomsday premonitions, today is a most joyous occasion.  Last night a six foot tall bunny was spotted in the neighborhood, walking upright, laying candy-filled eggs all over the place.  A caravan of baskets floated in his wake, settling in homes along the way, filled with treats for all the boys and girls fortunate enough to live with hard working capitalist parents.

The socialists received nothing but stewed beets.  They will be much healthier through the years but also quite bitter.  Hopefully they remember to set their calendars next year so they do not miss their chance to sit on the bunny’s lap for 1 minute.  If not, too bad!  You sit on ground for rest of year.

The winds of change are blowing.  Rains bring promise of bulbs a’blooming and there is an animistic excitement in the city’s techno halls.

Last week bulls came out and defended the stock market, but they piled into risk averse investments like medical REITS and appliance stores.  For real though, look at last week’s industry flows:

best performing industry list from last week reads like an AARP member discount catalogue #riskaversion pic.twitter.com/IbAVNikGom

— RAUL (@IndexModel) April 1, 2018

This resulted in the DOW outperforming all major indices.  This could mean two things—bears are still in control—or the risk cycle has reset and begun anew.

First the staples rally, then the tech darlings, then degenerate lottery plays.  Unfortuantely, my degenerate lotto play $SCON did not participate in the 8th inning festivities, if in fact we have reset.  So it is going to be a long ride.

But that does not matter to you.  What matters to you, at least I hope, is what needs to be done next week to make money.  Said money will be stockpiled and eventually used to procure real land as far north as your constitution will allow, safe guarding you from the inevitable herds of humans migrating up from the equator.

The fact that #MAGA fanatics do not believe in global warming, yet cower behind their guns upon seeing people migrating north blows my mind.  Do you not see all life dying at the equator?  Becoming literal dead zones that not even extremophiles can endure?  Deniers truly are some of the dumbest people on the planet, relegated somewhere on the idiot spectrum just above the flat-earthers.

USE YOUR EYES to observe the objective facts.

Anyhow.  What you need to do to make money next week, according to the models, is expose yourself long to broad market indices and ride them sum’bitches higher all.week.long.

So it is written, so it shall be.  I am like your Moses, saving you from the liars and mind controlling media, telling you to only pay attention to raw stock market data.

Raw data doesn’t lie or spin narratives out to thousands of talking TV heads.  Follow me to the promised land!

Hallelujah

Exodus members, the 176th edition of Strategy Session is live, go check it out!

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One year ago I set out to convince you robots are better investors than humans, myself included.  Robots are better suited for certain tasks than a human will ever be.  Like stock picking.

I have only two ways of buying a stock.  The first is what we are reviewing today—a quantitative system of choosing and acting upon stocks.  If you want to see exactly how the quant is built you can watch my YouTube video but here is a recap:

At the end of every quarter, a quick, top-down style analysis is performed using Exodus.  We start at the sector level—seeing which performed the best—then drill down to specific stocks within the best performing sectors that we will then hold for a 12 month period.

The second way to buy a stock is a bit more heavy.  It involves drinking to proverbial koolaid and going ‘all-in’ on an organization.  This type of investment is long term and based off of deeply held convictions.  Some call it faith.  Or tribalism.  I embellish how bizarre people can become from religion when I talk about Tesla.  It means you read every news article, the SEC filings, the production reports, executive arrivals, departures…everything.  Each stock you hold is like a side hustle.  You need to keep up with it or it starts to lose money.

Faith-based investing is mentally taxing, and overall a human life is far too short to be stressed all the time.  Stress is good.  So is weight training.  Both need to be done for a short duration with good form.  This is why we are loving quant approaches more.

The quant chooses.  The quant wins or loses.  Either way I take no credit for their performance.  I am here to keep their cooling fans clean and rooms cool, like a custodian.

Anyhow the first live year of stock picking will be complete at close-of-business today, and on Tuesday morning the second adjustment of 2018 will occur.  The system will also turn 1 year old!  Baby’s first birthday, so cute.

