This market is brisk and ebullient the action if it’s not being done with abandon then it’s with a gimlet eye. So many new highs across the board, more supply coming online and more demand for cover in new kinds of refuges and hedges. Gold is down and institutions are making slow mega tanker turns into securing permission to commit part of their balance sheets and park reserves in Bitcoin and other proxies for un-fiat.
Assets which were down and out are moving towards what is up and in.
One of the most powerful “lumpy returns” tools for investors and traders has been following price or at least staying out of the way if there was skepticism. Right now, it pays to play or at least stay out of the way. At the same put-call ratios, along with a collection of other devil’s advocate indicators give me enough pause to avoid “FOMO”.
This week’s various summaries include the following.
I began in a prior update with the stopped out list. I will do it again to make a point.
This market is pulling along out of favor ideas - in particular energy related ones.
I know that early fast-trigger traders are likely profiting from energies’ big bounce.
On to the Top 20 leaderboard. It really is something to see ideas that were in favor and then out of favor come back into the lead. It’s an instructive, inspiring and insightful reminder about how you can make and lose capital in the same idea at different times.
Unsurprisingly, Tesla is in this lineup. Even with the slow motion, late approach, Tesla is up nearly 100% so far since July 2020. That’s nothing compared to other approaches but in almost any other year that would be a blowout successful rate of return. Tesla is the poster child of the current market.
What else was in the Top lineup this week? SNAP, SQ, and Z. But what else?
New ideas as of this week. Russell 2000 is index on my mind as it has been for weeks.
A quick pause to look at a few charts to get a sense of the scale of this move up. Rob and Rich at Koyfin have again outdone themselves with this latest iteration of Koyfin.
First chart is the Russell 2000 via ETF IWM. This is a big start for maybe more.
The Nikkei may come home at last to new highs, the long way around, in the 2020s.
“liquidity seeks the inflating asset” which feels circular but Bitcoin ETF GBTC will have company at some point. The dam will break. I keep having that thought about how this always seems to happen during the last 20 years of ETFs, which were the financial tech investment product “hotness” of long ago - they always came online for a hot area just in time for some of the air to come out again. I just don’t know.
Gold is facing a moment. It looks like it’s being upstaged by crypto. We’ll see.
Bond ETF HYG.
“beans in the teens” - not a prediction but look at this.
IPO ETF, “IPO”, another marker of where Mr. Market’s mind is right now.
Just one of many, “SPAK”. Mr. Market is making a SPACtacle of itself. More coming.
US Treasury yield 1 year - what a view over the past few decades.
US Treasury Yield 30 Year - there is still room to go until negative digits I suppose.
So much more.
Apple over the same time frame as the UST yield charts. (Cleaning the attic papers, I saw that Dad was offered by his broker at Bache some of the IPO of a hot computer company called Apple. It was a handful of shares but with a 2000+ bagger it would have been a good story to tell. I wonder which of today’s IPOs will some of us will tell children and grandchildren were the multi-thousand baggers (Bitcoin already did that for those who were around for the original thread with Hal Finney and some post-cyperpunks but I was thinking about old school equities.))
Another 2000+ bagger where it has been “Day 1” for decades.
I know the narrative however for paragons. When the story runs long enough, a hero can become a villain. The “FANGs” may lose their market dominance eventually. Nothing is forever. It used to be world of energy giants dominating the market caps. If data is “the new oil”, that’s something to consider. My mind is on fintech and new incumbents by 2030 dominated by that sector as that layer gets built out over “The Big Stack”.
Who knows what the stories will be. Will it be a long march of decades to getting back to even (like Japan) or will it be life-changing things like Apple?
A personal update: Not about markets or trades, and NO need to read)
We made a roast turkey this year - it wasn’t a mega celebration but it was as close to feeling “normal” as we’ve had in over a year - it was nice and I am grateful for it. No, Dad isn’t on the mend, and it’s one slow rolling decline but we are doing our best, and we keep him and ourselves safe and comfortable (that’s more than most of the planet and more than most of humanity’s history so can’t complain for sure).
I am so very thankful for the good that is in life including family and friends. Without these life rafts, I would sunk even deeper. I’m forcing myself to the surface again.
I had a tech issue and had to get a new machine, and make some Cloud migrations. It seems fitting. I have been spending more time in other communities, in the substackverse, and that’s where a lot of my “FOMO” really is, pent up after a year - the need and urge to create. I have some things in mind and I have to hammer them out.