I am sure you are wondering what I am going to talk about with such a post title! But let me start by asking a question: Can you tell me what is speed of light with good accuracy? I will be back after this break:
Whatever answer you give me (ideally should be: 299792458 meters per second), what I did is just awake part of your brain that deals with math, physics, … or intelligence to summarize. It is very important for next question:
Why do you invest your money for?
- To save planet from crazy climate evolution
- To help companies being more socially responsible
- To make as much money as possible
- To help out spot aliens if case they come to vicinity of earth
See you can not lie any more to me or to yourself, the only possible answer is number 3. Your brain orders you to take that answer.
Now think about you last meeting with your banker (didn’t I write bankster?). You were surely told how we need to build a safer and green planet, how it is difficult to have profitable investments…
Had your banker started by asking you my initial question, the meeting would have much more complicated for him, you would most likely have told him “give me 10%, I know you can do it!”
Can he really do it? Not in straightforward manner but short answer is yes. The theory is simple. All the countries will need pay for the money they have printed for the pandemics, and the way they will do it is by applying deep negative rates to accounts, maybe down to -5% or -6%. Whaouh! <Add more interjections here!> It will go slowly for acceptance by people but it will happen. But wait, here we are discussing treasury bonds! When interest rates go down, the price of bonds goes up. When the rate is down by 1%, bonds prices go up by 6% or more!
See that one graph below (US treasuries bonds futures). While your bankster now charges you negative rate, he invested your money in treasury bond, yielding a cool 29% over the last 2 years, 9% for 2020 YTD. Ouch, that hurts!
Now go and see your banker, ask him to put treasury bonds in your portfolio (of course, consider there is some risk level involved here), keep as little cash as needed if you get negative rates. Enjoy the face that your banker will make! Especially if rates go down, deep down, very deep down, …
The same goes for trading. You are told to use indicators with preset parameters recommended usually by the guy who created it. I have explained many times the fraud that the Gaussian distribution is, it actually causes distortions of reality. Indicators are the same: they let you see the reality through a specific prism, and if they are not based on sound mathematical principles, they will mislead your investment decisions. The popular MACD falls into such category (I will let you look at the formula), though it might be efficient when used in specific market conditions but also with right parameters. See Ferrari below, MACD with default parameters is flat for most of the growth this year:
As mentioned many times, an investing or trading action must be linked to an ‘observation’ period. You want to earn x% over the next y months. The parameters should be set in such a way that you can follow your trade easily : entry point, target price, exit time. Say I want to capture most of the up trend over several months, I change the default parameters to 48 and 80. Look at MACD now, close to perfect!
It does not take too much intelligence to uncover a trading strategy that works. Just wake up your brain by wondering what is the speed of light!
That’s it! Until next time, trade safely!