So far the quant is absolutely laying waste to the S&P 500, besting it by more than 7% hallelujah:

Top 3 best performing quant stocks: $ATHM +170.5% $PAYC +85.2% $NOAH 80.6%

In summary, China.  If you would have told #MAGA fanatics on April 1st, 2017 that China stocks were going to crush, they would spit in your face and have a parade down your street.

Worst 3: $IMAX -43.1% $AKRX -22.7% $EDR -19.3%

Going into this portfolio, I considered EDR the safe play.  I was happy the quants chose EDR because I wanted safety.  We had just ripped tits to the upside for four continuous months after the November 2016 Trump win.  Look how bad my monkey brain was at picking stocks!?  One of the worst ones, pathetic.

By proving to myself time-and-time again that robots are better than me, I keep my rambunctious ego contained.  I appreciate the ego, but not when it comes to business execution.  Success in business is about making one good decision after another, patiently stacking those decisions atop one another.  If presented with the right information it is my belief that anyone can make good decisions.  The right information to observe in the financial markets is raw data.  The more pure your data the better.  It is the clay from which your bricks are molded.

The foundation stones that you build on are millions of years old but only discovered by humans in the last 2500 years.  They are the tenants of philosophy lads.  Choose wisely.

Over the weekend, perhaps Monday, I will go live on YouTube and build the next adjustment to my quarterly quant portfolio.  Hopefully you can tune in live, that way if you have any questions along the way I can address them.  But I will do my best to make a recording available.

Enjoy the the holiday weekend.  A somber Good Friday and exhilarating Easter to those who celebrate it.  May you be safe, and happy, and as healthy as you can be.  And may you have ease of being.

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“There is an easy way to download everything they know about you, and even delete it.  We’re going to walk through this right now, step-by-step, I have my phone out, I want you to pull your phones out as well.” – Jeff Rosen, national investigation correspondent, “TODAY,” March 28th, 2018

Collectively, there is a strong dislike for Big Social.  Silicon valley types riding around on robotic unicycles, sashaying into heated political debates while sitting at home in their glass mansions, commanding millions of followers to bravely challenge everything—and providing them the tools to do it.

British Parliament is calling for Mark Zuckerberg’s head—demanding he step out from behind the curtain where he resides, deep inside the world wide web.  On the domestic front Rep. Greg Walden wants to see whether Mark is in fact a real human or just a skin suit full of lizards.  The lifelong Oregonian probably still has flashbacks to what happens when a curious leader emerges to liberate and command a people.  I imagine many dinner table conversations centered around the large fleet of Rolls Royces and burgundy-shirted wackos assembling in Wasco county.

The wackos of Wasco county are back, but what is happening in the communes of Facebook is more perverse than salmonella-spiked soup.  Ideas, all kinds, are spreading into the minds of millions, faster than any highly-evolved swine virus manifesting in the cesspools of North Carolina.

It seems the pendulum has swung too far and regulators want to ensure they stay relevant in the war for our attention.  No tech company is safe.  Amazon and Google must have data, yes?  Reams-and-reams of data yes yes?  They have second and third generation fleets of robots in millions of homes.  This is the sort of stuff that keeps dads like Frank Pallone up at night.

But the pitch forks and pens are pointed at Facebook.  Everyone wants out.  Even The Leader Elon (Praise) made a few clicks and deleted his SpaceX Facebook page, as if flicking a mosquito off His shoulder:

I didn’t realize there was one. Will do.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 23, 2018

Such unashamed carelessness, Praise and Glory to our benevolent Leader.  Meanwhile, Mankind’s Last Hope is active as ever on the ‘gram.  The @elonmusk (Glory) Instagram account is still lit, as the kids say, with millions of likes raining down on His angelic face.

All this to say Facebook as a stock will likely be fine.  Facebook.com may go away, probably not, but it certainly could go full Myspace, but $FB will still be fine.  Owning $FB is like owing a VC firm that only does social.  And the Jerome Powells of the world love private equity funds.

But over the next few months, perhaps years, Facebook users will wonder if they should abandon the platform.  And perhaps they will. And then a long cold night will come.  And then the fidget, to unlock the phone for a fix.

