Betting against ETers - best long term strategy?

S

Saltynuts

So with this mini-crash, or whatever you want to call it, in early February, just reading the various threads on ET I noticed that there were SO MANY bears at the end of it. Some bulls, but mainly bears. Not just commenting on it, but actually placing bets to the short side. What did the market do? Come SCREAMING back up.

So I'm just curious. Is ET a microcosm of the broad market, and taking a view opposite what the ETers are taking in general is the best way to make money, contrarian style? It clearly would have made a killing in the February pull back. Literally no one on ET saw it coming (or at least I saw no threads - "Hey guys, watch it, market is looking risky here"). Then when it already happened, most of the ETers were calling for blood. Maybe every day we should have a new thread that is "For 3/19/18, do you think the market (let's say general US equities, so the DOW, S&P, NASDAQ) is going to be up or down 30 days from now?" Then to make money off it, just bet the opposite of what the majority of ETers that reply think?

Thanks as always, and god bless ET, the best message board on the entire internet.
 
Well the mini crash happened for a "precise" reason. I'm of the camp that it was the initial spike and this bounce is nothing more than to suck as much retail back in before another leg lower.

That being said ...we did see NQ make new highs already this month.
The market as a whole changes on a daily basis. Even last week we saw steady selling.

That being said, some catalyst can come into the market and change the equilibrium between buyers and sellers to make a new high in Sp500 and then go lower.

However the odds of us going lower are a lot higher than vice versa. So I am placing my bias on probabilities which will be the market will be a lot lower this year, while also being "open-minded" to what the market throws at me if it tells me to get long.
 
All we did was drift to this "level", it's time for some fireworks....unless the market has a higher drift/euphoria planned for us like 1987.
 
Timing

Lots of people on ET have been saying we were due for a correction. Lots of people in the media as well. Those are not necessarily bears... it's the timing that as always is the most difficult thing to get right. So it's kinda hard to see this coming at the right time. Long term perma bears will be right at one point.

A lot of people on ET seem to be here just for the odd shouting match. Nothing to do with trading. That's all talk and no action... I would say most of ET falls in this segment.

So, I see that just as noise... a lot of noise... can't do much with that really.
 
Saltynuts said:
So with this mini-crash, or whatever you want to call it, in early February, just reading the various threads on ET I noticed that there were SO MANY bears at the end of it. Some bulls, but mainly bears. Not just commenting on it, but actually placing bets to the short side. What did the market do? Come SCREAMING back up.

So I'm just curious. Is ET a microcosm of the broad market, and taking a view opposite what the ETers are taking in general is the best way to make money, contrarian style? It clearly would have made a killing in the February pull back. Literally no one on ET saw it coming (or at least I saw no threads - "Hey guys, watch it, market is looking risky here"). Then when it already happened, most of the ETers were calling for blood. Maybe every day we should have a new thread that is "For 3/19/18, do you think the market (let's say general US equities, so the DOW, S&P, NASDAQ) is going to be up or down 30 days from now?" Then to make money off it, just bet the opposite of what the majority of ETers that reply think?

Thanks as always, and god bless ET, the best message board on the entire internet.
More...

https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/es-eod-momentum-yowza.317604/#post-4594308
 
heavenskrow said:
That being said ...we did see NQ make new highs already this month.
The market as a whole changes on a daily basis. Even last week we saw steady selling.
More...

NQ is higher. ES is about half way back to where it was. If I had to guess, the market will grind a bit higher going into April for earnings with the ES possibly testing previous highs. If it wanted to go lower, it had a good opportunity with the resignation of Cohn, but instead we had about a 1% overnight loss on the ES and market just shrugged it off. And that's the characteristic of a bull market. It shrugs off bad news and rallies on good news. Bear markets act the opposite. I've been watching the long term treasuries for direction.
 
I trade long-term with-trend so was heavily long on US indices etc. going through January and going into February. But I had my stops in place so you could say I saw the correction coming. In fact, I didn't time it, I just always have stops in place - who wouldn't?
 
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