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"There have been hundreds of articles written about the “world’s most powerful investment bank,” or as journalist Matt Taibbi famously called it back in 2010, the “great vampire squid.” That squid is now about to wrap its tentacles around our world in a way previously not imagined by Bill Clinton or George W. Bush.
No less than six Trump administration appointments already hail from that single banking outfit. Of those, two will impact your life strikingly: former Goldman partner and soon-to-be Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and incoming top economic adviser and National Economic Council Chair Gary Cohn, former president and “number two” at Goldman. (The Council he will head has been responsible for “policy-making for domestic and international economic issues.”)
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"It was then only a matter of time until he was elevated to Treasury Secretary. In that position, he would accomplish something Ronald Reagan — the first president to appoint a Treasury Secretary directly from Wall Street (former CEO of Merrill Lynch Donald Regan) — and George H.W. Bush failed to do. He would get the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 repealed by hustling President Clinton into backing such a move. FDR had signed the act in order to separate investment banks from commercial banks, ensuring that risky and speculative banking practices would not be funded with the deposits of hard-working Americans. The act did what it was intended to do. It inoculated the nation against the previously reckless behavior of its biggest banks.
Rubin, who had left government service six months earlier, wasn’t even in Washington when, on November 12, 1999, Clinton signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act that repealed Glass-Steagall. He had, however, become a board member of Citigroup, one of the key beneficiaries of that repeal, about two weeks earlier"
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This is a link to a little on spread trading (its really just a commercial) but the link is for me as a reminder to re-examine this later should I have time
A 2.45%, 10-year U.S.Treasury rests at 2.45% because the ECB and BOJ are buying $150 billion a month of their own bonds and much of that money then flows from 10 basis points JGB's and 45 basis point Bunds into 2.45% U.S. Treasuries. Without that financial methadone, both bond and stock markets worldwide would sink and produce a tantrum of significant proportions. I would venture a guess that without QE from the ECB and BOJ that 10-year U.S. Treasuries would rather quickly rise to 3.5% and the U.S. economy would sink into recession.
He calls this "global helicopter money" circular scheme "financial methadone", and writes that "the interest earned on the $12 trillion is already being flushed from central banks back to government fiscal authorities. One hand is paying the other. But the transfer in essence means that monetary and fiscal policies have joined hands and that the government, not the private sector, is financing its own spending."
This fusion of monetary and fiscal policy is the very definition of "helicopter money", however because it takes place at the global, and not national level, few are outraged.
Needless to say, in the long-run such an arrangement is unsustainable: "individual savers, pension funds, and insurance companies are now robbed of the ability to earn rates of return necessary to maintain long-term solvency. Financial Armageddon is postponed as consumption is brought forward and savings suppressed and deferred."
According to Schwartz many traders are losing money because they rather lose money than admit they’re wrong. He also struggled with this in his early trading career. Once he changed his mind set, he became extremely successful. Like many top traders Schwartz also urges the importance of capital preservation. As trader you shouldn’t let your losses get out of hand.
Additional tips:
Always check your charts and moving averages (MA) prior to taking a position. There is many information found in how the market trades compared to its MA. Try not to go against the MA; it is self-destructive!
Always ask yourself if you really want to take that position
Take a break after a successful period. This is necessary for your mental game. According to Schwartz his biggest losses have always followed his largest profits. So, after a strong run of profits, take a break, or definitely play smaller rather than larger.
Know in advance the maximum amount you’re willing to lose. Money management is the most important concept in trading successful.
Conclusion
Marty Schwartz’s story is a story of failing for almost a decade, before hitting it big. Finding a methodology that worked for him, in combination with a change in mindset made his transition to a successful trader reality. Throughout his losing years, Schwartz focused on fundamental analysis for his trading. It was not until he immersed himself into technical analysis that he found his key to success. The take away is not to choose between fundamental or technical analysis but that each trader must find his own approach. Some traders feel comfortable trading with the trend while others prefer counter-trend trades.
5 notable quotes from Schwager’s interview with Schwartz:
I always take my losses quickly. That is probably the key to my success. You can always put the trade back on, but if you go flat, you see things differently. The pressure you feel when you are in a position that is not working puts you in a catatonic state.
