When the Central Bankers started printing money in 2009, I knew they wouldn’t be able to stop before they took things to an unimaginable extreme. When you’re in government and your policy isn’t working, you keep pushing harder—like your career is at stake if you fail. When China embarked on a massive infrastructure binge to re-ignite economic growth in 2008, it was obvious that Read More

Everyone is asking: “Is this is the right shoulder in oil?” I know, I’m not a chart guy, but I certainly respect charts for entry points. Sentiment on oil is awful. Inventory is high. Refined inventory is off the charts. New supply is expected from all sorts of countries. Yeah, I’ve heard it all, but so have the charts. Here we are, and it Read More

So, the inevitable happened, someone hacked Bitfinex where I kept part of my Bitcoin stash. It sounds like I’m getting back 64% of my bitcoins and a BFX token which I can potentially exchange for shares of iFinex Inc., which happens to be the Bitcoin exchange that lost my damn bitcoins in the first place!!! Why would I want to own non-tradable illiquid equity Read More

In all my global wanderings, I’ve only been to London twice—during one of those visits, I didn’t even leave Heathrow. To say that I understand the inner psyche of the British is foolish, but I certainly would have voted in favor of Brexit. I would have voted this way, not because I’m uneducated, impoverished or racist. I certainly don’t feel disenfranchised. I would have Read More

What is the national pastime of China? If you answered gambling, you probably have a few Chinese friends. What is the national pastime of Chinese business people? If you answered tax evasion, corruption and money laundering, then you’ve tried to do business in China. When a handful of businessmen merged these two pastimes, they made a fortune by building casinos in Macao. Now, the Read More

It’s been a week since I wrote that the institutional selling in Valeant (VRX:NYSE) would end on Thursday and pent up institutional buyers would show up on Friday. I didn’t expect a 40% move higher, but am not complaining either. My hunch is that under the hood, Valeant looks a lot more like SunEdison (SUNE:NASDAQ) than Allergan (AGN:NYSE) and I don’t want to stick around Read More

Let’s face it—portfolio management at most mutual fund groups has devolved to the point where you essentially mimic the index. If your favorite stock is weighted at 100 bps in the index, you may overweight it at 300 bps, but if you go to 500 bps, you face career risk if you get it wrong. Besides—who wants to risk getting it wrong? It’s so Read More

Nearly 5 years ago, I noted how the iPath S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures ETN (VXX:AMEX) was “Designed To Fail.” Since then, excluding some rather terrifying spikes, it has reliably melted away as I suspected that it would. If you put the position on back in 2010, you made something better than 98% on your money. If you re-weighted the position on spikes in Read More

It’s now been about 10 months since I last wrote about the Chinese Renminbi (CNY). At the time, I was bearish and expecting a decline in the CNY (which has since happened). White vertical line is the first article date Now here’s the thing about devaluations; when the structural forces say that a controlled currency should devalue—it usually does. It’s rare to see a “one Read More