leveraged long ETFs are brining in some good % thinking of changing position to leveraged short ETF now, anyone have a feeling of pullback tomorrow or monday?
all i can say is if we have seen the worst, it wasnt all that bad.
If I looked it up right, we already experienced the worst % drop since the great depression… I’m not too sure, if this is good or bad for the outlook. Certainly it looks like normally the markets don’t react the anxious. So it is not purely a “normal” overreaction of the markets…
I believe in this rally! Love it!
CFA_Halifax Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I believe in this rally! Love it! I love it too but I just closed my long positions, I’d rather take profits now. I don’t see any fundamentals changing, economy is still bad.
The US has some serious financial problems and they haven’t vanished into thin air overnight. I would say short into any goofy US rally. Personally I’m still 100% cash (14 months now thank you very much).
Democrats say worst is over Republicans say its only a matter of time until Obama drives us under Whigs are shorting commodities futures
purealpha Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > The US has some serious financial problems and > they haven’t vanished into thin air overnight. I > would say short into any goofy US rally. > Personally I’m still 100% cash (14 months now > thank you very much). I went to cash 15 months ago, then went 200% net short in October 2007 after pulling all my money from hedge funds and private equity funds and betting it all on an Obama election win in November 2008. I also won the World Series of Poker last year for good measure.
You don’t gotta hate just cause I made a good call. I told everyone I knew to do the same, heck if you were drivin’ my limo you’d still have a job. 
This forum holds a surprising number of contributers who have perfectly navigated the volatile past year and are very eager to share their wisdom in hindsight.
“This forum holds a surprising number of contributers who have perfectly navigated the volatile past year and are very eager to share their wisdom in hindsight.” I am not in that group…even my PA is down over 50 per cent since last year this time. Wow, that looks great in print.
I closed out my position in FAS (3x Financial ETF) today with an 80% gain after buying in on Monday. We’re up 85 points on the S&P since it recently bottomed @ 667. I’d love for the rally to continue because my retirement assets sure do need it. On the trading side, I think we’ll begin a slide tomorrow or Monday. I’ll be looking to reenter the market on the short side tomorrow sometime.
I covered my market shorts today (opened up in Feb 2008). We could still see downdrafts, but I think (hope) I caught the bulk of the collapse. I’m not optimistic enough to reverse the position, entirely, so I’m keeping proceeds as cash. However, my other long positions do mean that my portfolio is net long now. Hope I’m not crazy. The choice was to take shorting profits or rebalance to a net beta of zero. Given transaction costs, I decided on the profit taking.
Nice work bchad. Those must have been some hefty gains. Long now in US? I like China stuff, if I was anywhere but cash I’d go FXI or some such, just too scary here.
My cash postion is just about 60%, if the market gaps up tomorrow I will sell some more of my longs. My gut says we rally until May. My AXP ripped higher, despite mutliple downgrades. FU Goldman. FU Citi.
I have some mining companies and oil trusts that have some market exposure. I figure that if equities advance strongly, people will liquidate gold holdings, so there is some diversification of factors within the same stocks. The real long view I have are with energy trusts - if the economy improves, then energy prices should rise. Maybe I should get a carbon ETF though, to hedge against cap-and-trade effects (I don’t think cap-and-trade is bad in macro terms, but it can be bad for an energy-based portfolio). FXI seems too mysterious/scary for me to invest in, but I do think it may be a leading signal for other stuff.
tvPM Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > So right Dwight, but mine is recorded: > http://www.analystforum.com/phorums/read.php?1,842 > 795,page=3 Not singling anyone out. Just making a general observation ;). You’re right - your call turned out to be right on the money. In fact I ended up doing the same thing with my non-retirement investments a short time before you posted that. I even commented about it in your thread. 10/7 - TvPM: “I have been 90% in cash for 11 months now, due to a rollover event, not a stroke of genius, but it has worked out well” 10/7 - Dwight: “Both of my retirement accounts are 100% equities. I’m sleeping better now that non-retirement assets that may be needed in the next 2-3 years are in cash or fixed income.” I’m still 100% in equities in my retirement accounts and not sweating it. As long as the Dow is at 100,000 or whatever in 40 years or so I don’t particularly mind if it is 7,000 today.
Market timing is impossible, all about trend for those of us who are still human…didn’t like the trend in 07 and thn obviously into 08, but officially became a bull in mid-Octoberish…early, sure…but I feel confident about an upward trend.
JohnThainsLimoDriver Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I went to cash 15 months ago, then went 200% net > short in October 2007 after pulling all my money > from hedge funds and private equity funds and > betting it all on an Obama election win in > November 2008. I also won the World Series of > Poker last year for good measure. That’s basically me John! I thought of more cool stuff I did to piss you off. After I closed out all my positions at YE07 for 150% YTD gain (this is true, thanks AAPL, China and Korea), I realized in Q108 that it was time to leave the investments line of work now before everyone charged for the door, in March landed a nice quiet job at a VC firm where I could “hide out” until the smoke cleared. Also swapped some condos and stuff before the market froze so I could get situated for the long bloodbath. Also, by being cash all 08 I guess I beat the market by 40% or whatever. Cheers 
Halifax is it correct, market timing is not possible. Example: I knew this was gonna happen since 2002 when I worked in WaMu subprime. But I didn’t know when…however I kept it in the back of my head, and in Q407 when BlackRock showed me this chart of when all those crappy a$$ ARM loans were gonna reset I knew this was it (and remember that crappy Bear StructuredCredit HF had collapsed in mid07 already, that was a major early warning). I was on the client side and I asked Mr. BR PM “so what do you think is gonna happen when they reset?”. This was a smart guy and BR is very well equipped with advanced MBS analytic tools…he paused and said “it will be interesting to see how it unfolds” but his face twitched, and his face never twitched before. I didn’t have any indecision, went back to my desk and devised the above plan to get the hell out.