| To: sense who wrote (1634) | 9/8/2019 11:11:48 PM | | From: sense | | | | Hayman's Kyle Bass on trouble in Hong Kong
Should note that while I think Kyle is "mostly right" he is also all in these days on talking his trade...
Kyle's current trade seems it is entirely based on shorting the Hong Kong dollar, because he believes that it is not possible to sustain the HK dollar peg to the U.S. dollar... given the changes that have occurred, that are occurring, and that must and will occur.
But, the timing ? Well worth following Kyle's postings... and I don't disagree with his macroanalysis... but being right about a trade, even an inevitable trade, is one thing... while remaining solvent longer than the market remains irrational... or remaining solvent longer than the market remains deliberately ignorant, in this case... can still be a challenge...
So, figuring out what to trade, and how to trade, to "win" this bet... when a lot of people will be seeking to force the failure they'd prefer to see, rather than the one the market would deliver if it were honest ?
Timing... is the issue. Need to be "in" well before it happens, and before everyone else piles in... while still needing to be "out" as long as possible before risks have begun being realized (in market terms) to enable avoiding holding risks while opponents are seeking to take you out of the trade... by killing you on the trade. |
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| From: sense | 9/9/2019 5:46:33 AM | | | | | | Facebook has been of interest to me recently... as I think they have massive unrealized risks tied into the privacy problems, abuses of users information, and the censorship issue that has them abusing customers for having an opinion... that Facebook has no legal right or interest in caring about.
Ran across this today... about FB trying to add a new function... which sparked a bit of poking around
Can Facebook Dating Push FB Stock Higher?
Will Facebook Dating Break Tinder's Heart?
I don't expect them to succeed... given they've failed in similar parallel competitive moves... and dating, in particular, is likely to proof sensitive to FB's branding problems, given extent abuses of their existing users privacy...
But, the entry has sparked competitors to respond...
IAC considers giving up control of ANGI Homeservices, Match Group
All three are listed: IAC, ANGI and MTCH
ANGI might be worth paying it some attention, given its lost 2/3 in the last year... for some reason ? |
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| To: sense who wrote (1633) | 9/10/2019 7:13:50 PM | | From: sense | | | | Elephants Dancing to Trump's Tune... in The China(s) Trade(s)
1. Go gold or... don't go...
Dalio goes all Gold Bug on us... but just can't quite bring himself to actually say it...
Schiff: The Only Winners Will Be The People Who Bought Gold And Silver
2. China's Endless Summer Vacation... China mimes out Clark Griswold's new idea: "There’s a cruise, there’s a fire on the ship, we think the whole ship’s on fire and we jump—it’s just a little fire—and we end up on an island where we meet Randy [Quaid] somewhere who’s been left there from an old Survivor series."
Hong Kong Tourism Plunges 40%, Most Since 2003 SARS Outbreak
"A Boom In Reverse": Southeast Asia's Beaches Empty Out Amid Slump In Chinese Tourism
Of course, some will vacation harder than others:
Ma, No More: Kyle Bass Fears Alibaba Boss Will Be "Jailed, Disappeared" Within Next Year
China Vows To 'Crush' Pro-Democracy Separatists; Hong Kong Warns Against Foreign Influence
3. We can pretend its not happening...
US Futures Drift Higher On Chinese Invitation To Bagholders, Trade And Central Bank Optimism
Stocks Pump'n'Dump On Old News That China Will "Sweeten" Trade Deal By Buying More US Ag Products
Say, about that last one... "China buying more ag products"... haven't I heard that one before, somewhere ?
4. Turnabout is Fair Play: And Other Hard Lessons For Spoiled Children
China's Xi: President Trump Can't Believe What I Say
If it were me advising Trump... I'd have him announce a suspension in the China trade talks to enable clearing the air... provide a checklist of items that need to be dealt with FIRST before any resumption... with a resumption to occur just as soon as the two parties have each demonstrated good faith, as is necessary to restoring the ability of each to trust the other, by each showing they are fully complying with all their prior promises already made... you know, like China complying with the promises they made to gain admission to the WTO...
