What opportunity? If you went to the bathroom, you missed it. Shares are nearly back to pre-quake levels as is the yen. Unless shares retest the lows, that deal is done.
Got long on Fed futures for Feb 2012, filled at 99.565 and 99.57 If the fed hikes twice I lose a little less than 10% of my networth, on no hikes I make a little less than that loss amount. On 1 hike, I lose like 2%
What about a rate hike scare that sends these puppies down 75-125 points or more in a month or less and you lose 25% of your net worth without the Fed doing a thing. Are you prepared to hold? Have you looked the performance of FF futures or GE futures in the summer of 2003, when the "rates on hold forever" meme exploded?
Always modest, but I'm not sure it's a strength. Probably keeps me from piling everything into a trade even when I've got the market by the throat.
Thats why I'm not betting big, I can see some scenarios where the Fed gets hawkish from here(as opposed to 2008-2010 where I knew the market was completely wrong). Furthermore the ECB hawk talk made the market price only like 3 gradual hikes for this year, the Fed would probably generate less than that. Plus Fed has the extended period promise out there, which they will probably only remove in a few months at the earliest. I'd argue the earliest is in Jun so they could use the press conference to explain. After they remove they will probably wait a few months to hike. Which would probably mean 2 hikes at the most by Feb(I'm confident the first few hikes will be a measured pace of 25bps, ala Greenspan, even though that was criticized. The criticism of 1% rates didn't stop Bernanke to going even lower and promising more) If your scenario happened, I'd take the 75% of my networth that is left, buy more and retire
A request: Anybody have a chart of NFPs rate of change vs UR? Basically I want to see how a given change in job growth will reflect upon the UR all things being equal. I realize this is an overly simplistic way to view things but I find the simpler the better.
Oh don't worry, it hasn't left you at the station yet. I'm not talking about a daytrade here, I'm talking real macro moves over extended periods of time. Just wait until all the bad news of the aftermath is coming out, and the Nikkei mysteriously seems to ignore it all and mysteriously seems to start picking up positive price momentum. That will be the time to jump on and ride this thing for an extended period of time on the long side.