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I got into QID and SQQQ several weeks ago and I've lost a shit ton. I've added some positions as it's dipped. At this point, I'm just hanging onto it (what goes down, must come up??). Anyhow, thanks Boz for the info, always appreciated.


Man, both you guys have balls holding SQQQ...I just flip in and outa SQQQ.

Futures are slowly moving down this AM...SQQQ is going to have a good run eventually
 

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Global Market Comments
September 16, 2020
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:(THE BULL CASE FOR BANKS),
(JPM), (BAC), (C), (WFC), (GS), (MS)
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The Bull Case for Banks

Banks have certainly been the red-headed stepchild of equity investment in 2020.While technology shares have rocketed by two, three, and four-fold, banks have remained mire in the muck, down 35% on the year while the S&P 500 is up 6%.

However, all that is about to change.

Banks have become the call option on a US economic recovery. When the economic data runs hot, banks rally. When it’s cold, they sell-off. So, in recent months bank share prices have been flat-lining.

You have to now ask the question of when the data stay hot, how high will banks run?

There also is a huge sector rotation issue staring you in the face. Where would you rather put new money, stocks at all-time highs trading at ridiculous multiples, or a quality sector in the bargain basement? Big institutions have already decided what to do and are buying every dip.

Banks certainly took it on the nose with the onset of the pandemic. Interest rates went to zero and loan default rates soared, demanding a massive increase in loan loss provisions.

Much more stringent accounting rules also kicked in during January known as “Current Expected Credit Losses.” That requires banks to write off 100% of their losses immediately, rather than spread them out over a period of years.

Then in June, the Federal Reserve banned bank share buybacks and froze dividends to preserve capital in expectation of more loan defaults.

So what happens next?

For a start, fall down on your knees and thank Dodd-Frank, the Obama era financial regulation bill.

Banks carped for years that it unnecessarily and unfairly tied their hands by limiting leverage ratios to only 10:1. Morgan Stanley reached 40:1 going into the Great Recession and barely made it out alive, while ill-fated Lehman Brothers reached a suicidal 100:1 and didn’t.

That meant the banks went into the pandemic with the strongest balance sheets in decades. No financial crisis here.

Thanks to government efforts to bring the current Great Depression to a quick end, generous fees have been raining down on the banks from the numerous loan programs they are helping to implement.

And trading profits? You may have noticed that options trading volume is up a monster 95% so far in 2020 and increased by a positively meteoric 120% in August. That falls straight to the banks’ bottom lines. If you’re wondering why your online trading platform keeps crashing, that’s why.

I list below my favorite bank investments using the logic that during depressions, you want to buy Rolls Royces, Teslas, and Cadillacs at deep discounts, not Volkswagens, Fiats, or Trabants.

JP Morgan (JPM) – Is the crown jewel of the sector, with the best balance sheet and the strongest customers. It has over reserved for losses that are probably never going to happen, stowing away some $25 billion in the last quarter alone.

Morgan Stanley (MS) - Brokerage-oriented ones like Morgan Stanley (MS) and Goldman Sachs (GS) are benefiting the most from the explosion in stock and options trading. I’ll pick my former employer (MS), where I once accounted for 80% of equity division profits, as (GS) is still mired in the aftermath of the $5 billion Malaysia scandal.

Bank of America (BAC) - is another quality play with a fortress balance sheet.

Citigroup (C) – Is the leveraged play in the sector with a slightly weaker balance sheet and more aggressive marketing strategy. It seems like they’re always trying to catch up with (JPM). This week’s revelation of a surprise $900 million “operational loss” and the penalties to follow knocked 13% of the share price. This is the high volatility play in the sector.

And what about Wells Fargo (WFC), you may ask, the cheapest bank of all? Unfortunately, it still has to wear a hair suit because of its many regulatory transgressions, before, during, and after the financial crisis so I’ll give it a miss. Oh, and Warren Buffet is selling too.