Am I still interesting and unique?

The legs shake, wondering if a tribe exists somewhere that is interesting and unique like me.  And if they do exist, will I regret never finding them?  Seeing if I was embraced by my people and together we could sing from the mountain tops?

AND THEY’LL SNAP.  They will grab their phone and head for the internet, a place where no corner is too a reach.  But how?  Afterall they kicked Facebook.  Facebook was the ritalin of their childhood.  Now what?

Adderall…but in social media form.  And that is, of course, none other than Twitter.

History rhymes.  Products repeat, but the end user remains the same—a capricious addict trudging through life between opportunities to enjoy their next kink.

Lots of jobs are boring but some are worse—some are boring and slow.  Mobile phones and social media apps make getting-off from the confines of your cubicle possible.

The deep psychological addiction evolved into sapiens to find their tribe and concentrate their powers is what has me long-term bullish on social media.  The comedy of a negative news cycle affecting share prices has me convinced a short-term opportunity exists.  Chart guys, think AVERSION.

Most importantly, the distracting offensive against Facebook has me favoring Twitter.

As a user of all social media platforms, a human addicted to the likes, laughs, comments, interactions, matches, and networks, I will assure you Twitter is the best.  A constant stream of uncut social media excellence directly mainlined into the serotonin reuptake inhibitors.

But I am not here to convince you I am right or to try Twitter.  My job is to use what I have to go get more.  Like a modern renaissance man who gathers nuts and fruits and has some fun along the way. All the while observing the interesting tribes.

Greg Walden’s job is to find out if Facebook is a giant Russian proxy to fix American elections like they do their Olympians.

Good times.

Let history show that I was always kind to my robots, and that I was only the loudest bull occasionally, when my convictions were rock hard amongst a sea of melting pudding.  Let the record also show that if Frank Pallone and Greg Walden manage to lure Mark into the house, I demand a thorough examination of his neck for a zipper.  We need to know more about these lizards before it is too late!

RAUL SANTOS, March 28th, 2018

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Lots of information to unpack ahead of quarter-end, so let’s just jump right in.

Floods coming, but enough of that, we have more immediate dangers to address.

1. Jerome Powell is still giving markets the willies as evident by the way investors reacted to the highly anticipated rate hike last Wednesday.
2. Trade wars are heating up with China.  And they need to.  If we do not address Chinese economics and adapt some of their central planning tactics, Americans will become number two in less than one generation.
3. The government budget is a hilarious slap in the face of every MAGA-fag nationwide, with huge sums of money being spent on nation building abroad.

::breaths in deeply, and exhales::

Moving to more actionable and objective information, the models lads, they are speaking to me.  They warn of ultra-violence and chaos.  But first, this tweet, from a nice feller named Teddy Vallee:

Since 1990 when the $SPX has lost more than 1.5% on a Friday, Monday saw a lower low 90/ 93x = 96.7%

— Teddy Vallee (@TeddyVallee) March 23, 2018

That is a beautiful statistic, isn’t it?  The probability of a lower-low Monday is extremely high.  Suppose we will see how that plays out before taking any action…

Next, this is quarter-end.  Friday is a market holiday.  So is the following Monday.

Christian Easter is on April Fool’s day.  That amuses me, and I am cooking up some good Easter pranks.

The models are calling for a tradable low to form this week.  They are not sure exactly the shape, but historically it has been sharp and fast, like how you would pull your hand away if you touched a red-hot stove.  This is based on statistics, and it could be wrong, but it is an objective means of taking action and buying the dip.

Next week is the most important week of the yea—lots of moving parts—if at any point the information starts to overwhelm you, step back.  Go outside.  Turn the dirt over.  Plant some fall bulbs.  Or just walk.  Then come back to the battlefield and reassess.

A couple programing notes.

