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....

Quick Update

Market up a lot in the past 2 days.  Took profit on some Big Tech, software and crypto.  Covered some shorts.  Then bought back the crypto end of Friday's session after it corrected.

Next week, look to take a little more profit, then Short more.  Prefer to short stuff that: even apart from high rates/oil, will do badly in a contracting economy.  I might still be short it 3 to 6 months later.

Quick Update

Just before market close Thurs 1st Oct US time.  Market up.  Sold Oil.  Added to my shorts in small increments:

Quick Update

Last 2 nights:

• Added some Big Tech longs.  Then took some profit.
• Cut some of the Crypto trades that weren't working last night.

Day-to-day many individual trades I'ver taken are too choppy.  I may consider:

• Take profit on individual trades sooner.  On extreme overbought/oversold.  Sell/cover half, leave the other half to run.
• Only trade the more liquid ETF.  Ignore ETFs and stocks with a high spread - only experienced traders should touch them.
• Position size by volatility.  Or simply only trade the lower beta ETFs.  eg: If I was trading gold, pick GLD instead of GDXJ.  Less likely to be shaken out.

Reframe what I am trying to do:

• Even through the market as a whole is unclear, there are clear trends.  Look at three month charts of bitcoin/ETH (up), Apple/MSFT/NVDA (up), XLU (down) or the Russell (down).
• I'm trying to jump on board the trends, at a safer place where I don't lose too much when the trend changes, and in a way that I won't get shaken out by noise.

Under current conditions - near the end of the economic cycle, with rising rates, fighting an oil-war in the mid-East - take smaller and safer trades.  Don't swing for the fences.