Global Macro Trading Journal

I'm really paying the price for having mismanaged my BRKB long attempts earlier in the year. Its incredible how quickly this thing run up. I'm still long small and short some puts. I plan to continue to short puts and hopefuly will get another shot at getting in long in the future. In this 0% world, a stock like that (where I expect 6-10% year), is a pretty good deal
 
The US real estate recovery since 2009 goes to show the folly of calling real estate bubbles. A lot of countries that people were calling a bubble in the 2000s, never dipped, they actually went higher (I'm referring to some european markets, Australia and some others). But even the ones that did (the US), it was quick to recover (a lot of US markets are close to or higher than previous peak) and the whole thing was a buying opportunity (REITs are up 200% since then).
So the bubble callers only would have benefited from the bubble calling if they timed their sales well (meaning, they werent calling it a bubble in 2001 or 2002 but did so closer to the peak in 2005 or 2006), THEN they turned bullish when things bottomed out, they bought again. Now, keep in mind they would have to pay cap gains taxes when they sold because they didn't immediatly rebought it (IIRC, there is a tax relief of this kind in the US for the primary residence).
Its a high wire act to try to outperform buy and hold this way, specially when you consider the transaction costs in real estate, which are exorbitant

This is why I'm buying brazilian REITs despite people calling it a bubble. It isnt, but even if it were (by were, I mean, its about to repeat the US experience), its still no big deal. I'm finding stuff selling at 10-30% discounts to the market value of the RE properties, with tax free dividends and the capital gains can be tax free as well if you sell it gradually every month (R$20,000 exemption). This is pretty attractive. Specially given the record of the bubble callers
 
I believe it makes sense to sell out real estate, pay the transaction costs and the taxes when things are just absurdly overvalued. Like just flat out ridiculous/insane, otherwise you got to time it like a king
 
Were the bubble callers just unlucky that central banks supportive policies 'saved' these markets? Perhaps but it just seems ridiculous to rely on central banks allowing deflation. In a lot of countries (and Brazil is one of them), its simply not going to happen. And one could have known that before the fact
 
People who can call a crisis in advance and switch to bullish close to the bottom and buy are really rare. Thats a lesson I learned in 2009, most of the geniuses turned into idiots when things turned. I'm seeing that happening right now in brazil, the great managers who predicted the crisis are fighting the stock market, they are all skeptical, they list reasons and more reasons why the market shouldn't be doing what is doing etc

But I learned my lesson already, I havent sold my shares (and want to add on the REIT side) and don't plan to do until the economy bounces and that leads a lot of people to chase them up hard. I really think that if my thesis is right, people will be amazed how much higher they will go
 
I love most things about the US, except for one aspect of it, its a police state. I'm sure this war on cash will gain traction. When the hunt for tax havens came about (circa 2008), the US implemented FATCA, they closed the Soros loophole, pushed for things like the OECD reporting standards (although it took some time). They love more rules, laws, controls and surveillance. Of course, they also love to imprision people for a long time if they dare to go against their controls
 
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If Pablo Escobar were alive and in business today, I wonder if he would be burying gold instead of dollar bills. You would never know the day you would have to dig out those dollars and go to the bank, because they are about to ban the bill. Or when the government will create hassles involving these bills. With gold, its easy to price it and it can be used as a means of payment, specially when cash goes out of favor. They could ban gold as well, but the banning of gold could be actually positive for its price (like when people rush to buy M15s when they think the government will tighten up gun laws) while banning $100 bills, will be bad for $100 bills no matter what
 
Long Oct 16 Fed futures. I just dont believe this fed hike scare. The bigger the scare, the less the chance they hike (because stocks will fall)
But more importantly, I just think the ISMs will put the Fed on wait and see mode, they usually err on the side of 'more data plz' when there is risk of them being wrong
 
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