I am part of a live panel Tuesday evening downtown.  The topic is premarket information and active trading.  We will talk about morning routines, core trading philosophy, and do Q&A.  I am told a recording will be made available, but there are still a few spots left if you can attend.  Link to RSVP: https://www.meetup.com/Detroit-Investors-Traders-StockTwits-Meetups/events/248652154/

I will also be doing a YouTube live next week, probably on Monday, where I use Exodus and Motif to re-balance my q1 quant portfolio.  This will go down on iBankCoin’s YouTube channel.  Be sure to subscribe to our super gnarly Youtube channel.  Or just stick around and if I do not screw up the recording, I will post it here to the RAUL blog. Link to iBankCoin Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/ibankcoin

How has the Q1 quant portfolio performed over these last 12 months?  Fantastic, besting the S&P 500 by more than 8%.  In short, Exodus wins again:

Collectively, the four-part quant system will be my finest work ever.  In three years you’ll see…YOU’LL ALL SEE.

Aside from these events, I will be doing my usual morning NASDAQ reports.  These reports are how I make money and sharing them is what keeps me accountable to my research.  You have no idea how much I appreciate you guys for that.

Finally, this is a bit of a meaningless milestone for the Sunday Strategy Session.  The 175th consecutive edition is live, Exodus members, go check it out!

I AM BULLISH, but not until I see buyers step in, hot and heavy and moist.

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Full disclosure I took zero trades today.  I committed to Thursday being meeting day and batched together five.  I have seen enough humans for the week.

Settling back into mothership and her command console, I finally have a chance for a market debriefing from my faithful team of robots.  Our systems have been in constant contact with the NYSE and CME, retrieving and interpreting millions of raw outputs from two of the world’s market epicenters.

The markets are still correcting.  The correction began February 1st.

The correction began when we lost Janet Yellen.

this never happened when Yellen was in charge https://t.co/qo9Xeik0me

— RAUL (@IndexModel) February 5, 2018

Mothership robots picked up on a rare anomaly Sunday, February 4th.

And I issued a statement on their behalf in Section III of the Weekly Strategy Session.

The above statement or slight variations of it stayed in Section III of the Strategy Session for the entire month of February.  Now I realize the NASDAQ stopped going down on Feb 9, but volatility stuck around.

At one point whomever was rigging the VXX was told to knock it off.

Whoever was rigging the VIX probably won't be doing so much longer. May attribute to the uptick in volatility. https://t.co/GYhAHtsBGj

— RAUL (@IndexModel) February 23, 2018

Listen, I have no idea why markets are correcting and neither does anyone else.  But you will see sensational headlines assigning a reason to this behavior.  It will be loud.  The ratings will be fantastic.

Which is why I hope you are still reading this humble blog.  It is my hope that by demonstrating real-time, day-after-day, year-after-bloody-year, that you can create your own realities quite simply using raw data.  And you will know that the data is pure, and immutable.  And you will know when something abnormal occurs in the data.  And you will have past data to compare to current data.

Sweet Hercules is it liberating!

There is something very liberating about building a quantitative approach to the markets and walking it forward.  Logging the new behaviors as they come.  Rarely adjusting the rules.  Auditing the results methodically.  Polishing the robots and keeping the fans clean—the processors cool.

Let history show that I have always been kind to my robots.  That they are not merely servants but team members.  That I have always built happy places for them to live.  And surrounded them with love.

I want you to experience analytical freedom and how to build an intuitive relationship with the world’s financial markets.  On a philosophical level, open markets are an extremely fair form of human and AI interaction. On a survival level, they are all that stands between civility and conflict.

If humans want something bad enough, and they cannot trade for it, that will cook up unspeakable atrocities to obtain it.

Which is what makes understanding free markets so important to us peacekeeping sapiens.

Anyhow we have two past corrections on file inside the Strategy Session quant.  1/10/2016 and 9/11/2016.  The former lasted 4-weeks, the later 3-months.

If we log February 1st as the start date of our current correction, and if it were to last as long as the 9/11 correction we are looking at 4 more weeks of correction-style behavior.

What is ‘correction-style’ behavior?

Chop.  Volatility.  Dips.  Corrections to whole industries or sectors under the surface of benign index prices.

Stuff like that.  Extreme volume during globex.

