Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Equities: "Short 'em All"

The DJIA is up 30, the S&P's up 6 1/2. The market feels tired. Here's a repost from a year ago when I reiterated that you could short both sides of paired ETF's (FAS, FAZ; UPRO, SPXU) and in effect write the options to pocket the time decay.
Leveraged ETF's: "Short 'em all"

I've referred to one of my mentors in earlier posts:

Sep. 11, 2008

One of my mentors* used to say "Stocks are smarter than Analysts". He also said (in no particular order):
Stocks are smarter than Investment Bankers
Stocks are smarter than Fund Managers
Stocks are smarter than Brokers
He was skeptical of human nature and cynical about human arrogance. He was very rich.
Had he lived to see my cyber-punditry I am sure he would have added "Stocks are smarter than bloggers"....
March 12, 2008

I've mentioned* that one of my mentors was the best trader I've ever met. Creative, intelligent, disciplined (and bankrolled).
From time to time though, he would lose his mind and run around the floor screaming:

"Sell 'em all, they aren't worth the paper they're printed on".
Jan. 9, 2008
Can you trust the First Bank of Nigeria?
...*One of my mentors, and one of the sharpest traders I ever met, had the most common flaw of students of markets, hubris. In his case it was non-fatal, more of a cost of doing business:...
...2) He got into a rigged blackjack game in Yugoslavia. Lost half-a-mil. Said he started to think it was was fixed when he was down a couple hundred.
Wife: "Then why the hell did you keep playing?"
Him: "I thought I could beat it"....
*Direxion 3x Financial ETFs Go Certifiably Crazy (FAS; FAZ etc.)
Shorting Leveraged ETF Pairs (FAS, FAZ: SPXU, UPRO)