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[h=2]The One[/h]​


Quote of the Day

"If you advertise an interest in buying collies, a lot of people will call hoping to sell you their cocker spaniels," said Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett.
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Decent insider buying on AVDL over the past few days under rule 16b-3 up 12%
Yesterdays conference was a boon for sure..I'm very optimist here but it's still in the hands of the unpredictable FDA.
This is one stock I will hold through the election and will add but today is the wrong day to add, it'll drift back down hopefully.
Link to the conference web cast off the company site..I love this management team.

http://investors.avadel.com/events/...ight-22nd-annual-global-investment-conference
 

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Decent insider buying on AVDL over the past few days under rule 16b-3 up 12%
Yesterdays conference was a boon for sure..I'm very optimist here but it's still in the hands of the unpredictable FDA.
This is one stock I will hold through the election and will add but today is the wrong day to add, it'll drift back down hopefully.
Link to the conference web cast off the company site..I love this management team.

http://investors.avadel.com/events/...ight-22nd-annual-global-investment-conference


Man oh man is that a great call...I see why the stock is up big today.
One thing I'd take away is this has time to mature still, that is if JAZZ doesn't jump them first.
JAZZ has a long history of taking out companies in ADVLs position, JAZZ needs these guy badly to maintain a big part of their sleep disorder market witch is a substantial part of their company health moving forward.
I don't care what this company stock does short term, I'm hoping it dives actually.
 

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EU talking about negative interest rates is a heavy sign as to the depth of this gash in the economy.

Looking for a bounce up in the AM Nasdaq index today then a bigger dive in the afternoon...hopefully.
 

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Vix...trading the vix is nearly impossible IMO without a clear fall out in the market...Just a warning it's not exactly what it looks like and it doesn't mirror SQQQ.
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Global Market Comments
September 17, 2020
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:(SHOPPING FOR FIRE INSURANCE DURING A HURRICANE),
(VIX), (VXX), (XIV),
(THE ABCS OF THE VIX),
(VIX), (VXX), (SVXY),
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Shopping for Fire Insurance During a Hurricane

With the Volatility Index back down to a bargain $26, I am getting deluged with emails from readers asking if it is time to start hedging portfolios one more time and buying the iPath S&P 500 VIX Short Term Futures ETN (VXX).
The answer is no yet, but soon, possible very soon.
They are inquiring at absolutely the wrong time.
And here is the problem. When the (VIX) rises, it usually spikes straight up, and then right back down again. This time, it spiked but has since hung around the $23 level rather than collapse back down. That suggests that there is another leg up to go in volatility until it hits $50 or more before it takes a much-deserved break. That means the stock market has one more sharp selloff left before we hit bottom and bounce.
Markets can ignore trade wars, rising interest rates, zero interest rates, and international political instability (Britain and Hong Kong) for a while, but not forever. When the time DOES come to pay the piper, prices and volatility will rocket.
So I am more than usually interested in hedging the downside risk for my trading book. A good rule of thumb is to let the (VIX) sit at a bottom for a week, and then go buy the (VXX). Two weeks is even better. That way you can ignore expensive and unnecessary time decay.
Which all brings me to the subject at hand.
If you are new to the service and have no longs, you probably should skip this trade and just watch it as a learning experience.
This can also be a great hedge for any long positions we may want to add in the coming weeks, such as in “trade peace,” or technology plays.
As I never tire of telling people, no one ever complains when they buy fire insurance and their house doesn’t burn down.
If you are new to this service, don’t freak out. My daily research newsletters are not always about exploring the esoterica of options, or volatility trading.
I’ll let you know when I’m ready to pull the trigger with a Trade Alert.
I am always trying to get better prices.
If you are new to the (VIX) game, please read the educational piece below.
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The ABCs of the VIX

I am one of those cheapskates who buy Christmas ornaments by the bucket load from Costco in January for ten cents on the dollar because my 11-month theoretical return on capital comes close to 1,000%. I also like buying flood insurance in the middle of the summer draught, when the forecast in California is for endless days of sunshine. That is what we had at the end of July when the (VIX) was plumbing the depths of $12.

Get this one right, and the profits you can realize are spectacular.

It gets better.

If the bottom in volatility exactly coincides with the peak in the stock market that it measures, volatility could be headed back up to the 30% handle, and maybe more.

I double dare you to look at the charts below and tell me this isn’t happening.

Watch carefully for other confirming trends to affirm this trade is unfolding. Those would include a strong dollar, and a weak Japanese yen, Euro, and rising fixed income instruments of any kind.

Notice that every one of these is happening this week!