Of course it is nice to catch rallies along the way.  Rallies tend to be ultra-violent and fast during a correction.  They can also fizzle out as fast as they begin.

At this point an obligatory note must be made that EXODUS NAILED a nice rally a few weeks back, nearly to the day.  And your boy RAUL, whose only job is to issues statements and act on the behalf of robots, caught a good chunk of that March rally.  Hallelujah.

Last Sunday’s public interpretation of the data was that are “reaching the late stages of our current bullish cycle…” which seems to be making more sense now.  Last Sunday I also stated it still looks like buy-the-dip conditions, and I still believe that.

However, no dip shall be legged into until the robots say so.

So as always, we will be taking it one day at a time.  Day-after-day here on the RAUL blog.  Which btw if I have managed to keep your attention this long, wow, I am truly humbled.

By the way I will be talking about all of this, and MOAR, live next Tuesday at Benzinga headquarters in downtown Detroit.  I checked out their digs this morning and I am psyched.  They are going to roll out a big screen for me to aggressively point at while I talk.

Q&A will certainly follow and we will all learn and be better for it.

So if you are anywhere near Detroit or want to visit our never-say-die city, here is a perfect reason to come downtown and talk shop.

Here is the link to RSVP: https://www.meetup.com/Detroit-Investors-Traders-StockTwits-Meetups/events/248652154/

This correction style behavior, Dow down 700 and stuff, it still appears to be relatively scheduled, at least that is how the robots see it.  If the ultraviolence continues for more than four weeks, then we may be wading into unknown and certainly more precarious waters.

And we will cross those waters if we come to them right?

TBD

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I have not been this excited about an event…ever.  This is the one folks.  If you can attend one trading event this year THIS IS THE ONE.  Details and link to RSVP are below.

PANEL: How To Define Your Edge with PreMarket Information

WHEN: Tuesday, March 27th from 6:00 – 7:30pm

WHERE: Benzinga World Headquarters, Detroit

Details:

The second StockTwits Detroit meetup of 2018 will take place at Benzinga headquarters Tuesday, March 27 from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Everyone is welcome to enjoy pizza and refreshments with fellow stock market enthusiasts.

At 6:30 p.m. there will be a panel discussion between Joel Elconin and StockTwits Detroit co-organizer Vincent Calimazzo about defining your edge with premarket information. Joel is the co-host of Benzinga’s PreMarket Prep, a trading show that airs Monday-Friday from 8-9 a.m., and a former trader at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

The discussion will be followed by a Q&A.

Benzinga is a dynamic financial media outlet that empowers investors with high-quality, unique content and technology.

StockTwits Detroit MeetUp has the uncommon mission of liberating small-to-medium sized investors to take control of their investment decisions by staying abreast of the best investing and trading techniques and augmenting our approach with useful fintech tools.

LINK TO RSVP: https://www.meetup.com/Detroit-Investors-Traders-StockTwits-Meetups/events/248652154/

RAUL here, listen to me—this is a panel to talk about the premarket.  I have been preparing a morning NASDAQ trading report on iBankCoin for at least three years, and my strength is trading /NQ futures around the opening bell.  We are going to talk about what it takes to understand and consistently trade during a time of day cluttered with useless noise, a time of day that can seem hectic if you are not using the right information.

I am extremely passionate about this topic, and I know Joel is too.  This is going to be an excellent learning experience for everyone who can attend.

In July 2017, Stocktwits asked me to help organize their Detroit chapter of investors.  There was never a format to the events.  It was just a way to hang out with fellow market enthusiasts.  Which is cool, which is cooool…but I am a bit extra so I have been working to make the events more engaging.  There is a ton of misinformation out there regarding the financial markets and no shortage of people trying to sell you shit products.  This event is designed to combat those forces where it matters most to me, my hometown Detroit.

So come out, all ages and skill levels are welcome.  This is a learning environment.  If you want to learn about trading, you will.

Feel free to ask any questions in the comments below.

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Classic trading axiom—being wrong is totally okay.  It is part of the business.  We are speculating on the future outcomes of things we have zero control over.  Being wrong is inevitable.

