Global Macro Trading Journal
- Thread starter Daal
- Start date
Well, honestly, the second my wire hits the account, I'm converting to a digital coin and getting it the hell out of there. I choose them because they are pretty big and processed my documents quickly, I'm still waiting on a few other sites to finish accepting documents.
I think I will stay on coinbase or bitifinex but I'm not sure, I don't plan to keep a digital coin as a permanent storage, not without a good entry price. I plan to just park some USD in a decent broker and try to capture some predictable patterns here and there
So you learn that there is no safe asset (gold included). Diversification is the way, obviously. Personally, if I was looking to construct a long-term portfolio I want to check the relative behaviours of main asset classes (say equity/govies/gold/property) in multiple countries at relatively low temporal resolution. I think there is a fairly good data set of all of these from OECD statistics and you can see how these correlations/betas work in different economic regimes etc.
PS. Also, methodology such as roll frequency will greatly change your draw downs and other metrics. For example, when you consider real estate as an asset, would you take total return (pay cash, sell cash, collect rent through it's life), price return (pay cash, collect cash) or free leverage (pay levered, collect cash, pay rent into interest) assumptions?
Well, this scenario is starting to play out, stocks are getting in a more pricey range and there are reasons to think policies will struggle passing so I'm looking to add some more 'tail hedging' to my portfolio. Will buy some IWM and/or SPY/QQQ puts, sacrifice some return in order to decrease risk
This week I listened to a great audiobook, https://www.audible.com/pd/Self-Dev...on-Audiobook/B00TJJNSQG?qid=1496440028&sr=1-1
It talks about how to better communicate in a way that creates less resistance and produces more benefits, harmony, better relationships. Trump is the king of doing the opposite, using violent communication and creating resistance. So from that perspective, he is an awful communicator and this will/is hurting him. There are many examples of communications in the book that follow the "Trump model" and usually it just leads to more conflict. So he wont get much help from himself there. On the other hand, Obama was great at using non-violent communication and got nothing done after his first 2 years. So, its possible that the use of communication doesn't help all that much these days, what matters is:
-having a majority in congress
-using proper communication/persuasion/negotiation with the few members in congress that can swing a vote here and there
And in that, Trump has suceeded in that healthcare vote so far, so his awful communcation does not seem to be hurting him all that much. There is also the aspect that if the Republicans dont get any major bills approved before the mid-terms, they will have literally nothing to show the public for 1.5 years of work will lose a lot of seats so they KNOW they must agree and pass SOMETHING
I'm trying to raise the possibility that the Trump image/popularity/drama perhaps is utterly irrelevant despite the fact that the media cries about it all day long. Because at the end of the day, what matters is not what Trump is tweeting, who he is attacking or this or that but rather, what he is saying to key House/Senate leaders (how good are those communications) and all the pressure the Republicans are suffering to have something to show for the mid-terms. Perhaps this is why the market is completely ignoring the Trump drama and soaring to all-time highs, investors must figure, at the very LEAST the Republicans will try to "buy" votes by passing a 10-year Bush style tax cut package. I'm not saying this is right or wrong (to me, that doesnt matter as I don't vote in the US), I'm saying that's what I think is going on
And of course, you wont read a news article raising this kind of idea because people are too upset about his violent communication to think clearly
A much easier situation to read would be if Trump communicated like Obama but had the pro-business agenda, everything would be much smoother and clean. But the fact that he doesn't, maybe it is what brings some opportunity
It talks about how to better communicate in a way that creates less resistance and produces more benefits, harmony, better relationships. Trump is the king of doing the opposite, using violent communication and creating resistance. So from that perspective, he is an awful communicator and this will/is hurting him. There are many examples of communications in the book that follow the "Trump model" and usually it just leads to more conflict. So he wont get much help from himself there. On the other hand, Obama was great at using non-violent communication and got nothing done after his first 2 years. So, its possible that the use of communication doesn't help all that much these days, what matters is:
-having a majority in congress
-using proper communication/persuasion/negotiation with the few members in congress that can swing a vote here and there
And in that, Trump has suceeded in that healthcare vote so far, so his awful communcation does not seem to be hurting him all that much. There is also the aspect that if the Republicans dont get any major bills approved before the mid-terms, they will have literally nothing to show the public for 1.5 years of work will lose a lot of seats so they KNOW they must agree and pass SOMETHING
I'm trying to raise the possibility that the Trump image/popularity/drama perhaps is utterly irrelevant despite the fact that the media cries about it all day long. Because at the end of the day, what matters is not what Trump is tweeting, who he is attacking or this or that but rather, what he is saying to key House/Senate leaders (how good are those communications) and all the pressure the Republicans are suffering to have something to show for the mid-terms. Perhaps this is why the market is completely ignoring the Trump drama and soaring to all-time highs, investors must figure, at the very LEAST the Republicans will try to "buy" votes by passing a 10-year Bush style tax cut package. I'm not saying this is right or wrong (to me, that doesnt matter as I don't vote in the US), I'm saying that's what I think is going on
And of course, you wont read a news article raising this kind of idea because people are too upset about his violent communication to think clearly
A much easier situation to read would be if Trump communicated like Obama but had the pro-business agenda, everything would be much smoother and clean. But the fact that he doesn't, maybe it is what brings some opportunity
https://www.gmo.com/docs/default-source/public-commentary/gmo-quarterly-letter.pdf?sfvrsn=44
Grantham throwing the towel. He now talks about how US markets might need 20 years to go back to previous valuation levels. The dude has been calling for mean reversion for like 10 years and now says another 20 years will be needed, how a lot of the progress the US has had is likely to be sustained.