Reversion to the mean, anyone?

You may know of this from the many clueless talking heads, beginners, and newbies who call (VIX) the “Fear Index”.

For those of you who have a PhD in higher mathematics from MIT, the (VIX) is simply a weighted blend of prices for a range of options contracts on the S&P 500 index (SPX).

The formula uses a kernel-smoothed estimator that takes as inputs the current market prices for all out-of-the-money calls and puts for the front month and second month expirations.

The (VIX) is the square root of the par variance swap rate for a 30-day term initiated today. To get into the pricing of the individual options, please go look up your handy dandy and ever-useful Black-Scholes equation.

You will recall that this is the equation that derives from the Brownian motion of heat transference in metals. Got all that?

For the rest of you who do not possess a PhD in higher mathematics from MIT, and maybe scored a 450 on your math SAT test, or who don’t know what an SAT test is, this is what you need to know.

When the market goes up, the (VIX) goes down. When the market goes down, the (VIX) goes up. Period. End of story. Class dismissed.

The (VIX) is expressed in terms of the annualized monthly movement in the S&P 500 (SPX), which with the (VIX) today at $10 is at $72.54.

So for example, a (VIX) of $10 means that the market expects the index to move 2.89%, or $72.54 S&P 500 points, over the next 30 days.

You get this by calculating $10/3.46 = 2.89%, where the square root of 12 months is 3.46.

The volatility index doesn’t really care which way the stock index moves. If the S&P 500 moves more than the projected 2.89% in ANY direction, you make a profit on your long (VIX) positions.

I am going into this detail because I always get a million questions whenever I raise this subject with volatility-deprived investors.

It gets better.

Futures contracts began trading on the (VIX) in 2004, and options on the futures since 2006.

Since then, these instruments have provided a vital means through which hedge funds control risk in their portfolios, thus providing the “hedge” in hedge fund.

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Quote of the Day

“You always sound smarter when you’re a bear than when you’re a bull,” said Adam Parker formerly of Morgan Stanley.
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EU talking about negative interest rates is a heavy sign as to the depth of this gash in the economy.

Looking for a bounce up in the AM Nasdaq index today then a bigger dive in the afternoon...hopefully.


Clawing it's way back up 200 points from the AM lows..SQQQ is looking tempting for short day hold late day dive. maybe
Waiting on the Airline ex /Trump meeting to end.
 

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Clawing it's way back up 200 points from the AM lows..SQQQ is looking tempting for short day hold late day dive. maybe
Waiting on the Airline ex /Trump meeting to end.


Bought SQQQ for a late day 100 index bed shitting @ 25.91
 

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Still well below where I bought it lol.
 

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Man, both you guys have balls holding SQQQ...I just flip in and outa SQQQ.

Futures are slowly moving down this AM...SQQQ is going to have a good run eventually

I realize that now!! I'm going to start being more active with it for sure. I sold QID today, made about $150 (lol). But it's better than losing $150!!
 

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yeah that x3 on SQQQ can drain you..Every time I buy it I'm weary..I got killed twice I go large shots in short time frames...Shy with SQQQ.

Options expiration tomorrow (Friday) look for big volumes today and some volatility..Hopefully
 

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Market keeps bouncing down off the 10950 to 10975..I'd think that will be the case today too.

Looking at SQQQ again near 10975ish for a buy.
 

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Global Market Comments
September 18, 2020
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:(SEPTEMBER 16 BIWEEKLY STRATEGY WEBINAR Q&A),
(INDU), (TSLA), (DIS), (NKLA),
(GM), (PYPL), (FXI), (XOM), (KCAC),

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September 16 Biweekly Strategy Webinar Q&A

