Nevermind waiting, I bought my BRKB stake and covered SPY. The market is holding up in a healthy fashion here. Specially given how weak bonds were at the open
Right now I'm at roughly: 43% long stocks(PSH, EWZ, EWZS, BRKB, OAK plus some smaller ones), 17% in BR USD bonds, 10% gold and 1.5% gold stocks 6% UST bonds (15y), 22% in cash I'm reluctant to add more stock positions, unless we have a nice pullback on SPY
Just to explain to someone if they are new to the journal, what I'm trying to do here is a variation of the Jim Leitner approach from the book Inside the House of Money. I'm trying to earn risk premia with a diversified portfolio that is twisted a bit by some of macro views. But sometimes its just a micro view as well (like on PSH). I aim to make 5-8% a year with 15% max drawdowns until there is something really interesting happening that makes me more confident so I can bet bigger and try to make 20%+ Judging by how macro funds have done since 2010 and the overall difficulty of doing anything other than being passively long, I dont anticipate making any big bets anytime soon. Especially on the short side At some point, I'm sure this Central bank induced bull market will implode, probably with bonds as well and we will see a nasty bear market that has no place to hide as everything tanks and risk parity funds are hit with waves of withdraws but boy, you would broke by now if tried to fade this game. So I rather just observe and wait one day for something significant that makes me more comfortable with some kind of Soros style bet We will see...
Coincidentally I have just finished the Jim Leitner chapter in The Invisible Hands. Every bit as fascinating as the first, but with a lot of post-2008/Lehman insights. If anyone is genuinely interested in Global Macro I'd highly recommend both books.
This inflation report was really awful Still dont think they hike but to stick around for 2.5bps while risking 20 seems a little risky
http://www.businessinsider.com/brid...-interest-rates-could-crush-everything-2016-9 More specifically, the average rate hike during a deleveraging "caused, over the next two years, a 16% drawdown in equities, a 2% increase in economic slack and a 1% fall in inflation."
"Normally, a mistake in monetary policy is not that big a deal because it can be reversed," the note said. "The risk now is higher than normal because a tightening mistake is harder to reverse today when the ability to ease is more limited."
This Bridgetwater note shows the folly of the folks who think hiking is good for the economy, stocks and everything will be wonderful. They are looking the the rear view mirror when the US was not delevering. What they did were was to look for other periods and countries where there was delevering going on and look at the consequences This gives me more confidence to follow the approach to being cautious and look to accumulate positions in VIX spikes, because they are likely to happen (as opposed to more stable periods where markets can go for a year or more without any significant pullbacks)