WatchOK, back in 2008, I thought to myself "Boy, PMI is going to get creamed pretty soon. I should buy puts on PMI."
But I figured it couldn't be that easy, so did I nothing. PMI went to zero and I would have made a lot of money.
Then I thought, with all that bad mortgage debt out there, the Fed is going to to be desperate to increase the money supply, so commodities like gold will probably shoot up.
But I figured it couldn't be that easy, so I did nothing. Gold skyrocketed and looks like it has peaked now.
So now I'm thinking that the next thing will be a rise in interest rates and a fall in Treasuries. So I should short treasuries somehow.
But again I figure it can't be that easy. Japan has had ultra-low rates for more than 20 years.
Am I blowing it yet again?
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clambo says
You're not fighting to stop government waste, you are trying to keep government from paying off spending that YOU wanted! (don't even try to tell me you didn't support the Iraq war)
It's like destroying the water main to a house in order to fix a toilet leak.
Corporations have a single value and that is profits before anything else. An unethical corporation has a competitive advantage over an ethical corporation, therefore only unethical corporations will survive in the long run.
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I think gold is going to be a good long term hold still. What has changed or been solved by the politicians of the world?
Treasuries will fall, but could be propped up for years.
Just take today's situation and invest accordingly. Europe, China, Japan, USA are all in serious financial trouble, and nothing has been solved. That trouble will equate to fear. Fear is usually good for gold.
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San Diego, CA
In 2009, I thought a person could make a killing shorting bonds too, luckily, I did not act. Since then, we have learned that the FED can do QE to infinity and with impunity as long as the word economy remains weak. I would not short bonds.
Gold. Long term, all commodities are a buy, but due to short term fluctuations, gold could fall back to 700.00 before it goes higher. I have been in gold since 2002 and am trimming my position but only because I have done so well. I am not saying Gold will go to 700 only that it COULD, but I do think it is going to 1200ish for awhile and then upwards.
Stocks.... I would definitely buy stocks. The value of money will always be protected from inflation in the long haul by stocks.
Inflation and commodities. It is true QEasings are not necessarily inflationary, the money must leak into the general economy for inflation to take hold, but I really think that is besides the point. It is like someone dumping lighter fluid on wood with no fire, so you dump more and more lighter fluid, yet no fire. You suddenly get a spark and all that fuel you added to the wood is immediately consumed in an out of control burst. Yes, the Central Bankers say they will remove the fuel once the fire or the economy takes off. Can you picture removing the fuel in the analogy? I think it would be similar in practice.
The worlds Central Banks currently have the luxury to add fuel to the fire since there is no spark, but that spark will come. The fact of the matter is there are not enough natural resources to give everyone on earth an American standard of living. The Cental Bankers have no natural limits to the amount of printing that can be done, but the Earth does have a limit on what it can provide. Commodities are a long term winner due to unlimited cash available to the masses, EVENTUALLY. Rising interest rates due to inflation are not a given, especially with what we have seen with the known and proven intervention from world central banks. Inflation can be culled by messing with the statistics, rising interest rates can be thwarted by further QEs.
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iwog says
Pretty much, yes. Sad isn't it? What's even worse is when corporations control the government by buying politicians.
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Here we go.
It started with the guess that China is gonna tank and drag the world down.
Now it's the evil corporations employing children in coal mines.
How I think is that in an ideal world, people would work for themselves entirely, but that's not the real world.
I am not trying to drown our govt. in the bathtub. I am trying to keep the govt. from lifting my wallet to pay for hookers in Colombia, pay for Maricela's sec.8 and food stamps, for Sue's SSI she gets for life for claiming she is "bipolar", and numerous other schemes to steal from us using taxes.
I am against Solyndra and windmill farms paid for by taxpayers.
Corporations do have values, maybe not all, but they do. For example Texas Instruments is a good company in their community.
I am against employing slaves. I therefore am against the modern form of slavery, employing illegal aliens who are high school dropouts illiterates in two languages.
I am for employing exclusively legal workers/Americans who will enjoy rising wages.
You are just lying about what I have expressed and putting your imagined words into my mouth.