JG is a great example of the danger of selling stocks because 'I'm concerned about this or that', you will usually miss out on an exponential rise and then in the future, when you finally learn about your mistake and why you made it, its too late. The market price is so much higher, its almost absurd compared to where it was before.
Kinda like the mistake I made with bitcoin, not buying it when the market was quiet and it was trading under $600. Now its $2,300+ and you cant verify an account to purchase btc even if your life depended on it
The US has more financial data than any country on earth, yet, investors were lead into a huge trap in this whole valuation mean reversion nonsense. As I mentioned in the past, most investors would be a lot richer if they never heard about valuation. Whatever benefits that brings, it pales in comparrision to the mistakes it leads people to make
Grantham throwing the towel. He now talks about how US markets might need 20 years to go back to previous valuation levels. The dude has been calling for mean reversion for like 10 years and now says another 20 years will be needed, how a lot of the progress the US has had is likely to be sustained.
JG is a great example of the danger of selling stocks because 'I'm concerned about this or that', you will usually miss out on an exponential rise and then in the future, when you finally learn about your mistake and why you made it, its too late. The market price is so much higher, its almost absurd compared to where it was before.
Kinda like the mistake I made with bitcoin, not buying it when the market was quiet and it was trading under $600. Now its $2,300+ and you cant verify an account to purchase btc even if your life depended on it
The US has more financial data than any country on earth, yet, investors were lead into a huge trap in this whole valuation mean reversion nonsense. As I mentioned in the past, most investors would be a lot richer if they never heard about valuation. Whatever benefits that brings, it pales in comparrision to the mistakes it leads people to make
At least this Grantham guy implements his investing in a way that corrects for his flawled method. I recall from a previous piece of Montier that they were long 70% in mostly EM equities and 30% in bonds/TIPS/etc. So despite spending like 80% of their time talking about how the S&P500 couldn't possibly rationally go higher, they still kept a fair amount of stock exposure and did not short the market, went to cash or spend excessive amounts in put premiums (the same might not be said about the readers of his letters that are not clients), so they didn't blew up like John Hussman is doing:
This Grantham guy might a good example of developing a sound methodology with good rules, so even when you are proven to be completely wrong, you still have something to show to clients and some kind of return to prevent you from losing those clients. That's why I spend a good amount of time in portfolio research and backtests, that way, even if I don't have trade ideas or I'm wrong in my view, I can always count in my passive allocation giving me some kind of long-term return
This Grantham guy might a good example of developing a sound methodology with good rules, so even when you are proven to be completely wrong, you still have something to show to clients and some kind of return to prevent you from losing those clients. That's why I spend a good amount of time in portfolio research and backtests, that way, even if I don't have trade ideas or I'm wrong in my view, I can always count in my passive allocation giving me some kind of long-term return
"Dynamic scoring is potentially more accurate, but it is also more easily abused by those who want to promote their policies with an unhealthy dose of wishful thinking. Tax cuts rarely pay for themselves. My reading of the academic literature leads me to believe that about one-third of the cost of a typical tax cut is recouped with faster economic growth."
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/02/...ice-but-remember-the-deficit.html?ref=economy
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/02/...ice-but-remember-the-deficit.html?ref=economy
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/couple-thoughts-ray-dalio
Dalio updated thoughts on Trump. Kinda weird that he would mention China FX policy in the piece, for no reason. I guess he is long and wants to increase the short squeeze there
Dalio updated thoughts on Trump. Kinda weird that he would mention China FX policy in the piece, for no reason. I guess he is long and wants to increase the short squeeze there
After having my wire to OKcoin turned down and returned (Apparently they don't accept USD wires that go through a US bank intermediary, I didn't even know it was possible to have a USD wire that DIDN'T had a US bank in the middle. I mean, any offshore bank in order to own USDs electronically, have to have an account at a US bank, right?) and 2 weeks battling, it seems that I will be able to fund my Kraken account and get started in this coin trading world, they are letting me deposit as much as $100K a month. If all goes well, I will try to search around for an exiciting/interesting Initial Coin Offering to get some convexity exposure. If I plow some money in like 10 of them and catch a big runner, that might give me a pretty large payoff