Down goes the Dow

I'd be interested to know if your in-and-out strategy yielded better returns than if you had held it for the long term. The former is certainly more work, for that matter.

In hindsight, just holding many of those companies for the duration has been very profitable.

I think Apple play now may have a lot to do with consumers upgrading to 5g.

As of Dec 31, it has yielded less, but not much—because I would buy back in on dips but never at their bottom, and because of taxes.

But it depends on precisely when you would measure. If you took a snapshot during big drawdowns, I was ahead—which was my main purpose. Similarly, as the big names drop, I am closer to even, maybe even or slightly ahead now. My aim was always to avoid the big drawdown, while chiseling some of the gains from the best-gainers. At times I used futures in limited exposures.

It has been a pain, but I learned a lot—mostly, that certain strategies work only in certain environments. That is why I’m interested now in foreign dividend, energy, and bonds—I am going from a trading strategy to an “investment “ strategy. I have been a one-trick-pony “trader”, and my day is probably over. I have now even bought SAVINGS BONDS, something inconceivable to me over the past decades.

I am hoping that flexibility will land me in good stead—away from gains, and toward wealth preservation.

Maser, interesting.

And I fully understand the strategy of foregoing a little potential profit in the interest of avoiding some risk. During downturns I will customarily systematically lower my leverage ratio for that same reason.

As long as the strategy is working for you, that's what matters.

Ghost of Igloi wrote:

Well, that is Government subsidized earnings. Totally fake metric.

Not fake at all. The gubmint has been involved for a long time.

Baloney. Bailed out failed business models, subsidized consumers, subsidized interest rates to fuel stock buybacks, subsidized corporate tax structure. Biggest fake economy of all time.

Ghost of Igloi wrote:

Baloney. Bailed out failed business models, subsidized consumers, subsidized interest rates to fuel stock buybacks, subsidized corporate tax structure. Biggest fake economy of all time.

Maybe, but that doesn’t negate my point. It actually helps substantiate it.

I have been thinking more about btc.

As you all know, I maintain that it has utility, as an intermediary mechanism in a transfer. Thus, it IS a store of wealth, but for such a purpose, the duration over which that wealth is maintained is very short, if the btc is purchased and sold in short order.

So, why would anyone hold for a long time? The unit value should reasonably be based on the transaction volume, or more properly, rate.—ie supply/demand—and it should have no intrinsic significance. So, those who hold for a long time must be counting on a supply-demand imbalance.

This imbalance can be created by either or both increasing demand (lightning layer, etc), and restricting supply, Diamond-handed whales work to restrict circulating supply, while developers work to stimulate demand.

So why is price down? IMO because there are many holders who are not whales. The price should reach a whale-floor, and then bounce a bit as interest picks up and demand increases with a potentially further-reduced circulating supply.

The wildcard is the US gov, who can both manage supply and directly and indirectly affect demand. And you know they are doing it. Maybe they have been selling into this environment to drive the price down, so that they can buy in again cheaper and have even greater control. Repeat, until they control the market from within.

Idk if that’s possible because idk the current ownership distribution. What I do know is that I will still use the service for short-term transfers in the future, because the specific price won’t matter to me. What will matter will be the transaction cost and rapidity.

the transaction costs for bitcoin currently, you surely know, are too steep to be at all competitive.

While your theory of the US govt. manipulating supply/demand in crypto space of any sort is interesting, I don't know that i've heard of any evidence supporting it.

Clearly, the retail folks buying crypto were hoping for a long term appreciation and the chance to get in on the ground floor, so to speak. It is absolutely comical how that bitcoin $100k price target has been brandished about as recently as just a few months ago. And how many stoops figured, well, it's under $60K now, and here's my chance to get on board? The folks i know in it, I would have these exchanges, and they went where I would explain that on speculative stuff like this, i set a mental stop loss of about 15% below what i paid for it, and when it hits that, I'm out. That was an old momentum or day-trader trick. So, I would explain that i kept getting whipsawed out. Invariably, and I say invariably their response was to laugh in my face and patronizingly explain to dumbo me that with crypto you just buy it and go away. It was and is the future, and you just need patience (and in a week or two when we're off the charts....)

which brings me to my point - crypto, unregulated as it is, is just ripe for a few whales to collude, drive the price up, then sell off fast and furious, trapping the gullible long retail speculators, and far short of that phony $100K milestone. (i.e: before an would take profits). Classic pump and dump with all the pinnings to make it devastating - no regulation, no rules against collusion, no transparency, low liquidity, etc.

Add to that that there is high competition drawing speculators out of bitcoin into the hundreds of other crypto coins originating every week.

In short, you sound like the whales are holding steady while i expect the opposite - the whales are playing retail speculators for all they can take.

It's easy to short BTC or any coin you want. Just use VPN and download Kucoin. It's based in Europe, so no VPN needed over there.