That never happened, and it is still not happening... with China still expecting they will get away with taking advantage of the system of global trade by flouting the rules, fully expecting they will instead change the rules they agreed to rather than comply with them. ? That defines the reason that Trump, eventually, will have to end all trade with China... while also pulling the plug on our now 40 year long subsidization of China's "miracle"... which has been entirely funded by the U.S.... and is still funded by the U.S.... but will not be for much longer. Why, exactly, does the U.S. STILL pay the costs of the postage for shipping products from China to American consumers ?
In any case, Moe now joins Curly, Larry and China on the belated summer vacation... sells and goes away...
'Quant Quake 2.0' Fallout: Nomura Warns Of "Horrific" Returns For Momo Stocks Ahead
Quant Quake Goes Global Amid Momo Meltdown, Bond Bloodbath
What's left in the market is mostly a game of Musical Chairs:
Something Big Is Taking Place Below The Market's Surface
4. The Window of Opportunity is Now Closed. China blinks, once... already too little, too late...
Doing what Trump demands.... while making it look like it was our idea ?
Note the similarity in the effect of changing a policy... after it doesn't matter... to pushing on a string ?
China Scraps Foreign Investment Limits For Stock, Bond Markets... But Does Anyone Care
5. And then, speaking of over-playing your hand, in a fit of pique, while more greatly misunderestimating Trump than before... China threatens to teach the U.S. a lesson by shutting down their own oil supply:
Iran Will Be A Full Nuclear Power By End Of 2020: Report
China has signed a long term agreement to buy large quantities of Iranian oil in defiance of US sanctions
China has thus irrevocably tied together the resolution of separate multiple conflicts with the U.S., in trade and in other spheres... to the singular outcomes in non-proliferation (North Korea, Iran) , and now to the singular timelines on which events in the Arabian Gulf will play out. China is hiding behind Iran's skirts while "defying" Washington's rules for maintaining a free market focused global order... an highly successful and orderly system which China MORE fully depends upon than anyone else... thus leaving the only possible outcome in the near term as significantly expanded disorder...
6. So, how bad could things get... and what are the drivers of... Timing ?
What about the American left, the timing and potential in the next election, and the " Third Wave" function converted into a path once taken towards advancing globalist socialist goals as the " Third Way" ? The melding of the "benefits" of socialism and with those of capitalism... rather than working as "socialism lite"... is a policy that ensures an end result in becoming National Socialism. That's what we see in China today. American policy vis a vis China the last half century... has merely re-invented Nazi Germany... only this time in Asia, and with 1.43 billion people. Socialism, being inherently totalitarian... as shown by history at its origins... either leads to communism... or to national socialism. Does no one remember the origins of WW II ? Nazi's were not and are not right wingers... but are the "pro-industrial" branch of socialism... none of the evils of which are mitigated by imposing Nazi-led globalist governance on us. The American left... have wrongly expected a third path would fully enable them in a success won by sowing seeds that would work to undermine the U.S. from within... in a Vietnam War style redux of radicalism... fostering voluntary surrender to "globalism" as an anodyne alternative to being conquered by Hitler ? Good luck with that.
Antifa's efforts don't exactly seem to be carrying the day... while the prior election gives no reason to expect the next election will be less, rather than a whole lot more, of what we have now... with a Trump landslide... only with that still admittedly depending on the timing in events... that clearly ARE going to happen, whatever else it is that occurs from here in politics. And, Trump controls the timing.
If there is a recession in the U.S., the pace of events will only accelerate and escape Trump's control... and then there is going to be a war sooner rather than later... and it will be a real war, not the hobby wars that have been postured over the last few years in serial efforts, but failed attempts, to sap the American military's power...
Anyone still expecting (or believing it was random that) that the Bush/Clinton/Obama foreign policy... (which subsidized China and gave China a free hand, while it imposed a series of deliberately corrosive policies for America)... is going to work ? Anyone still expecting that... hasn't been paying attention.