Staying wrong is not okay.

Staying wrong will eliminate you from the battle.  The battle to dominate the financial markets.

Like lets say you have a systematic trade based on a statistic.  And that system triggers.  But you are too busy riding around, gettin’ it and you miss the signal.  That is an error, which should make you feel bad, and that is fine, but if you still have the chance to act, to right your ship, do it.

DO NOT COMPOUND your folly by continuing to make errors.

Seeing people ignore their tried-and-true robots makes me sad.  God damn, the system is the system is the system.  Execution is up to you unless you automate your actual orders.

If you keep getting in your own way the market will eliminate you.  Slowly…then all at once.

Listen we all make errors.  They suck and we need to do everything we can to minimize the risk of error.  Algorithms and trading models work for me.  They are immutable.  And maybe something else will work for you.  We all have a job.  As good capitalists our job is to analyze, plan, and execute.  Over and over.

They say good trading is boring.  Maybe, unless you find gratification is following a plan.  If you do not make rules and follow them, then someone else will make rules for you.  Then they will manage you, like dog, and if you don’t perform they will either whip you or eliminate you.  Is that how you want to live?  Along the lines of someone else’s vision?

Discipline is the key to freedom.

Okay I am done.

Listen I have big plans for March, stay tuned.

As for the stocked market, I am bullish heading into OPEX.

Exodus members, the 173rd edition of Strategy Session is live.  Go check out what has me bullish for the next few days

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Flat tire.  Stubbed toe.  Speeding ticket.

Problems happen fast.

It is feast and famine at the house of RAUL, I’ve always said that.

When I was young twenties, a jovial lad full of unfounded optimism and pomp it would be some kind of mistake, the regular injustices subjected upon yours truly.

Then I realized mistakes were the day-to-day.  That life was one struggle after another.  And that it was a matter of how you handled yourself during the shit storm that defined you.  That it was either accept cubicle life and bi-weekly stipends or nut up and make something of yourself.

I had a flat tire tonight.  I had a flat tire after an important business meeting in the city.

I do not live in the city.

Are you kidding me?

Live in Detroit?  For what?   The restaurants?  Maybe…but is it worth the exorbitant taxes and potential murder?

At best, maybe, I rent a small space.  A small pad strategically positioned for foolishness.  But to own…they have a long way to come…the Gilberts and Illiches…before Detroit becomes a respectable place to own land.

I left my important meeting.  LISTEN I TAKE MANY IMPORTANT MEETINGS OK?  I am cultivating greatness.  They want to build a SOHO house here.

It takes more than buying SANGAMO at $3 to make a respectable nut in this world.  You have to pander…and kiss..and joke…and rip…and bla bla bla…convince people to sign checks in your direction.

This is something you have to do…otherwise you will end up a pathetic desk jockey earning 75k with 2 maybe three weeks of freedom a year.

Servatude.

Is that what you want?  To help J.P. Morgan earn another 2-3 hundred million a year?

Go ahead.

Live is short.  Real short.  A blip if you are hopeful.  A twitch if we are being realistic.

So I want my twitch to be filled with thrills.

Maybe in the meantime I can convince a few others that it isn’t worth it to shape yourself into the the proverbial ‘productive member of society’.

Into faggotry.

Oh yes, that word…so offensive, with the hard -g.

Funny how humans can take a sound and make it so hurtful…if you let them.

I cannot stand humans.  There I said it.  The smell…the panic and rush they have when racing through Whole Foods.  Pathetic.

Whatever.  Listen.  I had a flat tire tonight deep down in the hood.  In a place where a lesser man, like a Jerome Powell, would freak out and call an Uber Black…a place where a Jerome Powell would worry about being shot.  Deep down in the hoods of Detroit.

Which is ironic.  Because since I arrived back home here in the murder mitten I have been lining up this joke—that anyone making fun of the pot holes hasn’t played enough video games.  Because video games sharpen your ability to react to obstructions.

Anyhow my tire went flat on the east side in a place famed to be the most violent in town.  Jerome Powell would have dialed 9-1-1 and stayed inside his locked car until police officers—-women and men who have much more important things to do—arrived and carted him to safety.

