Saturday, August 08, 2009

My Waterloo?



This bear market rally (S&P 500 retraced 50% since March) has killed me.

I've been *hurt* many times in the past 13 years.

But injuries heal....whilst death is a one-time affliction

5 comments:

Taylor Conant said...

C,

I Waterlooed and I'm only 23. The death of a child is a grave tragedy... ask the socialist politicians.

Anonymous said...

Did you throw in the towel on the ETFs? They are sinking fast. By my calculation, a 50% drop in IYR would produce a 100% gain in SRS...bringing it to around $22. Not sure how the VIX factors into the equation, but the basic calculations don't portend much of an upside for these products.

If you know different, state it.

CaptiousNut said...

anon,

The 50% market retracement zeroed out all 2X and 3X levered shorts as the math dictates.

From here, who knows. I certainly don't.

I still own them all but have no hope of anywhere near a full recovery. I may, at best, in a staggered crash scenario, get back 20% of what I lost.

Anonymous said...

Zeroed out as the math dictates? You lost me on that one.

Good luck in recovering some of your losses. It is difficult to believe that Uncle Sam could be so obsessed with pumping up common stocks.

As for the levered ETFs, I bought puts on QLD and FXI figuring that even if the market trades sideways, the time decay of the ETFs will exceed that of the puts. (assuming the puts were mis-priced, of course)

CaptiousNut said...

These shorts should move at 2X and 3X the daily moves of their respective indices.

When banks and REITs double, that implies that the short ETFs should (roughly) go down by over 100%. Does it not?