Shorting crypto is easy but very risky. A lot of shorts got rekt last August/Sept when BTC pumped.

My friend shorted in Sept/Oct and got liquidated.

At least if you bought high, you can hold. BTC supposedly goes on bull runs every 3-4 years.

okay, thanks. I have no interest in doing so, i just wanted to know if it was possible and more importantly, how much it was being done, just so I could garner some understanding to why prices were moving as they do.

To my way of thinking, being able to easily short something is important for price discovery, avoiding unsustainable price spikes, and to keep prices more realistic. A commodity that cannot be shorted, or is difficult to do so, runs a high risk of getting out of whack with its intrinsic value and real worth.

Last year my "ape" in laws FOMO'd into GME around 110 and got bailed out. Then YOLO'd their life savings into AMC around 20 and got bailed out. They made enough to buy two Tesla Model Ys. They put their entire retirement accounts in Tesla in 2020.

They also FOMO'd into DWAC after it pumped in October and probably got bailed out last week. I hope they realize these are lottery tickets and not sustainable income.

This presents a dilemma for Igy. Isn't Sven one of his preachers?

https://twitter.com/NorthmanTrader/status/1484857720402583558?t=TGbIOnAGc248PMRh3raqTw&s=19

Sventhetraitor wrote:

This presents a dilemma for Igy. Isn't Sven one of his preachers?

https://twitter.com/NorthmanTrader/status/1484857720402583558?t=TGbIOnAGc248PMRh3raqTw&s=19

i had to dig through a long, tiring article, but his thesis boils down to this: ". I propose that the coming long valuation adjustment in the broader market will have current holders of equities eventually seek for an alternative and Bitcoin as a digital asset class will offer such a long term venue"

Perma bear goes off the rails.

HEy, investing noob, sounds like the inlaws got lucky for sure.

I can't say that that kind of investing has much appeal to me in that I don't trust what massive overnight gaps down could do to stocks like that (with the exception of Tesla, which i've traded successfully and own a little of now). To each his own.

Year to Date

SARK +29

VXX +25

Energy +13

Hussman +9

Gold 0

EM ex China 0

Emerging 0

ST TIPS -1

Treas -1

Staples sector -1

TIPS -2

China -2

Value -2

Junk -2

High Qual Corps -3

Financials -3

Developed ex-USA -3

60/40 -4

Schwab Dividend -4

Utils -4

Industrials -4

Comms sector -7

Materials -7

healthcare -8

SP500 -8

REITs -9

USA -9

Small Caps -10

TSLA -11

Vanguard Momo -12

Weed -12

Tech -12

Cons Discr -12

Retail -14

Clean Energy -17

BTC -23

ARKK -24

PTON -24

GME -28

Sort of 'whatever worked last year got smashed, whatever failed last year did fine.' With some exceptions like value doing fine both times.

But yeah look at value's strength. Has any of us been alive when value outperformed growth?

1 year:

Value +20%

SP500 +16%

Have to love the idea of collecting dividends, buying cheap stocks. How it's supposed to work. I've been making some value stocks and dividend stocks co-backbones of my portfolio.

How did ARKK manage to find an entire portfolio that did as badly as PTON?

The correction seems to be focused on the US, and specifically the US stocks that rose a lot last year. Overseas, stocks are barely down. Will the selling extend overseas? Or is this just a cleaning house in the US?

Certainly 'old economy' is doing ok. Energy, financials, industrials. Just a little off the top, nothign serious.

Sventhetraitor wrote:

This presents a dilemma for Igy. Isn't Sven one of his preachers?

https://twitter.com/NorthmanTrader/status/1484857720402583558?t=TGbIOnAGc248PMRh3raqTw&s=19

Crypto is just another indicator of a massive bubble.

Well were the wrong? Buy an amount you can afford to lose completely and then hold. "Momentum tricks" don't work.

100K isn't a comical valuation... 200K was my target when I first bought 5 years ago. The market cap of all cryptocurrencies put together is still significantly less than precious metals. (BTC price would have to be $600K to equal the market cap of gold.)

Seattle, it could just as easily be true that whales have diamond hands, and rather than selling are taking loans against their crypto holdings, same as people do with stocks, to reduce their tax burden.

As far as I can see, there is no indication that whales are pumping and dumping to the detriment of the everyman.

That could entirely be true. Just a hunch on my part, and no doubt much of it out of the paranoia that i have since it is largely an unregulated market.

We don't know.

What has been disappointing to me, nonetheless, is not that it has dipped to these levels, but that it has languished there for so long. I am just speaking for myself, but bitcoin fit the speculative play relative to my other holdings, and for all the uncertainty and unregulated baggage that came with it, a significant lack of momentum was a deal breaker for me.

Again, I don't doubt that I may be totally wrong. I will go so far as to say that my trading strategies towards crypto have unquestionably been the worst of anything I have ever touched, and fortunately I wagered relatively little.