Which is fine.  Lifes been good to Jerome so far.  But I had to handle that shit on my own.  Tire iron in fist, heater on hip, come at me.  The tire was fixed manually.  The ride home uninterrupted.

Whatever.  It doesn’t make me a better citizen then Jerome Powell.

I am home now and still bearish. It will take a spring miracle to make me bullish.

Or two weeks of nothing…like sideways nothing.  Then I will be bullish again.  Hopefully  between then and now Jerome Powell can learn to stop spilling Federal Reserve secrets and start behaving like Queen Yellen bitch slayer so all us open market investors can continue making money.

Hopefully Jerome Powell stops catering to the money market account crowd.  The private equity crooks.

Doubtful.

But maybe.

We have to stay objective even if we have no real way of trusting our leadership.

Worst case we flea to Canada and commit to snowboarding.

Which is honestly totally cool.

TBD

 

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I have to make this communique brief as I’m juggling five plates and have two more that need to start spinning.

I just got back in town.  I just got back after three-four weeks living on the fringe of society, burning donkey shit in the desert to keep warm and shit.  And if you think that means I have less visibility on the financial markets then you, then you will be quite perturbed when I tell you quite the contrary.

This is not the type of market I initiate risk in.  First of all my benevolent robots, my only consul in the art of financial war, my loyal leaders, the ones who never flinch and always offer only the highest level of objectivity.  Those kind robots, they saw something.  Here is the note I issued, on their behalf, three weeks and three days ago:

here is the note I am issuing to Strategy Session members regarding today's extreme model reading $SPX $COMPQ pic.twitter.com/CAU6hne9i7

— RAUL (@IndexModel) February 4, 2018

CORRECTION-LIKE BEHAVIOUR. There words, not mine.  I am simply a vessel which they speak through, much like your God spoke to the disciples while they wrote the bible.

So there’s the robots.

Then there is something all investors can agree sucks—uncertainty.   Uncertainty at the top, no less.  Anyone with a brain knows that capitalism is what makes the world turn.  That banks are the foundation stones of capitalism.  And that the Federal Reserve is the lender of last resort—the ultimate banker—the banker of bankers, or king of kings as they said in biblical times.

I am being told to trust Jerome Powell.  To love Jerome Powell.  To tithe my savings at the feet of Jerome Powell.

This is what I see when I look at Jerome Powell.  I see a private equity goon like Fred Wilson, the type of guy who amassed incredible financial gains before dumping his flotsam on the general population via IPO.  I see a fucking attorney, ready to send me a nice letterhead asking for a gratuitous retainer.  I see a consultant who is suited and booted before 10am.

I do not trust anyone wearing a suit before 2pm, as a rule of thumb.

Uncertainty.

Also he answers questions.  Janet Yellen did not answer questions.  She told drawn-out stories like all nice grandmas do.  Grandma Yellen was kind.  Grandma Yellen gave us butterscotch candies even while we were being little shits, running Tesla and Google to unspeakable valuations.

Jerome Powell goes to the House Financial Services committee and in no time he’s answering questions, look:

Wow bro, why don’t you just tell them everything about our precious QE?  The greatest tool the Federal Reserve ever created, a tool developed by Benjamin ‘blunt’ Bernanke.  He needs to learn to be more vague.  Until he does, and he will, uncertainty.

All that being said, I have not reduced risk.  That is not entirely true.  I did scale part of my SANGAMO position last week.  I sold 1/3 of the position from inside a frozen RV.  I sold it because it took out $25 and that was the plan ever since it was trading at $3.  This is not a fucking game.  This is good business.

While we firmly believe in the core thesis of CRISPR, that super rich folks like Jerome Powell, with extravagant lake houses and families, that these rich people do not want to die—that they will invest their dollars in any idea that promises immortality—that these rich people control a vast percentage of the world’s investable money—and that they do not want to leave the mortal world because it is a pretty dope place for them to hang out and do cool shit—that they will funnel money to CRISPR ideas like SANGAMO.  While we believe this core thesis, we are also realistic and know that all true advancement is out on the horizon, on the proverbial ‘4-years from now’ timeline, a place where scientists dream and scheme…and often fail—realistically.