Below please find subscribers’ Q&A for the September 16 Mad Hedge Fund Trader Global Strategy Webinar broadcast from Silicon Valley, CA with my guest and co-host Bill Davis of the Mad Day Trader. Keep those questions coming!Q: Is the Russian vaccine real or just a publicity stunt?
A: I would say it’s real. Russia is much more prone to experimentation, that is a luxury they have. If they kill off a million people because the vaccine is no good, there is no litigation risk. So, it may work, but it is a high-risk drug.
Q: What will a contested election mean for the markets?
A: The Dow (INDU) will be down 2,000 points in one day. But I don’t think it’s going to happen; I think the media has greatly exaggerated the chances of a Trump victory. I don’t think there are any undecided votes now. The only way you’d be undecided by now is if you’ve lived in a care for the past four years. The market has got this completely wrong, and once it’s clear who won, you’ll get a monster rally in the stock market that goes until this year’s end, and the game from here until election day is to try to get into the market as low as possible before then.
Q: Do you think big tech is a crowded trade, and what do you think will eventually happen?
A: It is an extremely crowded trade; eventually it will go down big. If you remember the Dotcom Bubble, everything dropped 80% or went to zero. Having said that, we’ve never had this amount of Fed stimulus before, so we should go higher first, especially after the election. The fact is that the big techs are growing gangbusters—30%, 40%, or 50% a year so spectacular multiples are called for. This is the argument Mad Hedge Fund Trader has been making for the last 10 years, by the way.
Q: Do you think the residential real estate market will crash before or after the election?
A: I would say well after the election because I don't think it will crash until 2030. All these millennial buyers are out there in droves, interest rates are at record lows, and you have this massive work-at-home trend going on, which is going to be largely permanent. So, all of a sudden, the demand is huge for homes that you can convert into a kitchen with 4 home offices. A lot of companies have discovered this to be a very profitable way to work. So, I don’t see any crash happening in housing, perhaps even in my lifetime. We’re not seeing all the excesses in housing now that we saw in the Great Recession 13 years ago.
Q: How will Joe Biden’s election change the wealth of America’s finances?
A: Move money from the extremely rich to the middle class. That is the one-liner. It looks like any tax increases for individuals who make less than $400,000 a year will be minimal. The big hit will be those that make over a billion a year, and that category could even see Roosevelt level tax rates of 90% or more.
Q: What do you think of the condo market in San Francisco?
A: It is terrible now with prices down about 20%. We’re seeing exactly the same thing in New York City as people flee to the suburbs, and in the meantime, we have bidding wars going on in the outer suburbs. This will continue for about another year until people pour back into the city once the pandemic all-clear signal is given. That may be in about two years.
Q: Tesla (TSLA) has retraced half of its recent losses; do you think it will go another leg higher?
A: At this point, Tesla is an extremely high-risk stock. I would only want to be day trading it. The overnight gaps are so enormous. At $500 a share, it’s discounting a best-case scenario for 2025 already, so that is kind of stretching it. Better to buy the car than the stock.
Q: Do you have any other names in the EV market to recommend?
A: Absolutely not; most of the other entrants in the market have no cars and no mass production abilities, which is the real challenge, and are lagging Tesla with terrible designs. Tesla essentially has the lock on that market, and a 10-year head start. They are accelerating their technology and the only other serious producer in volume is General Motors (GM) with their Bolt, but that hasn’t really taken off. It is cheap at $30,000 but the next thing to happen is that Tesla will drop the price of their model Y below the price of the Bolt which will kill it off. But no, I wouldn't touch any of these other things. The future is all electric. Many people also underestimate the decade-long torture Tesla had to go through to get to where they are. I remember it because I have been with Elon from day one during his ****** (PYPL) days.
Q: Would you sell Disney (DIS) here at $130? The economic climate for 2021 doesn’t look great for public mass entertainment.
