So the bears are struggling now because the amount of bearishness has not been followed by enough economic deterioation and/or financial disruption. Of course, now its time to cry about how much more we should have bought on the way down
I still got my short SPY calls (198,199, 200) but that is offset by long stock in BRKB, PSH and EWZ. I don't get much upside after that but I probably should be selling sotcks after a rip that large anyway. With the calls, at least I get paid while i wait
I used today's weakness to add some to my gold position. still saving some bullets to add lower. I really think the future for gold in the next 12-24 months is likely to be great. The market seems to have been 'woken up' from the years of dormancy. Now things like financial repression (low/negative REAL interest rates) are likely to fuel it going forward. And governments with a lot of debt are likely to use this tool to delever. this is another reason why i think it could rise
The front end seems rich here in a enviroment where equities have stabilized, inflation is creeping higher and employment is still strong
Only a small loss there, a lot of the value declined as the VIX came down. it was only today that this thing started to appreciate more. will go back to using mostly bonds to hedge my stocks. though, im still cautious because of the Fed
Shorting puts as a way to buy a stock into a decline is a nice sounding strategy but in practice I'm finding its pretty flawed. What happened to BRKB shows to me the flaw I didn't anticipate. So I shorted a bunch of puts, the stock declined to the strike price and even bellow. I didn't buy enough of the stock because I was already pretty exposed through the puts. The stock recovered and the puts (the ones that I kept) are going to expire worthless. But the problem is that I lost the chance to buy the stock like I wanted (I only got in a small stake). I wanted to have been exercised but the dip recovered before the expiration One could say, just short half of the notional stake that you wanted to have and wait to buy the shares with the other half. Well, I'm not sure doing half of a mistake is a good idea I would be making a nice profit now with BKRB at $137. Now I don't want to buy it, not in this enviroment. I will probably have to wait a few months for another VIX spike to add more
Buffett was screaming buy BRK in his letter (at least, thats the impression I got),lots of people are chasing now. Real shame, it was a big opportunity for me and I messed up
I wanted to have put in 10-15% in BRKB. Ended up only with 2.5% I expect it to return something like 10% a year with little risk for the next 5-10 years so its a good alternative to cash