Global Macro Trading Journal

Ghost of Cutten was the type of trader that used to nail these type of moves back in the day. I should try to pay attention to these more often. You can really scale up your trading once you master these
 
Hard currencies seem to trade at a permanent level of overvaluation in these economies, as a form of an insurance policy to the holder. When the bad case scenarios dont play out, the value of the insurance collapses. If Venezuela does issue 500 and 1000 bolivar notes, its going to make transactions a lot easier and hard currencies wont be needed as much anymore. At least for a while
 
Daal said:
Hard currencies seem to trade at a permanent level of overvaluation in these economies, as a form of an insurance policy to the holder. When the bad case scenarios dont play out, the value of the insurance collapses.
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Why does this happen? Theory would say its because expectations are formed in the price and sometimes these adjustments overshoot due emotions or excessive pessimism, miscalculations or just plain old risk aversion etc. But the interesting thing is that it seems to happen all over the world. I dont see much difference in that and the US observation that higher returns can be earned in stocks when stock volatility is high. When things are shitty, whatever is involved in that shittiness will be sold to a level where there will be a compensation to those that take the risk of holding that shitty thing.

This is why I dont think the folks that are skeptical of brazilian stocks because domestic interest rates (specially, real interest rates) are high and one can earn a good return without taking risk. Some people are even questioning whether there is an equity premium in Brazil at all. Sentiment is still highly skeptical. This all means that the stock market is trading with a skeptic/high real rate discount. It got sold (over the past few years) to a level where there is likely an extra excess returns to be earned (over fixed income) for those that take the risk. At least, thats party of my thesis
 
One of my position sizing rules is: "the more you are going WITH sentiment, the smaller your position should be. And the more you are going against it, the bigger you CAN be". Whether the trader does or not its up to him. But its an idea based on that principle. I came up with that rule in 2009 when I made a wrongly sized bet against the US stock rally in March and April. I ended up losing more than I should have. It was an ok bet to make but I should have never sized as I did given that everyone and their mothers were bearish, the VIX was on the moon (plus valuations were attractive, thats another variable when deciding how to size something)
Thats a similar idea that I'm applying to VRX now. The bearish sentiment has played out for so long that the only thing that I'm sure is that whetever bearish expectations people have, they are almost certaintly being overpriced now. Whatever is the true chance of bk, the market is almost certainly overestimating it.
 
VRX IV in the options is very high, analysts have thrown the towel, even the bulls. The media and commentators are all bearish on it. Is there any more obvious trade than 'shorting VRX for the bk!'? This is like the guy buying dollars in a hyperinflation after he reads on the newspaper that inflation will remain high. Of course, he has to pay through his nose to get them. If it works out for him, its because he got lucky. Most of the time, its just a bad bet
 
But the same way you cant look at just the nominal USD return to see if it was a good bet in the hyperinflation (you got to consider the domestic inflation and other asset alternatives). You cant look a just the return of VRX, you got to consider the kind of risk the shorts are taking. And the risk is very high. The amount they can lose is a lot bigger than what they are trying to make
 
Here is a preliminary finding from my study. I tested one idea that I had read about in the past and knew it was probably true but wanted to see the data. The idea was "even if you are 70 year old widow that wants 100% safety, owning a little bit of stocks will have less risk than being 100% in fixed income". I run two portfolios with 2 year rebalancing. The returns are all real (after inflation) returns and the data is from 1968 to 2016.

Fixed income was savings accounts from 1968 to 2005, then government bonds from the Brazil Treasury Direct program from 2006 to 2016. Stocks are the Bovespa and US stocks is the S&P500
Results could change if I notice problems in the data.

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So having a little bit of stocks in the portfolio decreased the Max drawdown, almost doubled the compounded annual growth rate, decreased the average down year and increased the average return of up years. On the other hand, you had a few more losing years and standard deviation of returns was slighly higher. I would say that the drawbacks of owning a little bit of equities (a little more down years, even though they are smaller on average) are definetly worth it. Having a smaller max DD is also very nice;

Of course if the widow will panic and sell when stocks are down, then that strategy wont work. But the Brazilian data do seem to back up, at least mostly, that idea
 
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How can owning some stocks protect more against the downside of having all your money with very low duration fixed income? In the US, this might not happen but in Brazil's case, because of the high inflation and hyperinflation years, sometimes you got hurt badly by staying in fixed income. When the interest rate didnt keep up with the inflation, your real returns were pretty poor. But the stock market sometimes would sniff out that inflation and rally pretty hard, protecting the investor. That and in normal years, it would naturally produce higher returns. Overall, this shows the benefits of some diversification
 
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