that could be interesting. as far as i know fleck has never given away his methods. if he is ever asked he always says that most people shouldnt short.
He admits to being overly cautious on this run up, but wasn't short the market for 150 points or anything like that. His style sounds pretty risk averse and makes heavy use of derivitives. He often mentions that he will be long stock and long puts and trade around a position like that, adding and reducing long and short exposure as the market dictates. He's not some numbskull amateur who would ride a short position up 20%. His bearish conviction went from 0 to 25% yesterday. He's very confident that the march lows will be taken out at some point, but is cognizant of the fact that this rally may surprise people more from here, thus the light conviction level. But if yesterday was the top, at least he has some exposure in keeping with his bigger picture bearish views.
\ It's pretty clear that Toddo is basically a bear market operator...Have you once seen him slip an appendage into the bull costume...or if he did, was this the anomaly as opposed to the norm...Lets face facts...We have been in an upswing for the better part of 2 1/2 months...At some point, the lenses have to be cleaned and some sort of objectivity has to step in...He has been making long volatility bets since March with SPX index options...THose have gotten crushed...unless he has been hedging or paying the rent on all of that theta with ever increasing amounts of long futures or long component stocks against those options, that would represent quite a hit... But, this is besides the point of my little diatribe...What I really dont see after reading him periodically for seven months is any sort of consistency in terms of using the market constructively...Whether this is outside of his scope of commentary or he just waters down the chit chat to cater to the attention deficit crowd, I dont know...But its almost as if he has some emotional damage from the bull market going sour on him...This "bear only" mentality has been the overriding theme since he launched the site last fall...He was in a similar bear mode throughout November of last year...
Yes, he's gone bullish. He was right within hours of the February bottom. Don't remember what his take was on the March lows. But he's taken profits rather quickly in those instances. I think he has issues trading against his bigger picture views of the market. No doubt he's been wrong the last two months, he's admited so himself. I still think his insight is worth reading, but agree that it's nowhere near as useful as a trading tool as it was when re wrote for RM.
I too found him more useful when he wrote for RM. I am not looking for someone to offer stock picks. But I was able to get a Feel for what the market was doing when he focused solely on the trading aspect of the market and not on all the idle chit chat and story telling. I will admit, the stories are occasionally nice diversions from the everyday grind of trading, but that is not what I want to spend money on. It is admirable that he is trying to do so much for his charity, but again, as Todd always says, our first business each day is the market, and I feel he is focusing on many other things other than trading. I continue to hope that he will, at some point, return to his old ways. He needs to return to his trader's instinct and be able to flip from bullish to bearish and back in hours, not weeks or months. Getting too caught up in one's macro views (as we all do) can cost a trader his livelihood.
We can't know what positions he is carrying, and we can't rule out that he does not operate like others on Wall Street (deliberately misleading), but this reminds me of a story Michael Steinhardt told in his recent autobiography when he took a major position - I think short - in a non equity vehicle. Either it was in bonds or currency, I can't recall. He had run a strict equity fund up until then and his investors had understood he was a solely an equity hedge fund manager (one of the all time greats). Some of his investors pulled out of the fund when they discovered he was holding this position. Steinhardt remained convinced of the ultimate outcome of this speculation, even as the position went 10 million against him. Then, after several months, there was a rapid break, and in a couple more months, Steinhardt bagged a $50 million profit. Position trades are almost incomprehensible to daytraders. Short term risk management can't apply to longer term speculation.