Pabst's Blue Ribbon Trades
- Thread starter Pa(b)st Prime
- Start date
I was down the same. My worst day in 12 years.....
I was short everything. Bonds, Notes, back month Funds and a few ES. Like a moron I covered my stocks -14 SPX. I'm still short Fed Funds. There's no out.
I'm stuck in Volker mode. How the hell I can get REAMED selling 30 year fucking paper at 4.80 with $700 gold, $8 Wheat, $76 Oil, $9 soybeans and stocks 5% off their all time highs (and still 5% off their swing low as well) is beyond me. I feel like pulling a Tim McVeigh.
i think you will like this "loser" (you know how I mean it) 
our time will come: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aQClLsKHDT0E&refer=home
our time will come: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aQClLsKHDT0E&refer=home
I feel your pain, shorted ZB 112 21/32 Friday after the jobs number when it bounced off a price projection of mine at 112 25/32. Never moved not even one tick in my favor.
My only hope is that over the last couple of months there have been three such WRB days and all three were followed by
consolidation/retracement over the next several days.
I have good resistance on Friday's highs. I'm also dubious that it's going to hold. I'm most concerned about that period last September when Treasuries rallied hard three days in a row. It's deja vu all over again. That being said the best resistance I have is in the lower 114's. (in 10yr cash 4.29 would be the same projection).
In retrospect too many of us are short. I love ET for index sentiment because there's a million posts about stocks. Credit markets are a tougher read. Ain't too many of us Bond traders out there.
Quote from dhpar:
i think you will like this "loser" (you know how I mean it)
our time will come: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aQClLsKHDT0E&refer=home
Thank's for that link!
A comment about the Board. While Republican's like to snip that Bush isn't a true conservative (not true although his foreign policy is not my isolationist cup of tea), most Bush appointees are the real deal. One doesn't get vetted as a judge, Fed member or prosecutor in this administration by being a lib quack. My guess is that this Board is going to be VERY slow in abandoning their fiduciary responsibility in the fight against inflation. dhpar, I have the same FF trade as you except in Dec. I expect 25bp to come out.
I'll be starting a thread on some of these questions. I look forward to your input.
Rather than be a duplicitous fuck, I'll give you the down and dirty. Until the day before the discount rate cut, my account was as high as 240k. Today it's 90k.
Yea, I'm freaked out.
Here was the problem many Bond traders had. As we all know, during periods of turbulence the common profile is lower stock and higher Treasury prices. When the dust settles and stocks find a base then the flight to quality bid abandons Treasuries, forcing yields up a bit. Well this time was different. This was all about credit spreads. Great news for Treasuries, a bit bad for stocks, but collapse city for non guaranteed loans. RIMM doesn't care about foreclosures in Detroit. Treasuries do.
Going into the fateful opex Friday of August 17th I was short ES and short ZB. As I've recounted on ET that day I added to my short ES on the spike and covered 29pts lower 42 seconds later. By EOD on the 17th I was flat ES. Bonds as some of you remember, broke down to 109.08 on the news. Stocks up, Bonds down. Normal. The PROBLEM though is I stayed short the Bonds and while SPX is now 70 points higher than the 17th, Bond futures also rallied 5 and half points! There've been many times the past month that I didn't buy stocks when I was bullish because I thought my short Bonds would come in enough that I didn't need the extra exposure from ES. Big mistake. The stocks went up but Bonds didn't break.
Of course here and there I've sold ES and subsidized some of the Bond losses. That fact only shows how significant the Treasury losses in toto have been. I made a stand into employment. I was short the curve from Fed Funds to Bonds and on top of it I financed the purchase of 110 puts with the premium allocated from the naked short sale of 114 calls. My bad. I had told dhpar on this or another thread that a similar pattern to last years blow off highs in Sept could be in the offing. Instead of taking a loss at a time when my work suggested higher prices I instead added to losing shorts.
Now I'm paralyzed. I'm flat and trying to decide if I should take the advice of friends who suggest I just scalp 10 lots of ZB and ZN on the screen and be content making a thou a day or if I should continue trying to get rich. My retirement years are set so I suppose I should just relax and have fun.
I've had a wild last year. I went from 1 lots in NQ to a lucky Corn trade last fall and then overtraded a few 20 lots in the Bonds and EuroFx around the new year so that I went from essentially zero to 160k in 10 months. Perhaps this is a normal drawdown after such a climb. Jeez a 2 point move on 30 ZB and I'm back to a buck and half which is where I've spent most the year. Maybe I'll just teach......
Yea, I'm freaked out.
Here was the problem many Bond traders had. As we all know, during periods of turbulence the common profile is lower stock and higher Treasury prices. When the dust settles and stocks find a base then the flight to quality bid abandons Treasuries, forcing yields up a bit. Well this time was different. This was all about credit spreads. Great news for Treasuries, a bit bad for stocks, but collapse city for non guaranteed loans. RIMM doesn't care about foreclosures in Detroit. Treasuries do.
Going into the fateful opex Friday of August 17th I was short ES and short ZB. As I've recounted on ET that day I added to my short ES on the spike and covered 29pts lower 42 seconds later. By EOD on the 17th I was flat ES. Bonds as some of you remember, broke down to 109.08 on the news. Stocks up, Bonds down. Normal. The PROBLEM though is I stayed short the Bonds and while SPX is now 70 points higher than the 17th, Bond futures also rallied 5 and half points! There've been many times the past month that I didn't buy stocks when I was bullish because I thought my short Bonds would come in enough that I didn't need the extra exposure from ES. Big mistake. The stocks went up but Bonds didn't break.
Of course here and there I've sold ES and subsidized some of the Bond losses. That fact only shows how significant the Treasury losses in toto have been. I made a stand into employment. I was short the curve from Fed Funds to Bonds and on top of it I financed the purchase of 110 puts with the premium allocated from the naked short sale of 114 calls. My bad. I had told dhpar on this or another thread that a similar pattern to last years blow off highs in Sept could be in the offing. Instead of taking a loss at a time when my work suggested higher prices I instead added to losing shorts.
Now I'm paralyzed. I'm flat and trying to decide if I should take the advice of friends who suggest I just scalp 10 lots of ZB and ZN on the screen and be content making a thou a day or if I should continue trying to get rich. My retirement years are set so I suppose I should just relax and have fun.
I've had a wild last year. I went from 1 lots in NQ to a lucky Corn trade last fall and then overtraded a few 20 lots in the Bonds and EuroFx around the new year so that I went from essentially zero to 160k in 10 months. Perhaps this is a normal drawdown after such a climb. Jeez a 2 point move on 30 ZB and I'm back to a buck and half which is where I've spent most the year. Maybe I'll just teach......
whats your position biases now PB? going into FED meeting and post FED meeting.