I think China is a very rough place to live. We have had a much nicer history than they have. The turmoil, death, privation there for centuries is impossible for us to imagine. Yet today they enjoy *relatively* better conditions and *rising wages* which makes everyone have hope in China. In China at least you are not afraid of taxes sucking your blood, however meager your pay may be.
We in the USA have falling wages after taxes and inflation. Most people I know are slightly afraid of the future. I didn't meet Chinese who were afraid of their future. Perception of your world may be your own reality so who am I to judge?
I didn't start at 10, but I worked at age 15 in the summer, was I abused too?
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treatmentreport's website
In a big picture, the Chinese economic boom is no different than the mid 1800s boom in the sugar plantations with slave labor all along Mississippi from New Orleans to Baton Rouge. The slave owners benefited from high sugar prices in Europe and cheap slave labor in US. They were the richest region in the world at the time. They spend their money on exuberant goods and speculated in land and other markets outside of the South.
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treatmentreport's website
Shorting treasuries is very difficult because you have to pay to short them. If you decide to short them today and interest rates don't move anywhere for a year, you are out 3% and that's if you do futures yourself (with etfs you have to add another 1% for expenses). If you started shorting them last year at 3.75% just like Paul Ryan (Romney's most likely VP choice) did, you would have lost a lot more than 3%. Luckily for him, I think he had only $15,000 invested.
Future's contract value is $100,000 - http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/interest-rates/us-treasury/10-year-us-treasury-note_contract_specifications.html
Stock market is benefiting from low treasury yields as compression in yields propagates into corporate bonds and makes it cheaper for those companies to finance buybacks and overall lowers their debt expenses. When interest rates rise, stocks will mostly likely suffer.
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Americans want to feel like generous rich folks who can help others, care about environment and afford to lead a flamboyant lifestyle.
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clambo says
No, you're nuts because every time someone explains to you that these costs are MINISCULE compared to a single military weapons program, you totally ignore it and pretend that providing a free health clinic is what's bankrupting the country.
You and your silly Republican friends are TOTAL FAILURES at balancing the budget because you're not willing to examine where money really goes. Spending on "deadbeats" doesn't matter and doesn't affect the federal budget by more than pennies on the dollar.
Alternative? You're going to outlaw the requirement that emergency rooms admit anyone? Good luck with that. The first instance of a child dying on the sidewalk in front of a hospital because it was too expensive to stop the bleeding will get rid of the Republican party for good. I continue to believe that most Americans aren't sadistic assholes.
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ArtimusMaxtor says
Our system is designed to produce industrial era employees, not entrepreneurs or small producers. Right down to the 40ish minutes between shifting work stations when the bell rings.
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clambo says
Well said.
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Last year I would have told you to short treasuries with both barrels.
Unfortunately Republicans are becoming too strong. Even the threatened elimination of Medicare by Ryan wasn't enough to piss people off, and if Mitt wins you'll see even higher concentrations of wealth and lower inflation.
The money supply doesn't cause inflation by itself, it needs to be spent and the routes to consumerism are being shut one by one.
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What's next in the markets?
If I could tell you that, I'd already be retired down in Tahiti.
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Shorting treasuries would have lost money last year.
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Your entire thinking is speculative and short term.
You are speculating on the directions of 1. markets 2. interest rates.
1. the stock market is an auction. Both buyer sentiment and profits or lack thereof by various companies influence the movement of the auction. What can happen? Anything. What is likely to happen now? The stock market is likely to keep rising because interest rates are low, and profits are still growing. Profits are growing because worldwide GDP is growing. Not the USA, not PIIGS but the rest of the world.
2. interest rates are of course affected by Bernake and his guys, and somewhat by politics. There for example may be pressure on Bernake to stop buying so much Treasury debt. Is this entirely predictable? No. The likely thing is that interest rates will not go up very soon.
Some commodities prices are rising as a result of actions on #2 by Bernake. They are not all rising since China is not buying as much steel, but continues buying more oil, for example.
If you want to be an investor for a long time horizon, e.g. for your future wealth in a decade or so, then stocks, corporate bonds, even foreign bonds would be a mixture that will produce some income and gains over time.
