Before Macro Man (an expatriated Yank) settles into a day of heavy food consumption and late-afternoon NFL, it's time to count his blessings and be thankful for the following:
1) That he works in an industry that allows him to indulge his intellectual curiosity and competitive instinct while providing a handy method of keeping score (the P/L.)
2) That his real-world portfolio has been empty of CDOs and all manner of structured credit turds.
3) In a similar vein, that he doesn't have to rely on third-party agencies to do his analysis for him.
4) As a UK resident, that he is paid in sterling rather than dollars!
5) To have gotten Q3 and, to date, Q4 right, investment-wise. In future years the second half of 2007 will join October 1987 and August-October 1998 in the pantheon of stress-test environments.
6) That Mrs. Macro, the Macro boys, and he himself are healthy and happy.
7) That he's kept the TIPS position all year. A total return of 11% for a bond-holding in a little more than ten months ain't bad!
8) That he had the foresight or luck (or perhaps a combination of the two) to change his mind on the yen and hedge near the highs in USD/JPY.
9) That he does not have to manage the England football team.
10) That, contrary to all expectations, this space has attracted a modest following and, gratifyingly, reasoned, intelligent commentary from other market participants and observers. Thanks to all who read and share their thoughts.
1) That he works in an industry that allows him to indulge his intellectual curiosity and competitive instinct while providing a handy method of keeping score (the P/L.)
2) That his real-world portfolio has been empty of CDOs and all manner of structured credit turds.
3) In a similar vein, that he doesn't have to rely on third-party agencies to do his analysis for him.
4) As a UK resident, that he is paid in sterling rather than dollars!
5) To have gotten Q3 and, to date, Q4 right, investment-wise. In future years the second half of 2007 will join October 1987 and August-October 1998 in the pantheon of stress-test environments.
6) That Mrs. Macro, the Macro boys, and he himself are healthy and happy.
7) That he's kept the TIPS position all year. A total return of 11% for a bond-holding in a little more than ten months ain't bad!
8) That he had the foresight or luck (or perhaps a combination of the two) to change his mind on the yen and hedge near the highs in USD/JPY.
9) That he does not have to manage the England football team.
10) That, contrary to all expectations, this space has attracted a modest following and, gratifyingly, reasoned, intelligent commentary from other market participants and observers. Thanks to all who read and share their thoughts.
17 comments
Click here for commentsAnd we, as readers, should give thanks that you provide us access into your very reasoned, insightful thoughts! I, for one, find this blog very interesting and always look forward to reading it with my morning coffee. Great job!
ReplyOn the other hand, Spain rightly goes in as near-chalk, despite having not made it to the quarter finals in about half a century. No one here has high hopes, though.
ReplyCB
The blurb, BTW, was mighty well received. Tx.
Thanks to you and Happy Thanksgiving. We do not comment as much as we would like to as so tied up but really appreciate this space. Keep it going and best of luck in your trading.
ReplyHi Macro Man,
ReplyI am a regular reader of your blog although this is my first comment here. I would like to thank you Macro Man for share your thoughts and opinions about the markets and other issues here. Every day I look forward to read your blog, as it gives a very interesting picture of the market and their participants. And it helps me in my process to become a global trader. Thank you and happy thanksgiving for your family and yourself.
Javier from Colombia.
Shouldn't #6 and #9 be first on your list, or were they listed in no particular order? :)
Replywhats the avg maturity of your tips and how much of your gain was capital gains from the bernanke cuts?
ReplyThe list is, indeed, in no particular order, else #6 would of course come top of the pile. As for #9, I could hardly do worse than some of the recent holders of the post, and the pay ain't half-bad...
ReplyI own the Jan '17 TIPS, which is the first security listed in the P/L. 6.5% of the return is capital gain, 3.3% is inflation compensation, and the remainder is coupon payment/accrual.
Happy Thanksgiving, MM, and to the commentators who grace these parts.
ReplyRJ
thanks for the tips breakdown. do you have any idea what tips would do in a inflationary hiking cycle?it seems to that it would not be able to produce significant returns, so you will probably dump the trade at some point no?
ReplyHappy Thanksgiving MM. Do you think we will see a repeat of last Thanksgiving Friday's USDJPY massacre this year? My 6th sense tells me that someone might attempt to push the market again while most participants are still digesting the turkey from the previous night.
ReplyUU, it's a holiday in Japan tomorrow, so anything can happen. Liquidity is so awful in every financial market these days that it doesn't take much to push stuff a long, long way.
ReplyMM,
ReplyPersonally I am thankful that I stumbled upon your blog. I hope that your Thanksgiving is grand.
Keith
MM,
ReplyHow do you like the Saudi interest rate cut?
They don't like speculators, huh? Who do they think drove WTIC to $99US?
I think I was blowing smoke on the Saudi interest rate cut. I'm not finding any reports. I do see that UAE cut. And Oanda's bid/ask yesterday on SAR was 4.75/5.25, today it's 1.25/2.00.
ReplyThanks for your commentaries over the last year. I was about to note that the curious case of the vanishing bid had turned into the even more curious case of the vanishing post when all of a sudden the post returned! But will the bid return so easily? The suspense is killing me. My suspicion is that 2007 and beyond is going to make stress testing 1987/1998 style look like crash testing at 10 kilometers per hour into a polystyrene wall.
ReplyAhhh, you must have caught me mid-edit. Well, one might reasonably conclude from this year's quant disasters that Monte Carlo simulations are best performed on chemin-de-fer rather than finan cial markets.
ReplyMacro Man,
ReplyI read your posts first thing in the morning (NY), so it's time I thanked you for your insightful analysis.
Thanks!
Donaldo
PS: I'll try and comment more often.