And I’ve gotta run. It’s been a busy few weekends this summer. Next weekend will be no different. But then I think my schedule clears up nicely, just in time for July 27th event.
NFTRH 714, out now.
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Patience used 9 times in the report. Agreed. I can wait another week and a half.
While I feel reasonably good, since I have been in mostly cash for 2022, this market is pretty much untradeable to anyone with a horizon greater than a day. One day you might feel reasonably safe in commodities or bonds, the next day they drop like a rock. And vice versa. If you can time any of this, my hat’s off to you. Technical trading, while I am pretty darn new at it, has lately not proven any better than throwing darts. I sure hope July 27 allows a direction one way or the other at least for a month or two.
Was there a question in here? Not really, or maybe there is — if there are any subs who do trade shorter term, are you doing well in this market? Just figured I’d post my thoughts.
Day trading is sure not me. With cash equiv. paying increasing income it aids patience, which was not the case in previous periods like when Bernnake held ZIRP-eternity so even saving could not work for anything other than not losing. It was forced speculation or nothing.
The market is wearing everyone other than strict day traders out, and if they can make it work, more power to them. I will collect income and wait for a real turn, which will come when a high enough percentage of people have thrown in the towel on the idea that this phase will end.
Frankly, it has ended. Not 2 months ago everyone was inflation-centric and inflation’s trades and indicators topped in the interim. Now the question is whether it is interim before new inflation pressures crop up or a full jerk back to the other side of the pendulum’s swing. But the backward looking data like CPI are not going to give the answer.
Mike C, “this market is pretty much untradeable,” my view as well. It’s not just you; don’t feel bad or “inadequate.” Market has not always been this way, may or may not stay this way, but as Gary would say, “It is what it is” — for now at least.You mentioned bonds, I find buying 26-week Tbills and, lately, 2-year Tnotes (not bond funds) has helped keep me away from the high-volatility slaughter. The up 10% one day, down 10% the next, just ain’t worth it.
This is a great discussion. I am sure we three are not the only ones wrangling over the complexities of this market. A worm will turn, but I only know the dumb steady way to prepare for it, which means doing the tedious work of interpreting it as these small volatile bursts establish new trends or reaffirm the old ones. Meanwhile, it’s a waiting game, which I agree kind of sucks. And then there are goons upcoming on the 27th. Always fun (not).
But it’s gonna break. Experience tells that. When it does I hope to be prepared after managing risk so extensively, to capitalize. That’s what we’re here for… a) manage risk and b) capitalize. But this macro has thrown in an 8-ball with the move in long-term yields. Makes it more challenging and more volatile IMO because the rules that held in place for decades (from a bond market vantage point) are no longer in place. I picture the machines not knowing what to do either. But it will play out and our job is to interpret (and speaking personally, not to get hung up on day trading and short time frames).
Being able to get some return on cash definitely is helping, but I haven’t taken the plunge yet in my IRA cash into SHV or SHY depending on next Wed. Most of my other cash is at a couple online savings accounts getting 1.25% or 1.6%. Hell, if that number ever got back up to the old days of 5%, I’d convert my entire net worth to money market accounts and be done.
Gary, I think you’ve got the right method for longer term investing, but one thing this swing trading attempt has shown to me is any purchases I do make from now on, I plan on applying stops. It has taken the emotional aspect of trading out of the picture, for me at least.
The stop concerns are 1) if I get stopped out, how do I decide on a re-entry point and 2) how to not get screwed with a stop loss ticking a really bad exit in a flash crash situation.
Thanks.
I am actually self-coaching right now. I have long been very good at risk management. Okay great, not losing much money, down around 4% in 2022. But the aspect I have not been great at is the capitalizing part because I am such a risk manager and you need a level of speculating bubble head in you for that. I’d like to get outside myself more when the herds are really running the wrong way – as they will – and be more of a risk taker at the right time.
When I can be confident of the form that risk should be taking (I’ll be confident enough in the general timing of it) I’ll hope to deploy heavily, for me at least. I’ll try to be a more aggressive speculator than I was in Q1, 2020 for example. Then I knew it was contrary very bullish and yet I only deployed moderately to that view.
@Mike C How do you know your online broker isn’t connected to some algobot that will shake you out “flash-boy” style to pick up your stocks for cheap, then sell them into the next micro-rally for a profit a few nanoseconds later? All “levvered up” of course, and they can do it a few million times per day.
I know you’re not asking me, but this is exactly why I cannot day trade. All the flash hysterics (by man and machine) in the world will not alter the next real trend, which is what I want to catch.
I don’t, unfortunately, but I am not conspiratorial about it either. If they need to drop the price to take out my 10s to 100s of shares — I really think they’ve got better stuff to do or bigger things to go after.
Definitely figuring out where to set stops has been a learning process, and I don’t know how to protect against the once every few years flash crash.
But I do know stops have removed emotion from trading for me, and if I had traded without emotion for the past 33 years, I would be about 2-5x my current net worth.
It is all so frustrating sometimes. I don’t want to see my investments as an in/out, swing trading trying to scalp what I can so we can be ok in retirement type thing. At 55 it gets more and more important to get things right, and not be early, and also not be married to one view. So many friends and blogs I talk to and read (past tense for the most part) were/are generally on the bearish side and have been so for literally more than a decade. And quite a few are gold bugs, yeah, that seems to go hand in hand.
Don’t get me wrong, I am comforted to some level by my physical gold. But was it the right place to be in for the past decade investment-wise? Not by a long shot.
Sure, we probably are due a really big correction, and I hope to be in the right spot to get back in, if not at the bottom, at least missing a decent part of the drop. I feel that’s where I am positioned now, and just need to be “patient” and let it play out.
I have to do what I can to get the next 5-10 years right, or I will be a Costco greeter when I’m 80!
Gold to me is not part of this. It’s a rock, literally and figuratively. The miners are a speculation that I think will be explosive for a period before needing to once again be dumped. As for stocks, my risk aversion has declined significantly in 2022. But the dynamics in bonds compels us to be aware of sectors and their relationships to bonds.
It also helps to see the Fed for what it is, and has been on this cycle. A tardy, market micro-managing bunch of eggheads doing what the bond market demands of them. It’s fun psychologically, if not yet financially.