Personally I still cannot resist being much more heavily in stocks simply because I believe that the hungry consumer worldwide is not going to be sated in my lifetime.
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Patrick says
The hard part is timing. When to short and when to cover. History is littered with corpses of too early shorts and stale bulls.
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Jeremy McMillan's website
hanera says
I'm very timid, but I made a small bet and took a little over $10K from the gold speculation by going long early and selling early. Maybe I have some opportunity loss, but at least I'm ahead a little bit. Make small bets; live and learn.
I agree with hanera 100%, but if you are smart, you'll put yourself on the other side of any trade you're considering, and understand why anyone would make that bet. What are the supports for the current regime? If you're in the right place at the right time in the right frame of mind you might understand some triggers to help narrow down the time frame (which is directly fungible when you're trading options).
I think the best performing (non insider) stock strategies right now are based on "Random Walk.." with a dash of active management. You need to invest enough money to buy the individual components of your favorite index. Then you look at the stocks, and drop the low-hanging-fruit that you think with almost certainty will be dogs in the interval before your next planned rebalance. If you do this on paper at least, you can use it as a benchmark by which to evaluate any out-of-the-box trades you're contemplating.
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I tend to act/think too soon. I bought gold early and sold my position before the run-up. But here's what I see:
The foreclosure mess has been put on hold, but the banks have been held immune from lawsuits. In Florida the foreclosures are starting to pick back up since the robosigning delay and the banks can now act with impunity (pending any Supreme Court action, but that will likely take years).
Commodities prices are reflating and you recently posted an article implying these are an indicator of financial turmoil. Oil is overpriced. Natural gas / fracking looks like it's ready to implode from Enron-style accounting at CHK. I'm not sure what's going on with ethanol anymore but it seems like a commodity spike followed by foreclosure crisis #2 is in order. We'll see how the weather behaves this year.
So when foreclosures pick up the banks are going to go at them fast and with impunity to get theirs out of a soft but not declining market. That won't last long.
This destruction of money / bank credit will need to countered by massive government spending / fed action. Whoever gets elected really makes no difference because the fed is independent and will compensate for lack of government spending. They will keep rates low to encourage consumerism.
If government does start spending, hopefully they'll find something better to spend the money on than war. The two big keys here are infrastructure and education. Infrastructure spending seems politically unlikely and would likely come in the form of corporate welfare and not anything useful.
Education is terribly overpriced and the education debt bubble is unsustainable. Don't know what will happen there; education debt cannot be discharged in a bankruptcy, so that's going to be a significant lodestone going forward.
There will be more bank bailouts. These will probably come in the form of propping up the housing market, but this won't work. Fannie and Freddie (or whatever replaces them) will take on these loans/losses. There is a small possibility that the banks will be broken up (ending 'too big to fail') but more likely there will be greater consolidation. I see little movement towards re-implementing Glass-Steagal at this time, and no movement towards letting the bondholders lose money (especially as the bondholders tend to be governments and banks...).
Europe is going to get worse before it gets better. Greece will be bailed out, but Spain and Italy are likely to take hits. They will also be bailed out. Germany will grudgingly go ahead and do this but only with the backing of the U.S. There will likely be a scare on the solvency of France.
Things get tougher to predict this far out, and for me, away from the U.S. The fed will be printing money but it has to go to loans somewhere. I expect China to figure out how to profit from this. While the U.S. debt-to-GDP climbs to unsustainable levels, China will be buying up productive resources. Suspect outlays into Africa and Afghanistan (which the U.S. will be unable to prevent, having completely forgetten that war is about rape and pillage; like it's a moral thing or something).
The wealthy in the U.S. will generally be afraid to buy anything (because they're money hoarders, not industrialists) so wealth inequality will grow significantly. But the populace is pretty placid; little societal change is likely to occur. This could flip on a dime, though.