A: That is all true, but their streaming business, Disney Plus, is taking off like a rocket. They just released Mulan, which I watched over the weekend with my kids and loved it. It will undoubtedly be the largest streaming movie release in history once we get a look at the numbers next month. So, they are moving into the online business at an incredible speed, and it may be enough to offset the enormous losses they are running from their hotels, cruise ships, and parks. And also, this is a reopening play big time—one of the few quality reopening plays out there—and the only reason to sell Disney here is if you think the corona epidemic will get dramatically worse and stay worse well into next year.
Q: What about battery names?
A: Batteries are still either owned by giant companies like Tesla or they’re small startups that have a nasty habit of going bankrupt. There really aren't any good clean publicly-listed plays on batteries in the markets these days.
Q: What about a short on Nikola (NKLA)?
A: If I were an aggressive day trader, that would be right in my sights. You can expect nothing but bad news to come out about Nikola. Taking a truck with no motor and then rolling it downhill and calling it a successful trial just invites short-sellers by the hoards. It’s already off 65% from its peak.
Q: Why do you say there's no future in hydrogen?
A: You need to build a large national hydrogen distribution network to make this economically viable and it’s just too expensive. Electricity infrastructure is already in place and just needs to be upgraded and modernized. Electricity is also infinitely scalable in improvements in power output, but hydrogen is only capable of straight-line improvement. No contest.
Q: What about the Solid-State Batteries?
A: I actually wrote a piece about this earlier this week. Solid-State Batteries could allow a 20-fold increase in battery efficiency for cars and houses and that may only be 2 or 3 years off as there are several in development now. QuantumScape (KCAC) is the listed leader there. Bill Gates is a major investor (click here for the link).
Q: Can we play a short-term bounce in big oil like ExxonMobile (XOM)?
A: You can, but remember, this is a trading play only, not an investment play. The long-term future for these companies is to go to zero or to get into another line of business, like alternative energy.
Q: What will happen to the market after the Fed speaks today?
A: My guess is stocks will rally as long as Jerome doesn’t say anything horrendous like “this is your last freebie; I’m raising rates at the next meeting,” which he is not going to say at the last Fed meeting before the presidential election.
Q: I am trying to get through all the fluff of misinformation out there; I want your opinion on who is winning the US-China (FXI) trade war.
A: The simple answer is that China has been winning all along. The proof of that is that their economy is growing and ours is shrinking. That’s because China managed to cap their Corona deaths at 4,000 and ours are at 200,000. In the meantime, the technology improvements in China have been enormous over the last 4 years, so none of the trade war issues, which by the way, were all focused on the lowest margin businesses that China did, have had any effect. If anything, it’s forced China to offshore their low margin business to cheap countries like India, Vietnam, and Bangladesh so they disappear as China trade. I always thought the China trade war was a mistake—it’s always better to trade with someone than go to war with them. I’ve done both and prefer the former.
Q: Do you think Biden is bullish for stocks, considering all the regulations that will be put back?
A: I don’t think there will be many regulations put back except for the energy industry, which has essentially operated regulation-free for the last three years. All of those controls—on flaring, on pipelines, and so on—those will all get put back because they were implemented by executive order, which can be reversed with the stroke of a pen. I don’t see much regulation anywhere else in the economy coming back. And in fact, since Joe Biden pulled ahead in the polls in May, the stock market has gone up almost every day. So clearly, the market thinks Joe Biden will be positive for stocks, and the possibility that he might implement an extra $6 trillion dollars in fiscal spending once in office is the reason why. You have to look at what these people do, not what they say. And my bet is that since Trump set the precedent for record deficit spending, Biden will continue that. And we’ll only worry about things like deficits when the inflation rate tops 5%, when interest rates go back to 10% in five years—all the reasons that caused the massive rise in deficits during the late 70s and early 80s.
Good Luck and Stay Healthy

