Surf's Special Situation Journal

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Quote from NoDoji:

I do admit I may have once briefly scared an ET member I offered to help when I had an introductory Skype convo something like:

Me: OK, you have your 5-min chart up?

ET-er: Yup.

Me: And you have your 1-min chart up?

ET-er: Sure do.

Me: And you have your Visa or MasterCard handy?

:D
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LOL! I do have an innocent question. What's the motive to help others with such passion? The markets really don't attract altruistic people, in fact, the opposite is true. Fame, fortune, adoration? I'm willing to suspend my skepticism --- but the explanation had better be good! Lol.
 
Quote from marketsurfer:

LOL! I do have an innocent question. What's the motive to help others with such passion? The markets really don't attract altruistic people, in fact, the opposite is true. Fame, fortune, adoration? I'm willing to suspend my skepticism --- but the explanation had better be good! Lol.
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When I was a noob on this site, and later when I had some experience but no "big picture" idea what I was doing, many ET members stepped right up and helped me. I often read posts by people who are making very common mistakes and I share from my own experience how I stopped making those mistakes. If someone asks me for some help or suggestions what to do about a trading problem, I help out, just like ammo, austin, banjo, bighog, cornixforex, geez, Red_Ink, Redneck, Robert Weinstein, and others helped me out without any expectation of payment in return.

To be fair, by mentoring traders, I learned to hone my own fledgling trading plan. So I received more than I gave. I think there's a St. Francis prayer in there somewhere :cool:

P.S. Also my trading methods are not proprietary. They've been around as long as liquid markets have traded. It's not like I'm messing up an edge. There are plenty of traders who can't afford to share their tactics because their edge can be easily diluted by too many players doing the same thing.
 
Hope everyone in New York City is ok following the hurricane. I fled my place in Gramercy Park on Thursday night (after 3+ days in the dark) and headed to my house in the Catskills where we had power.

Looking fwd to a productive week, and excited for things to get back to normal in the city (minus the Nor'easter that's supposed to hit in Wed/Thurs).
 
Quote from R. Raskolnikov:

Hope everyone in New York City is ok following the hurricane. I fled my place in Gramercy Park on Thursday night (after 3+ days in the dark) and headed to my house in the Catskills where we had power.

Looking fwd to a productive week, and excited for things to get back to normal in the city (minus the Nor'easter that's supposed to hit in Wed/Thurs).
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Live with worrying, Life is happy. With out worrying give feeling like just dead.
 
Quote from marketsurfer:

The guy was up over 160% in 2006 -- made my frind wealthy-- then We invested in 2007 during the death spiral as described here

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&refer=home&sid=a8jtLSxIdqK4

Then starting in 2008, after being wiped out--- he rebounded huge again. Truly amazing



<I>In 2007, Farmer's faith in the commodities boom took a blow. Red Kite Metals made big bets on continued price rises. When aluminum dropped 14 percent and copper barely gained, the value of the fund's holdings fell 50 percent in the first 11 months of the year, according to two investors.

Like the endangered bird of prey for which it's named, Red Kite was suddenly fighting for survival.

Now Farmer, a veteran of U.S. commodities trader Philipp Brothers, has come roaring back. The price of copper rocketed 26 percent in January and February and set a new record of $8,820 a metric ton on March 6. As of March 20, it was $7,840.

20 Percent Rise

Red Kite Metals gained more than 15 percent in January and more than 20 percent in February, according to people familiar with the fund's returns.</I>
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It is interesting that Russian businessman Mikhail Prokhorov played the crisis much better than many HF's. He owned huge shares in metal industries, but went almost totally in cash (worth of several billions $) right before the crap started only to load up in assets at much cheaper prices after it dumped. Classic macro-play and very smart move it was. His "buddy olygarchs" stayed in the assets during the same time and lost serious amounts of their net worth... Rebounded by now, but that's different story.
 
Quote from Ol' Yella:


However, I do still believe in "The Siberian Crow". :cool:
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Hahaha... Thanks! :)

I hope Siberian Crow's story is not the matter of belief, but a matter of actual results shown, cause I'm not trying to create a cult or claim some fantastic results, just share bits of experience both positive and negative. :)
 
Quote from NoDoji:

When I was a noob on this site, and later when I had some experience but no "big picture" idea what I was doing, many ET members stepped right up and helped me. I often read posts by people who are making very common mistakes and I share from my own experience how I stopped making those mistakes. If someone asks me for some help or suggestions what to do about a trading problem, I help out, just like ammo, austin, banjo, bighog, cornixforex, geez, Red_Ink, Redneck, Robert Weinstein, and others helped me out without any expectation of payment in return.

To be fair, by mentoring traders, I learned to hone my own fledgling trading plan. So I received more than I gave. I think there's a St. Francis prayer in there somewhere :cool:

P.S. Also my trading methods are not proprietary. They've been around as long as liquid markets have traded. It's not like I'm messing up an edge. There are plenty of traders who can't afford to share their tactics because their edge can be easily diluted by too many players doing the same thing.
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Exactly the same experience. Despite Surf's thesis of "markets don't attract altruistic people" a few years ago quite a few good traders from ET generously helped me and didn't ever ask a single penny for all their help worth hundreds of hours of their time in total (as we still keep in touch literally every day)... Why is that so? No idea...

P. S. As we both know even if you show almost everything that works for us, 99% won't even bother to read/listen. So sharing things is sort of improving karma while not creating much competition really... :D
 
Quote from marketsurfer:

The guy was up over 160% in 2006 -- made my friend wealthy-- then We invested in 2007 during the death spiral as described here

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&refer=home&sid=a8jtLSxIdqK4
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I apologize for not completely bad at math so let's look at those numbers, shall we?

1. If the fund was down 50% in 2007, even if it made back 15% and 20% the next year's first 2 months, it was still down at least 25%, since it needed a 100% return to make it back to break even.(even if I sum the 50-15-20=15% still down that much)

If you look at copper prices, they took a dive next year.

2. Since the fund made 188% in 2005, but since the inception it is up only 145% (according to Bloomberg), that means that anyone invested with them after 2006 is still in the red.

So I don't see any miraculous recovery yet helped by his faith (I prefer skill,experience and even luck).

Again, look at copper. After the 2008 drop in price (Red Kite must have lost huge again), it came back but still at those mid 2008 level.

A year to year breakdown would be nice, but again, Farmer's bet on copper lost big twice....
 
Quote from cornixforex:

Those funds' drawdowns sound pretty scary. :)
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Don't forget that IF Farmer was a big player in the NYMEX market, every penny move was +/- 1.25 million dollars.
Thus: a 1 buck move in copper was worth $125 million !!
 
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