The Market Tends To Fool The Majority
In early May, the monthly Jobs report came out strong. Paul Tudor Jones said you had all the data you wanted for fixed income to get killed. In other words, a strong jobs report means the economy is improving, thus higher rates down the road. Instead, the opposite happened! Bonds closed up that day and rates fell. Jones astonishingly said: How can anyone predict/think that bonds would close up that day??? PIMCO's Tony Crescenzi was [...]
Notes From David Tepper’s SALT Conference Interview
Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the 6th Annual SALT Conference. Thanks to the leadership and vision of Anthony Scaramucci, this event has evolved "from a financial conference to one of the world's leading thought leadership forums." There were many phenomenal speakers who presented during the week, but as a trader, I was most interested in David Tepper's one-on-one interview with Anthony Scaramucci. It is pretty powerful when someone introduces you by saying "$1 [...]
One Common Theme: Frustration
I got a text today from a trader friend who is short the market saying: "This market is NEVER going down!" About 10 minutes later, I got a text from a different friend who is long the market saying: "I HATE this market!" It got me thinking about a few things. Many traders and professional money managers have recently voiced their opinions about the current market and when you read between the lines, you can [...]
Trading For Yourself vs. Trading For Others
About 5 years ago, I had the pleasure of sitting down with one of the top 10 traders in the country. Any time I have the chance to learn from success, I jump on the opportunity. (Out of respect for his request, this portfolio manager asked to remain anonymous because he is a very private person). From 2000-2009, his hedge fund had an average return of +14% per year. That performance is phenomenal, especially considering [...]
A Quick Note About Trading
There are so many different strategies and ways to trade the market. The key is to know when the time is right for your strategy. When it's right, get aggressive. When it's not, scale back. The biggest challenge for many traders is to ACCEPT the times when the market environment is not favorable for your strategy. More importantly, having the discipline to scale back is critical because forcing trades can become very costly. For example, [...]
Two Market Scenarios From Here
I discussed the following in a Market Video over the weekend. Here is a summary of the important points: 1) In my 18 years of trading, there have been 4 years where the market grinded higher for almost the entire year: 1999, 2003, 2009 and 2013. It's important to look at what happened the FOLLOWING year not only to understand market history, but also to try to ANTICIPATE what could happen this year. In all [...]