John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader


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Sitting Pretty


Quote of the Day

“It is fine to have the longest view in the room, as long as the thing at the end of the vista is a gigantic hill of money,” said John Lanchester of the New Yorker magazine.

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Market keeps bouncing down off the 10950 to 10975..I'd think that will be the case today too.

Looking at SQQQ again near 10975ish for a buy.

Hit 10955 and I missed it...
Done for the day..unless the NAS bounces back up to someplace near even.

LLNW up 5% on news.

Happy flipping fellas
 

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Bought Vale SA /ADR @11.78 .off the hook call volume today I'll hold for a few weeks.
Very conservative play not my normal thing...Just a call volume play.
 

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Decent insider buying on AVDL over the past few days under rule 16b-3 up 12%
Yesterdays conference was a boon for sure..I'm very optimist here but it's still in the hands of the unpredictable FDA.
This is one stock I will hold through the election and will add but today is the wrong day to add, it'll drift back down hopefully.
Link to the conference web cast off the company site..I love this management team.

http://investors.avadel.com/events/...ight-22nd-annual-global-investment-conference

AVDL
More insider buying on Friday..Phase III is done and the NDA has been submitted..
Should be up on the opening.
 

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AVDL up 5%
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Global Market Comments
September 21, 2020
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, or HERE’S THE BLACK SWAN FOR 2020),
(SPY), (INDU), (TSLA), (JPM), (TLT), (C),
(V), (GLD), (AAPL), (AMZN), (UUP)

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The Market Outlook for the Week Ahead, or Here’s the Black Swan for 2020

I had the pleasure of meeting Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg only last year. She was funny, a great storyteller, and smart as a tack. If she disagreed with you, she pounced like a lion with a prescient one-liner.She was also a goldmine of historical anecdotes about American history over the past 60 years, recalling incidents seen from her front-row seat as if they had happened yesterday.

She was also frail and rail-thin as if a faint breeze could knock her over at any time. Contracting cancer five times will do this to a person. Assistants helped her walk.

Her unexpected passing is now on the verge of creating a new financial crisis. Any chance of passing further stimulus in the US congress has just turned to ashes. The focus in Washington has turned entirely to the Supreme Court for the rest of 2020.

As a result, tens of thousands more small business will go under, millions of families will be thrown out on to the street, and the Great Depression will drag on. There is nothing left to spike the punch bowl with.

The Dow Average on Monday morning will open down 1,000 points, led by Tesla (TSLA) and the big technology stocks. US Treasury bonds (TLT) will rocket $5. The US dollar (UUP) will soar on a flight to safety bid.

Traders were already cutting positions and scaling back risk to duck the coming turmoil of the presidential election. We are also trying to front-run a yearend stock selloff prompted by a Biden rise in the capital gains tax from 21% to 40%.

That’s a bit of a moot point as 75% of stock ownership is owned by tax-exempt funds. The remaining 25% is most tied up in institutions that duck the tax by never selling or are embedded on corporate cross ownerships which never change.

Now we have uncertainty with a turbocharger, with gasoline poured in the air intake (pilot talk).

With Democrats refighting the battle of the Alamo, I doubt that Trump can ram through a third Supreme Court nomination. Remember how the last one went, for Brett Cavanaugh? Filibusters alone could delay proceeding by a month. These are NOT developments that make stocks go up.

If Trump succeeds, it may be a pyrrhic victory, costing Republicans at least five Senate seats, losing a majority, and increasing the margin of a presidential loss. If retired astronaut wins the Senate in Arizona on November 3, only two Republicans need to fold to make a Supreme Court nomination impossible.

It’s not like the stock market was in such great shape going into this, the biggest black swan of 2020. The market is being flooded with high priced initial public offerings, some 12 in the coming week alone. Apparently, there is an extreme shortage of high growth large-cap technology stocks and Silicon Valley is more than happy to meet that demand.

Cloud storage player Snowflake (SNOW) saw price talk at $70, an IPO of $120, and a first-day peak of $275. This created $70 billion in market value with the stroke of a key.

Of course, flooding the market like this ends up killing the goose thay laid the golden eggs and is a common signal of market tops. Existing stock holdings have to be sold to buy new ones, taking markets south.

We have already seen the 30-day and 50-day moving averages broken, and sights are clearing set on the 200-day. They would take us to a full top to bottom correction in the indexes of 20%. That would take the S&P 500 from $3,600 to $3,000, The Dow Average from $26,298 to $24,000, and Apple from $137 to $84.

If the Volatility Index (VIX) goes over $50, I’ll start sending out lists of very low risk, high return two-year options LEAPS like I did last time.

The Fed says no interest rate hike until 2023 and promises to heat up the economy even more than previously. The long-term average 2% inflation target I reaffirmed. Jay sees a net shrinkage of the US GDP this year ay 3.7%. Since governor Jay Powell promised to run the economy hot weeks ago, ten-year US treasury bonds have only eked out a paltry rise to 72 basis points.

The market isn’t buying it. It’s tough to beat ever hyper-accelerating technology that crushes prices. Still, I’ll keep selling short bond rallies because it’s just a matter of time before the government crushes the market with massive over-issuance. Sell every rally in the (TLT). The Fed put lives! Buy stocks on dips.

Election chaos is starting to price in, with the US dollar (UUP) getting an undeserved bid in a flight to safety trade and stock down 1,000 points from the week’s high. All sorts of Armageddon scenarios are making the rounds now and traders are pulling out of the market to protect hard-earned profits. For details watch the final season of House of Cards, where martial law is declared in Ohio to reverse an election outcome. No kidding!

