Thursday, May 28, 2009

Stopped Short

I mentioned in my last post that I was stopped out on UGA. Total bummer really, but that's also the point. While the loss would have been temporary, I now have capital to re-deploy elsewhere.

So what happened, you say?

I entered this 100 share position at on 19 March 2009 at $24.82. I went light because I didn't have a lot of capital to deploy, and I really haven't like the price point on UGA. Basically, for investing in the oil patch, I get more value elsewhere.

My stop was filled at $29.26, for a per share price, after commission, of $29.19. My stop was placed at $29.25, which I thought was loose enough to prevent all but the most egregious of downdrafts based on UGA's trading history. Clearly, it should have been a bit looser.

Profit, after commission, came to 17.6%. Not too bad for a 2 month holding period. While I would have loved to continue holding UGA, I have been able to pursue some other ideas with the freed capital. So things eventually work out. I have no interest in chasing UGA on the way up, even though I think it has a bit further to run. I'd rather deploy capital in more efficient ways and focus on getting a 2 or 3 bagger, if not more.

Remember, cut those losses short. But there is nothing wrong with taking a profit. Just don't take them too aggressively. Always let your winners run if you can.

Until next time...

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Ooops!

Actually, it was more like "damn!!" but you get the picture.

That's what I said on Wednesday when I pulled the trigger on a trade. Why did I curse my trade? Because I'd selected a limit order instead of a stop, and in short order, 1/6th of my holdings of UCO were gone at a price of $10.54 per share.

Let me clear. I'm not upset because I made a profit. It's kind of hard (and stupid) to be mad about that outcome. I am mad because my profit was only $1.99 per share, with an entry of $8.40 for those shares (on margin). So, if we do the math and subtract $14.00 in commissions, my gross profit was 23.67%. Not bad for a position entered on 31 March. Of course, none of this includes tax calculations, but I have enough previous losses to offset the small amount of taxes here. I've also not subtracted margin expenses, and if I can get clarity on that point, I'll update this post or post anew.

Still, my net profit works out to be about 14 - 15% over 7 weeks, or 104 - 111% annualized. Not too shabby. Now to wash, rinse and repeat!

So in the future, I warn everyone to make sure that you set the trade type appropriately with your online brokers! Don't be like me. Don't give up profits early with stupid mistakes.

NOTE: We'll discuss getting stopped out of UGA the following day in a later post.

Happy trading!

Exogenous Price Shocks

It could just be me, but what I found to be most interesting in the 20 May post from David Kotok of Cumberland Advisors was the story about corn ethanol and its effect on "food insecurity" in Zambia (and by extension, around the world). 2,500,000,000 affected by bad US policy on corn ethanol. Brilliant!

My only question is how can I benefit without trading in corn on the CME? Trading grain futures and options on them handed me my own head once. There may not be a clear path to profitability for the small speculator, but I plan to keep looking. I'm all for capitalizing on bad public policy.

That's all for now. Until next time...

Monday, May 11, 2009

Canary Red

This quick blurb about HSBC over at Bloomberg.com caught my eye. Why? Because for those who recall early 2007, HSBC was the first major bank to admit any problems with its subprime portfolio. We know how the rest of that year progressed. I have to wonder if they are leading the pack again. I guess only time will tell, but it is definitely something to keep an eye on.

Could that be the stench of death around the financials, yet again? Hmmm. I know my choice for leading contender to die.

Until next time, good people, stay safe...

Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Peter Thiel on Financial Markets and The Singularity

I will definitely watch this again, but a few things struck me about this presentation by Peter Thiel. (For the unaware, Thiel was the CEO of PayPal who sold the company to eBay. He runs Clarium Capital Management LLC, a global macro hedge fund, and does early stage investing, mostly through The Founder's Fund. He was one of the first investors in Facebook and a bunch of other well known Web 2.0 companies.)

First, Thiel really is nerdier than I expected. I was hoping there was a suaveness to him, a relaxed confidence borne of his intelligence and success both as an entrepreneur, an academic and an investor. No. There really isn't. He's as nerdy looking and sounding as one would expect from reading about him. I'm not sure what to make of this, and it really means ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, but it caught me off guard. He's also a very unpolished speaker. Again, this is not a problem or a bad thing, but I always find it difficult to listen to people who overuse "ummm" and "uhhh" and "you know" in their speech. In Thiel's case, it is probably a matter of his thinking faster than he speaks, and his speech having to catch up with this (disorganized and chaotic) thoughts. However, it only serves to obfuscate his message and, to me personally, makes it almost painful to listen to him. He should probably spend more time preparing and organizing his thoughts when he is to speak to crowds.

Second, I think Thiel has misunderstood Warren Buffett's investing strategy. Maybe Buffett, and by extension Berkshire Hathaway, has invested in The Singularity better than anyone else. However, I don't think that was his objective. Buffett and Berkshire have been doing the very logical thing - managing risks and probabilities. Insurance is the ultimate business of managing risks and probabilities. The insurance business is basically about probability, and this fits with Thiel's singularity thesis because it comes down to managing the fat tail risks.

Thiel makes the point, several times, that there are all of these potential outcomes in a non-Gaussian distribution of risks, from -- for example -- an investment boom being the beginning of "The New New Thing" which will revolutionize life on Earth to just being an extended investment mania. He uses the Japan bubble of the 1980s, the Internet bubble of the late 1990s, the real estate bubble in the US in the early part of this decade and the pursuit of the control of space in the late 1960s as is representative cases. In most of these cases, there was a span of time during which great wealth (or "wealth") was created, followed by a spectacular collapse -- boom and bust.

Thiel continues on to mention that Buffett, by way of Berkshire Hathaway, is investing in the The Singularity by writing insurance against catastrophic events -- the busts. However, I think Thiel has missed some things. First, Berkshire is not new to the insurance business. Second, insurance -- basically, writing puts against given outcomes, which I think of as the best description -- is a well known business with solid underpinnings. Buffett understands this, and uses this to his advantage. The Berkshire insurance businesses are cash generators, and Buffett has intentionally steered away from certain lines, or approached them carefully. For example, Geico only recently began writing renter's and home owner's insurance, after having been in the auto insurance business for a long time. Geico has also been known as the company that would only take on the best drivers (e.g. the lowest risk drivers) and dropping coverage for drivers after a single accident (cutting losses early). The cash thrown off by the Berkshire insurance businesses has fueled Berkshire's acquisitions of other lowly valued businesses (on a fundamental basis) as well as it's war chest, which in turn had driven it's AAA credit rating (until recently).

Even Warren Buffett's mistimed (?) derivatives bets are nothing more than insurance plays. They are bets on the probability of certain outcomes, including the level of the S&P 500 equity index in almost 20 years. While the positions are underwater now, and Buffett can be considered hypocritical for calling derivatives of all stripes "financial weapons of mass destruction", he is fundamentally making similar bets as any of the insurance lines his companies write.

I say all of this to say that Buffett doesn't invest in insurance businesses due to some recognition of or belief in The Singularity but simply because he recognizes that probability is on his side. Everything has risk, but insurance, such as it is (outside of the realm of catastrophe, for example), is well known and generally a cash cow due to the small payout in claims against the large revenue in premiums. Maybe Thiel knows this, but he seems to express a view that Buffett has some grandiose "black swan" perspective on investing. I, personally, think not.

Anyway, it is an interesting presentation and not a bad way to spend 20 minutes of your time. Will you gain any new insight here? Probably not. But you never know. Maybe something he says will land with you in a way other talks have not. Check it out if you have the time.

Until next time...