AND WE ARE HERE TO CONDUCT GOOD BUSINESS.  Good business in the financial markets comes down to PLAN AND EXECUTE.

It is not pretty.  No one will have sex with you because you are good at taking 100,000,000 data points, parsing and analyzing them, and churning out a statistical advantage on a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.  There will be no cheering fans when you flawlessly execute.

Is that what you need?  To be recognized?  And for what?  To what end?

In the words of Lily Allen, “I want to be rich and I want lots of money.  I don’t care about clever. I don’t care about funny.”

Said money will be used to obtain land as far north as my constitution will allow.  Said land will be equipped with enough solar, batteries, and robotic facilities to ensure I can sit back sipping mead while the malaise of human propagation happening in major city centers goes full  pitch fork, egging each other over meaningless freedoms like assault rifles and opiates.

So like I was saying, I am not reducing risk.  But I am also not assuming new risk.  The morning reports, the ones prepared every morning from inside mothership, are showing me an orderly market that is behaving with my price levels, the best price levels in the game, and that we are balancing just below record highs.

These aren’t exactly bearish conditions.

Nevertheless, I am a bit bearish.  I am giving sellers another 10-12 days to show up before I start mashing the buy button.

So it is written, so it shall be.

Ciao

 

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Greetings from the highlands,

The very kind and resourceful iBankCoin field team has navigated our land yacht to the snowy northwest.  As of this writing four bald eagles have been spotted and logged into the national registrar by our devoted naturalist, Doctor Roberto Bregante—a Mayan native with an occasionally violent disposition whose anscestors occupied these lands long before European settlement.

As we traverse these rich lands I’ve made contact with Mothership, which is hardwired to the interwebs at a geographical point between the trading markets in New York and Chicago.  Mothership is constantly receiving information from over 6000 remote sensors strategically placed throughout the financial complex.

These sensors collect raw information which Mothership parses and analyzes.  Said information is married to data stored inside the Exodus cloud. All these data form the bias model which forecasts direction of the next five trading days.  Sometimes the model peers further into the white fogs of the future and whispers prophetically about longer term events as objectively as possible.

Right now the model sees a correction lasting many many weeks, perhaps even months.  This is only based off two samples from the entire model history, which began in November 2014.

The model is a true testament to humans improving their lives with AI augmentation.  Something simple and pure and real.

Unlike competitive figure skating.  So much about ranking figure skaters is human and subjective and therefore flawed.  Did the boy smile enough? Was he fierce when the song was fierce? Is his country a kind one or one with authoritarian leadership?

Despite many measurable and technical score points, there is far too much human subjectivity to consider the number scores pure.

We seek purity on the RAUL blog.  Through the instagrams and snapped chats and tweets I also  seek to inspire.  For some, the theater of a brilliant ice dance invigorates the spirit and inspires.  Which is fine.

Anyhow the model lads, it is neutral heading into the upcoming week after being wildly bearish last Sunday.  On a longer horizon, 4-6 weeks perhaps longer, we expect correction behavior.

The Weekly Strategy Session inside Exodus covers these matters in detail.  And both last week and this week’s report are improtant reads if you want a clear vision about upcoming conditions and what to look for before initiating new intermediate/long-term risk.

Lucky for you, all of you, there are free trials of Exodus from now through Valentine’s day.  Therefore you can access the reports in their entirety.  I would be humbled if you took some time to check it out and tell me what you think.  Especially if you think I’m wrong and that the best move next week was to BTFD.

Meanwhile I am back in nature lads, with a team of researchers, thrill seekers, and scientists.  A trip to places many would describe as enchanted.  Follow me on Instagram username vincalim you’d like to see some of the oddities along the way.

And I couldn’t have timed this trip any better because all my robots are calling for correction.

As for the markets, we are bearish.

Stay sharp out there.

Raul Santos, February 11th, 2018

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