The Clinton - China - Leftwing Tech Company linkages ARE still intact... for now...
Thanks To Tech Totalitarians, US Already Has A China-Style "Social Credit System"
Big Tech & Big Brother Are Going To Join Forces To "Secure Elections"
But, expect a very short half-life... while noting the unintended counter-punchline in this article defining one aspect of the Clinton/Obama wartime legacy: "Counter-productivity seems the essence of U.S. military policy in Uncle Sam’s never-ending, post-9/11 wars. Call me crazy, or wildly conspiratorial, but after serving in two hopelessly absurd wars and studying the full scope of American military action, it seems that maybe that was the idea all along."
Clocks are ticking on the unwinding of these events... including in the election interference in the last cycles... as we close in on the media driven expectations for the next cycle... ? Trump cards in hand... Trump bides his time.
Tying those loose ends together...
FBI Given Evidence Of Clinton-Linked Libya Scheme; Instead Launched Trump-Russia Quagmire
CIA Crushes CNN's Latest Trump-Russia Conspiracy Theory
Broken Clocks... are still exactly right twice a day...
Trump Fires John Bolton After "Disagreeing Strongly With His Suggestions"
Enough for today... |
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| From: sense | 9/11/2019 5:38:51 PM | | | | | | What Just Happened ?
"Has Only Occurred On Two Days In History"
On the 2nd of September... Silver SPIKED... moved up over a dollar on the day... and then, in the equity markets... Market Momentum just absolutely DIES ?
The MoMo traders were GUTTED last week... in a "momo massacre that swept across markets over the past three days" which "has made sure that anyone who had market-beating profits as recently as the start of the month, is now red for the year!"
This was no typical volatility move... MoMo was massacred... but it didn't die in a vacuum... it was tied into the markets in a trading pair, with "a ~5 standard deviation rally of value vs. momentum yesterday and today". You don't see 5-standard deviation moves of anything... without there being a REASON... and yet, there's nothing being said... the crickets are chirping. Someone made a lot of money, though, by betting against the momo crowd... and backing the RALLY of VALUE.
But, that's a chart pairing clearly describing a trade this week... not fully defining the "why" in something significant enough it accounts for MASSIVE fundamental changes on the order of 5 standard deviations ?
What does THAT mean ? Consider, first, that we live in an era when the markets are driven, not by free market functions in the aggregate of actual individual investors choices, but by the choices of focus being imposed by the algorithms "they" plug into the computers... that automate and dictate the balances in micro-second to micro-second sequences of execution in trades... that in aggregate replace investors opinions.
In any given period, say over a 9 to 18 month span, they'll keep the machines working within the lines, and investors adept at charting can easily map out the overlaps in time periods... periodicity still rules... traders work the volatility and momentum between the goal posts... and, then, changes will be implemented... the rules are skewed by some factor... in part, just to change things up and prevent excess predictability...
But a shift like that this week seems pretty clearly to defined boundaries in the trade in which the rules programmed into the machines have suddenly altered not just the "wobbulators" varying bias in the time flows to be less predictable... but have altered the underlying fundamental market biases...
Two things are made apparent in result...
First, this is defining a shift in the underlying computational drivers, with a shift in the focus on the VALUES that are incorporated into, enabled, and applied by the machines in their calculations... altering market bias.
It appears what we are seeing is an two pronged effort in altering market bias in a particular way:
1.) de-emphasizing "momo"... removing support for $ in the trade that has been being enabled purely by manipulations of alpha facilitating volatility and thus potential for profitability in "trading"... and
2.) refocusing on "value"... which necessarily means making traders interest more dependent on actual performance of the underlying business entities... less dependent on the bankers/brokers/hedgies interest in computer trading based on vaporware variables generating differentials programmed in by machines... so the winner is a trade is determined by better programming and faster computers... rather than connected to the real value and valuation of the underlying vehicles... productive businesses.