Citigroup announced a surprise $900 million loss. I can’t wait for the excuse for this surprise, out-of-the-blue “operational error.' It’s most likely an expensive hack. It’s the kind of black swan that can hit you any time if you are a short-term trader. Long term investors should be buying the dip in (C).

China’s Retail Sales rise for the first time in 2020, up 0.5% in August. First into the pandemic, first out. Keeping Corona deaths to 4,000 was also a big help. It’s proof that economies CAN recover post-COVID-19. Buy China on dips (BABA), (BIDU). Stocks there will enjoy a huge post-election rally once the trade war winds down.

US Consumer Sentiment hits six-month high, up from a 75 estimate to 78.9. The University of Michigan report is proof that those who have money are spending it. Another green shoot. Didn’t help stocks today though.

Oil collapsed 15% on the dimming outlook for the global economy. Not even massive well shutdowns caused by this week’s hurricane could boost prices. Avoid all energy plays like the plague.

Morgan Stanley says the trading boom won’t last forever, says my former employer coming off of a record quarter. Too much of a good thing won’t last forever. Make hay while the sun shines.

The value rotation is on, with large scale selling of technology stocks and the chasing of banks and other recovery plays. It’s been a long time coming and could well persist until the end of the year. The option expiration at the close on Friday was exacerbating all moves, which is why I dumped my last two tech positions days prior. It’s too early to buy tech again on dips. Wait for a pre-election meltdown.

Copper hit a new four-year high as traders bet on an accelerating recovery in the global economy. My favorite, Freeport McMoRan, the world’s largest copper producer and a long time Mad Hedge subscriber is soaring, up 257% from the market lows. China, which is done with the Coronavirus and whose economy is recovering rapidly, has returned as a major buyer of the red metal. Keep buying (FCX) on dips.

When we come out the other side of this, we will be perfectly poised to launch into my new American Golden Age, or the next Roaring Twenties. With interest rates still at zero, oil cheap, there will be no reason not to. The Dow Average will rise by 400% or more in the coming decade. The American coming out the other side of the pandemic will be far more efficient and profitable than the old.

My Global Trading Dispatch clocked its third blockbuster week in a row. I cashed in on my winnings with longs in (JPM), (TLT), (V), (GLD), (AAPL), and (AMZN), rang the cash register with shorts in (TLT) and (SPY), and booked a small loss in a long in (C). This took my cash position from 0% to 80% and I am looking to go to 100% in the coming week. The risk/reward in the market now is terrible.

Notice that I am shifting my longs away from tech and toward domestic recovery plays.

That takes our 2020 year-to-date back up to a blistering 35.74%, versus -2.93% for the Dow Average. September stands at a nosebleed 9.19%.That takes my eleven-year average annualized performance back to 36.43%. My 11-year total return is back for another new all-time high at 392.12%. My trailing one-year return popped back up to 54.87%.

The coming week is a big one for housing data. The only numbers that really count for the market are the number of US Coronavirus cases and deaths, which you can find here.

On Monday, September 21 at 8:30 AM EST, the Chicago Fed National Activity Index is out.

On Tuesday, September 22 at 10:00 AM EST, Existing Home Sales for July are released.
On Wednesday, September 23 at 9:00 AM EST, the US Home Price Indexfor July is printed. At 10:30 AM EST, the EIA Cushing Crude Oil Stocksare out.
change.

On Thursday, September 24 at 8:30 AM EST, the Weekly Jobless Claimsare announced. At 10:00 AM the all-important Existing Home Sales for July are published.
On Friday, September 25, at 8:30 AM EST, US Durable Goods Sales for August are disclosed. At 2:00 PM The Bakers Hughes Rig Count is released.

As for me, I’ll climb up on the roof this weekend and clean the ash from my 59 solar panels. The fallout from the nearby raging forest fires has been so extreme that it has cut my solar output by 25%.

It’s not just me. Over a million homes in California have the same problem, putting a serious dent in the state’s electricity production.

Stay healthy.

John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader


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Quote of the Day

“It’s not always the troops that storm the beaches who are the right ones to set up the government,” said Steve Vassallo from Foundation Capital about the resignation of founder Travis Kalanick from Uber.
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