Pressing the shorts

• Loaded up on more LT bonds, throughout the night.  May have been a bit early.  Now full position.
• Added some more rate sensitive and consumer staples ETFs.
• Shorted a lot more stuff after market open.  Especially the new category of semis.
• Covered some silver and palladium.  These might be interest rate sensetive.  HYG may also have to be cut later.
• Covered 1/3rd Big Tech (NVDA) short.  Chart might show capitulation.  Every man and his dog is talking about Jensen now.

This *might* be a market crash.  Where it falls through oversold levels for a few days.

Bought bonds

Tues 9:45pm SGT:

• Bought some long term bonds after the CPI release just now, before market open.  Looking to increase position.
• Bought some rate-sensitive and consumer staple ETFs on Friday.  Looking to increase position. 
• Shorted some precious-metals Friday.  Not gold, but I may look to decrease this position size as I'm expecting rates to fall.
• Looking to increase my shorts, especially High-Beta tech.  The market rebound started on Friday or Monday, will probably do it in 2 or more days time.
• Would love to buy gold stonks sometime, but not yet.

Up 2% tonight

Holy Fuck!

• Added some precious metal shorts, but these might be covered later.  Bonds up, rates down.
• Bought some ETFs - those that do well in a slowing growth
  environment - then changed my mind and cut them.

• VIX spiked.

Not covering yet.

Tonight is probably the start of a crash.  Everything falling indiscriminately leads to more positions being unwound.

Tough night

Before market close, 4th Nov US time.  Post election rebound.  Portfolio down 1.5%.  Bleah:

• Half of this is from my gas pipeline positions.  Long term buy and hold.  Performance wise, it would be better to separate this from my trading portfolio.  If I'm going to hold something for long term (7 years so far) I shouldn't look at what it does day-to-day.
• 20% of it is from crypto shorts going against me.  High beta, so small position has an outsized effect.  But the charts are still in a downtrend, so added to it.
• 15% of it is from some Private Equity short positions.  I cut those.  Rate sensitive.
• 10% is from precious metal shorts moving against me.  Actually semi-precious semi-industrial metals.  They endlessly dropped so much in the past month, now finally bouncing.  I added to one of these at market open which might have been a mistake.  These might be cut later (take profits) - hard to know - precious metals (interest rate sensitive) are up but industrials (like XLI) are down.
• The rest of it is from other shorts moving against me, one software position in particular.
• Interestingly, about a third of the short positions are still working tonight.  On such a big up day.

VIX broke down to 19.  Lets see how far this market rebound goes.  Longer term (months out), I am still bearish.

Quick Update

Last nite I covered some PE shorts that weren't working.  Will probably cover more tonight.

I'm less short than I'd like, but its hard to reload now as nothing is bouncing.  I missed the chance early last night.  Short term, we are probably in a crash, wait for it to play out over a few days, cover some, then see if I can reload.

Always cut your losses.  And don't look back, you can never look back.

Update: After open 3rd Nov.  

A lot happened in 3 hours:

• Some things bounced pre-market, till they were in the middle of their Hedgeye risk ranges.  Shorted them before market open
• Covered more of the PE shorts after market open.
• Apple collapsed.  Their results beat expectations, but outlook gloomy due to margin pressures.   Stock was down 3%, I think the market reaction tells all.  I sold it, plus the rest of my Big Tech (Microsoft) and Software (IGV).  If the King can't survive, no one can.  I may have been too early as its bouncing now.  Lets see how it goes.

Update: After close morning 4th Nov.  Added more shorts, covered Europe and some PE:

Finished clearing out PE.  The positions remaining are the ones going down.

I can get a little bit shorter, if the bounce continues.

Quick Update

Small adjustments, trimmed a few longs and shorts:

• Covered part of Europe, I forgot the other part.  Why be short something thats not falling in a crashing market.
• Stopped out of some software, took some profits on healthcare.
• Stopped out of some other shorts, individual positions that weren't working.

Performance has been good the past 2 days.  Of course.  Portfolio up 1.5%.

Its hard to tell when the market is oversold or crashing.  I give it a 2/3rds chance of the latter.  I'll probably hold most of my shorts for the next 1-5 days, before covering 1/3rd to 1/2.

I remind myself to cover more of the higher beta stuff, like silver and crypto-stuff. Less of the normal stuff like Q's and Russell.  And don't bother with High Yield.  The high beta stuff can really rip your guts out in the next vicious bear market rally.

Getting squeezed

I added to some shorts early this week.  Too early, I got squeezed a few days.  Tough week:

Sold the LATAM bank, Nubank, last night, on the rebound after the Brazil election loss.  Don't want to hold a high beta EM stock into a correction.  Got a little shorter: