This is something BFI badly needs. We barely discuss macro and news events but they make up at least 50% of decisions in trading and even investing. Understanding them is crucial to profit and analysis of risk.

Stuff like:

- Economic numbers (employment/consumer sentiment/manufacturing)
- QE/central bank announcements
- Market moving political events and anticipation
- General outlook

Have huge effects on daily, weekly and monthly trading. I'll be posting frequently here with events and economic numbers and what I think they'll mean for direction. Please join in.

Yup agreed. Definitely in on this.

This blog post by Ray Dalio contains loads of interesting data. It is mostly long term relevant though:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/our-b...&trk=prof-post

Ill post some graphs from the article for people who don't want to make a linked in account for this:

Data like this is probably relevant if you are focussed on longer term:


Historically a recipe for disaster:


Some of that white male privilige in action:


Combine this with automation, and you have a second world country within a first world country emerging.


% of prime age men not looking for jobs:


Balance sheets of low and high income groups:


Only reason income is up for bottom 60% in this graph is because entitlements:


Actual income is not up:


At least the healthcare problem seems limited to the US:


This right here seems a major competitive disadvantage and should give the US a large economic boost in other areas if it gets fixed?

While interesting, I can't see anything tradable or even investable in it. What investing decisions would you make on the basis of the above data/view that you wouldn't otherwise make? I can't think of one.

Let me give two examples of a tradable market movers from last week, and the purpose of this thread.

Example 1:
Last Tuesday afternoon, news came through that John Taylor had won a straw poll of senators to be the next fed leader. The market reacted to this news with a sudden pretty small dip, and the bond and USD markets reacted strongly. John Taylor is widely viewed as being more hawkish and pro higher interest rates than other choices.

I bought SPY puts that afternoon, because

a) the market had been running up for a long time and was due for a breather
b) The bond and USD markets were showing substantial moves, indicating the seriousness with which this was viewed
c) The market hadn't reacted yet and vol prices were wonderful.
d) Put together, this means a high possibility of a pullback.

The next day the market dipped nearly 1% in a volume pullback, one of the largest moves in a while. I made 300%, but there 1000% on the table had I let it run longer.

This was a macro/news event that was tradable and fairly reliably moved the market. I would like to discuss and make each other aware of such events

Example 2:
On Thursday, the ECB announced showed a highly dovish approach, saying they would step in and buy up as much as needed if things got worse. This had two effects:

- Crashing the Euro/USD - the Taylor effect helped as well
- Putting more QE into play indefinitely, much of which ends up in stocks.

This provided a stabilizing floor under the market. Combined with excellent corporate earnings, particularly in tech, it was enough to buy the dip and restore robust positivity on Friday.

Example of how this affected my decision making: I bought Tesla puts near open on Friday, on bad news for that stock, but the combination of QE and corporate earnings mean that I put a stop at 50% profit, because the risk was far higher of it moving the other way in such an environment.

Anyway, we do close to zero analysis or posting of this stuff, but I think it's very valuable. It weighs heavily into my trading, and I can't be the only one.

There's longer term stuff to discuss too.

I like this thread. I'll be contributing.

good idea Tooth, subscribed.

Yeah i guess the use is to demand lower valuations when investing in the US. Especially for some consumer companies that depend a lot on the bottom 60%. It has me kinda worried for the next crisis. Add in a lot of disappearing low skilled jobs and who knows where it will go in the short to medium term? All the ingredients for a political timebomb are present if growth goes to 0% (which will happen at some point) and negative for bottom half of population.

Are there statistics on how much cash there is in brokerage accounts? I think a significant portion of the money that was printed in the past decade is now in brokerage accounts of private and institutional investors. Only a small trickle really made it into the real economy. This should provide a bottom for stocks (unless earnings take a nosedive, which I don't think is very likely).

Don't know much about short term trading stuff, so I will be following that with interest.

Maybe we'll get to witness these perfectly timed trades in real time...

Yield curve parity and inversion has predicted previous recessions flawlessly. Someone else drew these up. I need help finding the best real-time chart if it exists. I've been watching the actual yields but I like looking at a chart to see trend. I assume they used the premium service for Stockcharts.com? In the last chart investor optimism is the highest it has been since the late 90s raging tech bubble apparently.

wtf america? these guys gotta get to work.

Wondering if this means anything we should pay attention to:

Investors yank $6.8 bln from high yield bonds, 3rd largest outflows-BAML

Relevant to the junk bond needing high risk companies? Easy debt at cheap prices have fueled a lot of the growth of the crap stocks.

Any reason to worry?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/have-tr...ign-1511438401

Cliffs? Can't read

Massive beat in new home sales for October (up 6.2% vs expectation of a 6.1% drop or a 6 SD beat of expectations cc zerohedge). Average price also exceeded $400k for the first time. Interesting to see the effect low historical rates have had on this recovery and what effect these stats could have on rates going forward especially on the longer end (if any).

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...st-in-a-decade

Came across this piece last week: Austrailia's Economy is a House of Cards

Title says it all. It's a long read but worth it.

Highly levered to materials/specifically coal demand from China and they also have a significant & well covered housing bubble. Love this quote from Tepper, "one of the biggest housing bubbles in history”. “Australia”, he added, “is the only country we know of where middle-class houses are auctioned like paintings."

Anyone else get bitchslapped by the Flynn bombshell? USD was hit pretty hard. I imagine stocks were affected as well, but not trading them I don’t know the extent of that.

took off some winners, shorted vix, btfd

obviously they run back up to unchanged

The Flynn "bombshell" wasn't really a bombshell. It was fake news, as most negative reporting on Trump is.

