Global Macro Trading Journal

At this level I sold all BRL that I bought 2 weeks ago...
There is still too much political noise going to be long BRL at the current levels...
 
The SPY and EWZ squeeze shows why I don't like to chase down shorts in indices. Its "easy" to short on the way down and it hard to short on the way up, thats why it works better to do the latter. The risk-reward is superior and there is a better sharpe ratio. This happens because in addition to the medium-term edge (the reason why you are shorting in the first place, which is bigger on a rally given that the market is more far away from your estimated fair value) there is an additional short-term edge "sweetner" to the trade (due short-term overextension in the market to the upside). The combined edge in the trade is larger and this makes it a lower volatility trade. Which helps mentally (preventing dumb decisions from hurting your edge). Chasing down has less edge and might impair your mental capital. Waiting for good entries on the way up has more edge and supports your mental capital
 
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Also, because stocks tend to rise, having more edge in the trade is necessary because you are fighting the trend of 10-15%+ per year
 
If you think about it, trading against the stock up trend bias is kinda like trading with huge commissions or huge bid ask spreads (its a cost constantly taking money from you, same with shorting uptrending assets). If you trade with huge commissions you need excellent setups with very good risk-reward ratios to make up for that loss. The same thing applies to shorting indexes
 
CH1973 said:
At this level I sold all BRL that I bought 2 weeks ago...
There is still too much political noise going to be long BRL at the current levels...
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If there is a trade I would consider would be long AUD/CAD/NZD vs BRL. Long USDBRL I'm not a fan. Too much exposure you continuation of the bounce plus with oil rocketing higher, one would be effectively saying oil is going lower. Which might or might not happen. Short comm bask currencies vs BRL makes more sense because that gets isolated
 
There is gold too, which is looking investable for the first time in years. long USDBRL would have a component of exposure of shorting oil/gold..
 
long commodity basked currencies vs BRL, is effectively saying that 14-16% a year in interest does not compensate for the risks of the country. That was a good bet over the last 12 months but is it likely to continue to be after a 70% or so plunge? I'm not sure, either way its not a high confidence/edge trade. At least for me
 
just as a interesting fact, from 2008 to 2014 (right before the big plunge), the real was down nominally against the USD but not when you factored in the interest income. With that, it was flat or just a little bit down, even though it had dropped quite a bit
 
Daal said:
If there is a trade I would consider would be long AUD/CAD/NZD vs BRL. Long USDBRL I'm not a fan. Too much exposure you continuation of the bounce plus with oil rocketing higher, one would be effectively saying oil is going lower. Which might or might not happen. Short comm bask currencies vs BRL makes more sense because that gets isolated
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I understand your view but I avoid doing crosses unless the risk/reward is incredible juicy, if not I prefer to keep it simple and trade the regular CME contract and at the current moment I am not a big fun of commodity currencies as I fail to understand why commodity will move up with disappoint grow in China, Europe and (after the last NFP) US ... In this particular case I am cutting the BRL position due to political risks, as you know the congress will appreciate some important votes today and I rather get out of my BRL, specially after such a nice run....
 
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