Politics is very tricky today ... with wild swings to massive change possible. Gay marriage recognition seems to be moving forward strongly, as well as drug legalization. At the same time women, minorities, and the poor are seeing more oppression in civil society. Columbia is demanding payments for all the drugs we import while we give guns to Mexican drug lords, who produce meth by the $Billions. Gun companies have stopped taking new orders because they can't fill the ones they have already. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court looks like it could lean towards unwinding some FDR-era laws (e.g, with drugs) while giving corporations an unprecedented amount of legal protections.
Maybe I haven't been paying attention to this stuff long enough, but it feels like the can has about as many spring-loaded snakes in it as it can hold (or, if you prefer, the music on the jack-in-the-box is approaching crescendo) and what happens next could be quite surprising for everyone involved. Internet 'slacktivism' is an interesting unknown as well. The SOPA protest worked; ACTA is having trouble; U.K. citizens are being deported to be tried in the U.S. for committing no crime; the president is using drones to kill Americans exercising their free speech; the U.S. is part of the field of battle of the war in Afghanistan; and we're trying to strongarm China - a communist country - to care about our "IP" while ignoring British IP is what let the U.S. become so industrious.
It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world....
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El Cerrito, CA
I've been thinking about this question as well, and the picture that I've come up with looks something like this (these are just ideas, I don't have data to back ANY of this):
I think treasuries rates are going to move around a bit, but I don't think there will be wild swings. You aren't going to see 30 year rates at 7% anytime soon. I think treasuries are going to be relatively calm moving gradually downward, and this is intentional. I don't think they are designed to go the other way.
One problem with shorting treasuries is that you are shorting a safe haven. So next time there is some shock to the system (japan melts down, oil spill in the gulf on tv, iran, giant hurricane, flooding, the unknown unknown) people will buy treasuries, rates will fall. This is the predictable result of an unpredictable event.
Next, the fed can always ease more if necessary, so that is another thing working against your short. The fed want to keep rates low to make housing more attractive and to get more people to spend on their credit cards. If rates started to rise, why not just do QE again?
Third, you are fighting demographics. Baby-boomers are retiring, and they are going to be stashing more money in bonds or just leaving it in bonds if its already there. Why should they sell? They need the income and less volatility.
Finally, the stock market has had a nice run up. It's due for a big correction any minute. I think sell-in-May is going to happen again this year. Everyone puts all their money in retirement funds at tax time then smarter money pulls out and cashes in.
The resulting correction should push some money into bonds in the very near term.
On the other hand, in defense of shorting bonds, Operation Twist, which twisted the long end of the yield curve downward, is set to end in June 2012. This could make the rates on the long bond rise back up to 4.5% or so.
So you could make 25% off that trade, but overall, I think the bond market is going to be a place of calm.
On the other end of the spectrum, I think the stock market is going to be extremely volatile. It makes sense, you have all this money sloshing around from QE2, and eventually, its going to be taken off the table. The market will fall. If it falls enough, there will be another round of QE, and the markets will rise again.
So my picture of the future is a steady bond market with bursts of QE over the next 5-10 years. The market will take wild swings in that time, driven by news, psychology and algorithmic trading.
I think the best bet to make money is to BUY some bonds when the stock market is raging upwards (and rates are going slightly up), and everyone is talking about how the end of the world is coming for bonds, and we are switching to a gold standard. That's the signal to buy. Then sell them when the stock market comes crashing back down shortly after. Use the proceeds to buy some stocks.
You know, everybody talks about how amazing gold is, but you don't hear people shouting about McDonalds (MCD).
It's up 500% since 2003, and has been moving at the same clip as gold. Or better yet Taco Bell (YUM) Brands.
Or Apple of course has been phenomenal, up 500% since 2009...but has anyone taken a look at lululemon the yoga clothing manufacturer?
Up 1500% since 2009. If you invested 10k, you'd have 150k now, 3 years later.
I think the best way to make money in this market is to be patient and wait for a strong dip, then buy fearlessly knowing that the fed has got your back. Buy some of the obvious "small luxury" things that everyone likes and uses and pays a premium for. Buy things that save energy.
One thing that I'm thinking might be the great buy is natural gas, which is at all time lows...we are sitting on huge reserves. It makes no sense not to start putting this in cars.
Anyway, all of this is speculation!
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Simi Valley, CA
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