Got Shorter

Wed morning 21st Oct, before market close.  Woke up and my shorts were up (against me), added some more.

Now filled around 3/4 of my max short position.

Sold Japanese SAAS Companies

My Japanese SAAS stocks were 2 cloud accounting companies: Freee (4478) and Money Forward (3994).  Got these ideas from Asian Century Stocks.  Since I bought them in Feb, they've been pushed up by good results, a buoyant Japanese stock market, and a recovery in software stocks being hurt by AI.

Sold them today.  Average over 40% gain in 8 months.  Supposed to sell Friday but busy at work.

Why did I sell?

• Market share data is hard to come by.  There is a big private competitor (need Japanese VPN), Yayoi, that has a large market share in legacy (desktop) accounting software.  They claim to have 560,000 active contracts (one or more users per contract) which is more than either Money Forward and Freee, and probably more than both.
• Both Freee and Money Forward are still in early growth stage, where PEs are not meaningful.  Price to sales.  The story is that they will grow profitable by converting greenfield users.  They may - recent growth figures have been good.
• I think we're at the end of the economic cycle, the current AI boom is ending.  Like 2001.  Stocks probably get hit, especially growth stocks.  I don't want to hold "Price to sales" stonks into a downturn.
• One of Hedgeye's signals for Japanese equities turned negative. last week  It was on a day that everything fell (Oct 15th), so it could be a false alarm.  But given everything else, now's a decent time to sell.

I may be missing out in two multi-year compounders.  But I also may be missing out on a market correction.

Quick Update

Earlier this week, got stopped out of some shorts and longs on Thursday's wild ride.

Sat Oct 17th. Woke up late this morning after mkt close.

• Q's down - the index is no longer holding up.
• Nvdia down - the AI king. 
• VIX spiked from 16 to 19.99 - fear is spreading to the big names that form the index.

‌This is a change in market tone. I want to be short. I expect the the economic cycle to turn down in 1Q27. Was wondering if we would get a blowoff top in the big caps, especially NVDA, but its looking less likely.

‌The market is oversold here. It can bounce Monday. Or crash.

‌Took small short positions in AI (data centers, private equity) after market close. Its 1/4 of my full short position. I want to increase those positions if we bounce, or if we drift along a 1 to 3 more days to work off the oversold conditions.


I want to get shorter. Lets see if I get a chance to increase those positions.

This is a good video of why the Nasdaq bull may have ended last week, starts at 1:15:

Covered the Bond shorts

Market open 14th Oct.  Covered yesterday's bond shorts on market open after the CPI release.  Made a small profit.  Not bad for one night.

Looking to load up on Big Tech and software longs.  But probably not today.

Pressing Shorts

Market open 13th Oct.  Got really short.

• Entered large position in Interest rate shorts (ie: expecting rates to rise).  Short term trade.
• Reduced crypto over the last few days.  Its getting less bullish.

Lets see how it goes.

I need to learn to trade options.

Quick Update

 Small changes:

• Sold Gold.  Look to buy it back in the coming months.
• Bought a little crypto earlier this week.  
• Cut short exposure a little.  Added a tiny amount to precious metals.
• Bought Big Tech today, plus some software.

Still just aiming to be short stuff going down and long stuff going up.  Hope the bifurcated market continues.  Probably get a chance to buy more and cover more shorts early next week.  Before reloading on the short side.

Gotten shorter

Market up for the past 5 nights, I added shorts, mostly in the last 2 days: interest rate sensitive sector, cyclicals, Europe and other countries which have lower growth than the US, and a few others:

My short trades (30%) are bigger than my long trades (10%) because:

• The trading shorts also offset the fundamental longs (around 45%).
• Narrow market breadth: even as indices risen, most stocks are falling.  Easier to find stuff to short.
• Market up for past 5 days.

Short term, I am near my max position size for most of the shorts.

My aims now:

• Keep shorting stuff thats going down on bounces.  Don't overthink it.  Preference for stuff that can still keep falling when economic growth, inflation and interest rates go down.
• Review all the individual fundamental picks, do I want to hold them into a bear market?
• Buy stuff thats still going up on dips.  Especially big tech.  Might get a 2001 blowoff top - this time its probably NVDIA which is sucking cash out of the rest of the ecosystem for their chiiiipsss....