Learn to take losses. The most important thing in making money is not letting your losses get out of hand. Also, don’t increase your position size until you have doubled or tripled your capital. Most people make the mistake of increasing their bets as soon as they start making money. That is a quick way to get wiped out.
Most people would rather lose money than admit they’re wrong. What is the ultimate rationalization of a trader in a losing position? “I’ll get out when I’m even.” Why is getting out even so important? Because it protects the ego. I became a winning trader when I was able to say, “To hell with my ego, making money is more important.”
I always check my charts and the moving averages prior to taking a position. Is the price above or below the moving average? That works better than any tool I have. I try not to go against the moving averages; it is self-destructive. (in his book Pit Bull, Schwartz says that he is using a 10-period exponential moving average).
What was your experience during the week of the October 19, 1987 stock crash?
I came in long. I have thought about it, and I would do the same thing again. Why? Because on October 16, the market fell 108 points, which, at the time, was the biggest one-day point decline in the history of the stock exchange. It looked climatic to me, and I thought that was a buying opportunity. The only problem was that it was a Friday. Usually a down Friday is followed by a down Monday.
The high in the S&P on Monday was 269. I liquidated my long position at 267.5. I was real proud of that because it is very hard to pull the trigger on a loser. I just dumped everything. I think I was long 40 contracts coming into that day, and I lost $315,000.
One of the most suicidal things you can do in trading is to keep adding to a losing position. Had I done that, I could have lost $5 million that day. It was painful, and I was bleeding, but I honored my risk points and bit the bullet.
I thought about going short, but I said to myself, “Now is not the time to worry about making money; it is the time to worry about keeping what you have made.” Whenever there is a really tough period, I try to play defense, defense, defense. I believe in protecting what you have.
Source: Schwager, Jack D. (2012-01-09). Market Wizards: Interviews with Top Traders. Wiley. Kindle Edition.
Hedge Fund managers in 2016
All that said, the overall returns produced by hedge-fund managers in 2016 were a disappointment, Sopher said. “Even the managers with the best long-term records did not perform strongly and their results were no better than average,” he said.
The top 20 managers generated a total of $16.1 billion in gains after fees in 2016. On a weighted basis, they produced a return of 2.6%. The S&P 500 returned 11.9% in 2016, including dividends.
It was a tough year for some high-profile managers. Paulson & Co., ran by billionaire John Paulson, who became famous for his lucrative bet against the housing market ahead of the financial crisis, saw a $3 billion loss in 2016, LCH estimated, reducing its accumulated net gain since inception to $18.4 billion and dropping it to No. 13 on the all-time list from No. 7 a year ago.
Thursday 8:12 PM 2/2/2017
1. changed "start in .. formula " to use DDauto HL est - versus discretionary HL est.
2. looked at NT help file to learn about subroutines in C#. They are now called methods with void() to show no return argument. I want to find
out how to make an external subroutine that several indicators can call. (Probably a public argument) I think I will need to find a complete list
of NT "reserve names". There are probably libraries of pre-bulit C functions. (E:\doc\c programming\cmethods.rth)
Friday 10 Feb 2017
1. Fixed formula in Today section for zero diff ref
2. Guideline: No trading Friday if not 100% cert
3. Did chart of Thursday for notes with LOD and HOD and Today section
4. Made formula to find the best fit of midpt est and posted results in thread "Formula to Estimate midpt". so this shows which estimate was
closer and the second step is to review each day of week 402 to find a switch to say which estimate to use.
5. Worked on seeing if I could find a trend fitting program to match a selected multi-day trend. Found there are many formulae built in and I will
have to do some reading to learn more on each. Copied the help section for reference file:///E:/lotus/work/123/statiscaldistributions.txt (post
in trading).
Saturday 11 Feb 2017
1. Improved the input of sunrise and sunset times to reference "Sunrise" in "Sum" page.
2. Did weekend updating.
3. Keeping Weekly rng in a transfer file (weeklyrng) now for pasting to DD