Second, this change appears that it is imposing a major shift in market focus... some of the implications of which should be fairly obvious... when you shift the market factors that matter most from an imposed focus on short term (trading, not business) profits enabled by more finely parsing time while trading incrementally in fractions based on artificially created alpha... and INSTEAD focus on trades based on financial metrics that are not independent of the underlying vehicles... so stocks again represent an ownership interest in real companies instead of trading based on variable factors in a pairing of behavioral analysis within a time domain division algo...
I noted in posts here recently that really important words you should understand... that used to generate relevant hits when plugged into search engines... have now been scrubbed from the web. The context for that note was my recent search for "management of performance expectations"... MOPE... the concept that is applied by the Fed now in "spoofing" (manipulating by lying) markets into performing as demanded... by manipulating public perceptions of the truth... It has been re-named to make the new title much more obtuse... but, under any name, the concept employed by the man behind the screen is no longer allowed to be subject to investigation by use of the web... search engines will return garbage on any search... but, when you're not allowed to get the answers you seek, they will instead return something like "Sorry, there are no results for this search." The web is a big place. The algos behind it are less than perfect. The web, in search, comes closer to monkeys randomly creating Shakspeare than is otherwise possible. No results... on a thing you know exists and is important... that used to be there... means censorship disallows you from getting the information you seek. We're not in Kansas anymore.
Try your own search for "artificially created alpha"... and wonder why, in the entire world of potential that string might generate... the web is magically devoid of relevance ?
All of that to say... what just happened is likely defining a MAJOR change in the way the markets work.
The rules of trading just changed... out with the old boss... in with the new boss... same as the old boss... only the new boss has a few different ideas about how the markets ought to work...
Trump... forced the Fed to blink, recently... Didn't back off today, blasting them for not moving rates toward zero ?
And, at the same time the last two weeks, Trump and the Fed have been "on the same page" in denying that we have ANY risk of entering into a recession... which, on the face of that, makes for a set of truly remarkable assertions... clearly not based in any REAL metrics about what is happening in the markets, where autos and transport are imploding... while the media are working hard at talking us INTO a recession... which the Fed, until recently, was working in tandem trying hard to engineer... in order to alter the outcome of the next election.
I will extend that awareness of the conflict... and the outcomes of the conflict over monetary policy recently... to predict... if we DO have a recession... the Fed will soon cease to exist...
That's one good reason I'll continue rooting for a recession...
Meanwhile... "value" has been more than "ignored" by the market for a long time... but has actively been destroyed in favor of the promotion of "stocks" that are naturally more cooperative in the corruption of the market function... which in the aggregate results in MASSIVE mis-allocations of capital into "political" choices... like Solyndra and Tesla... which are enabled in foisting obvious frauds on the markets... only because the also enabled momo drivers deem it politically expedient to sustain those efforts... to advance those members of their team... in spite of their patent failure or potential to generate value. So, the market being broken... means winners and losers are SELECTED... and NOT determined in a meritocracy based on success, or probability of success... but are anointed by "the powers that be" based on the degree of corruption of the principles... the more corrupt the better.
Has that regime now fallen ? Tesla... likely a bellwether... on one side of that pairing... between stocks of real merit and stocks defined by... having been anointed as valuable in spite of the absence of evidence.
But, on the other side ? The chart above is described as altering "this record gap between value, cyclicals, SMid and high beta stocks on one side... and momentum, low volatility, and growth on the other side" which "was not sustainable"...
I question the validity of the categorization... the chart above pairs a differential between "momentum" and "value"... while the text generates pairings between value and high beta... and ties momentum to growth and low volatility...
The problem with that... is that MARKET FUNCTIONS today are elements that are scripted in performance... and it appears that the underlying script has just been rewritten...
"Value", "cyclical" and "growth"... define functions and performance of actual businesses in relation to stocks... not pure market functions like beta, volatility and momentum... ?
In a free market, what the market participants value... is what defines the attachment of particular categories of stocks to the parallel in performance based on the functions in trading...
So, what changed along with the the REACTION to change seen in the 5 sigma shift in market functions just now... ?
Silver and gold... and silver and gold shares... have performed well since April...
"Financialization"... seems to be running into headwinds...
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