Global Macro Trading Journal

Here is a crazy random thought, a stock bear market induced by rising rates (that is, in conjuction with a bear market in bonds) will blow more hedge funds out of business that people imagine. Most people use bonds to protect a stock portfolio, if you lose money in both, clients will run

As I said before, I believe the Fed will come to the rescue and consequently prop up bonds and stocks but in the mean time, the hits to P&Ls could be significant
 
The hedges are cash (hated by most), OTM puts (which consistently lost money for buyers for years, see Hussman's performance), and being underweight stocks (which might have gotten you fired in the previous years due lack of performance) and being in the right point in the yield curve with bonds(which is not easy to know where it is)
 
Actually in your scenario hedge funds would do better. It's traditional mutual funds and 401k plans that will get crushed. That's 10s if not 20 trillions of dollars.
 
newwurldmn said:
Actually in your scenario hedge funds would do better. It's traditional mutual funds and 401k plans that will get crushed. That's 10s if not 20 trillions of dollars.
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I disagree. A lot of hedge funds 'learned' that they had to be in the S&P500 in order not to be fired, everytime they sold stocks in the sell-offs, they would watch markets come back and they underperform. As a result, most market participants had to 'get up and dance' due benchmark risk. I believe there are a lot of people that are dancing and when they head to the exits, it will not be pretty (I can only imagine how many funds are in the FANGs and other hedge fund hotels)

Now bonds are still working as a hedge (judging by this week's action) but I'm watching it closely, if we see stocks are a bunch at some point, with bonds also down, I will be selling all my bonds and going to cash

Essentially, I believe a lot of hedge funds will struggle because they will have to implement strategies that they were punished for using for a long-time. Its hard for people to do that. Also, if everybody tries to implement them, there is not enough liquidity for everyone
 
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Rosenberg had an article with similar thoughts to mine (Fed forecasts can lead to a market rout)
http://business.financialpost.com/investing/david-rosenberg-feds-rate-hike-not-all-that-dovish

Now, I wish didn't got faked out by the FOMC rally. I tried some shorts that day but it didn't work. The next day I made some on the short side but nothing major. Same thing with friday. I should have pounded on the short side thursday, when the market reversed like that it was the signal that the day before was just a pavalovian response the FOMC statement buying. The correct reaction was to sell. Now its dangerous to chase a short down but it opens the possibility that the next bounce on the S&P500, is a sell, not a buy
 
So stocks collapsed in August and September and that lead the Fed to not hike, then they rose a lot and that lead the Fed to hike rates. With the Fed forecasts the way they are, essentially, the Fed is saying, "we are going to hike at every ES pop". It was a nobrainer to sell stocks into this.

It looks to me that markets are likely to stay in a range (perhaps 1900-2100) where they collapse and at some point they become a buy and when they rally, its a sell.

I don't buy the theory of 'well, historically, hikes have been good for the market'. This is a crowded momentum trade fueled by central bank policy, I believe it will be very different from some average that people take comfort in
 
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The way I'm going to play this is to aggressively short BRKB puts, potentially add to PSH/EWZ positions when the ES is in the lower end of the range (anywhere between SPX 1990-1930) and sell exposures when markets come back up to 2050+
 
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