There's a good summary here:

https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/bl...3e93f7e58b12b7

Basically, the explosive claim was made in the Washington Post (king of fake news) and the ABC that Flynn was testifying that Trump ordered him to contact the Russians when Trump was a candidate, thus conspiring with the Russians.

This was of course false, as the contact in question was after Trump had won the election, and was entirely appropriately putting out feelers with foreign governments.

The real news is a non-starter; Trump was doing what all incoming presidents do and started establishing dialogue with foreign powers to smooth the transition (Obama did the same thing).

I think the default trading position here is that negative Trump related news is pure bull****; good for trades, but never going to amount to anything and thus the dip will be bought. Trump is very obviously clean, for a number of reasons.

Complains about fake news and then posts a link to a tabloid website that is controlled by Rupert Murdoch.

Never change Tooth.

Brain damaged person who thinks facts don't matter, but sides do. Please change dfgg.

The retraction is there in black and white. Keep enjoying that fake news. How may people lost a fortune who sold on the Washington Post/ABC fake news? You do understand that's what happened, right? They reported fake news, it tanked the market, the news turned out to be fake, they retracted, the market bought back to near zero.

Did you even read the link, or did your sheep brain just go "duh it's owned by Emmanuel Goldstein, can't be real"? What I said is documented in that article in black and white with original sources. How did your epistemology get so ****ed up that you get basic things so wrong?

And since you have an undeveloped tribal chimp brain rather than one that functions like a normal educated human being, I'll have to speak at your chimp level.

This is a tweet from CNN's Olivia Darcy:



He's on your "side" (as your uneducated brain sees things), so your teenage girl worldview (I only trust my gals! Everyone else is a liar!) should be willing to accept and trust it.



It says exactly what Emmanuel Goldstein's site says. I guess it's your turn to retract?

Now now Toothsayer no need to start throwing insults. Calm down there buddy.

My issue is not with the content. But you post from a source that is known for straight up making stuff up. Basically a rightwing fake news website. I guess I am a complete idiot for not trusting them right? If this is so obvious, why can't you find a reputable source? Why post a link from tabloid journalism.

You started this. I posted factual content and you went all weird and partisan, attacking the source and then implying that this was because of my character ("never change, Tooth").

Cite the claim that the Daily Telegraph has a poorer track record for factual accuracy than an average reputable news source? What you believe above came straight out your fevered/deranged partisan brain and has no connection to reality.

There goes your chimp brain again. It's owned by Emmanuel Goldstein, everything Emmanuel Goldstein touches is fake. Do you realize your epistemology is all ****ed up?


Unlike you I'm not uneducated or unworldly enough to believe that right leaning news is "fake" and left leaning news is "true" (or vice versa). All have their biases...right now the left has an insane anti-Trump bias. When Obama was in power, parts of the right had an insane anti-Obama bias.

Murdoch news is as reputable as any other news, more on some topics, less on others (it depends on the topic). You just don't spot the biases of your own side because you're up to your neck in them, and your own side has been running a propaganda campaign, attacking the media that doesn't agree with them. That you believe otherwise is kind of sad. This idea that one side is right and reasonable and are impartial commentators and the other side lie and distort is just amazing; anyone with any knowledge of history or journalism or even human nature would laugh at you. Both sides are partisan and both right and wrong and both lie and distort in ridiculous ways. There's not a hair between in how much. Yet a good portion of people (you included) actually believe that it's just one side. We live in weird times.
Because sources that you believe are "reputable" simply aren't documenting this fake news event. It makes them look bad, and they're mostly tribal cheerleaders to impress sheep like you. I read across the spectrum and this was the first decent documenting of this event that I read.

But nonetheless I found you a tweet from a senior CNN reporter in my post above who says exactly the same thing as Emmanuel Goldstein's site. Thus your chimp brain should be sated - someone from your side said it, it's beyond reproach now.
Because it had a good list of the sources and timeline. If the NYT wants to document the rabid anti-Trump fake news that has infected US mainstream commentary for well over a year, and yesterday wiped $200 billion off the stock market, then I'll post them instead, if only to avoid the kind of weird bull**** that partisan idiot partake in, like you above. Until they do, I post things that are sourced and factual.

Your problems with tribalism and broken epistemology are irrelevant to the discussion.

Accusing main stream media of posting fake news, while posting a notorious fake news source yourself from the least trusted newspaper in Australia is kinda ironic. You are so obviously biased, yet you cannot see it. Hence the 'Never change Tooth' remark. I see you do that a lot. Especially in the Tesla thread. It is kind of hilarious really.

You could have simply posted this without all that tribalistic fake news crap attached to it:
http://www.forexlive.com/news/!/sp-5...cline-20171201

The reason why I mentioned Murdoch is because he has a reputation for regularly bending the truth. The only somewhat reliable news source he owns is the WSJ, but even that newspaper has been going downhill in the past 10 years since he bought it.

The former owners are actuallyregretting selling it to him as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Da...aph_(Australia)

And since Murdoch who is a slimy character is heavily involved in all his news organizations that is pretty relevant:
Generally the news companies he owns have a terrible record of keeping to the truth, and they often want to bend the truth for political gains with a extreme right wing bent. Just like is happening on the left as well with various news sources like Bloomberg. Which has been ruined by anti Trump mania.

I can't believe I need to spell this out to you.

Oh and I don't read the Washington post. You really need to calm down, you sound like some southern redneck who drank too much homemade moonshine.

edit: I will add this, Rasmussen is a right leaning poll and 40% of Americans don't trust Fox news:
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/publ...news_trophy_is

CBS only 3%. Guess who owns Fox?

Maybe if so many people don't trust you, there is a reason they don't trust you?