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They’re making money up and down. For example, SPY is likely done climbing for a while. Maybe it will squeeze up to ~4160, but it’s either going to be flat or a

by thrav 5y ago

They’re making money up and down. For example, SPY is likely done climbing for a while. Maybe it will squeeze up to ~4160, but it’s either going to be flat or aggressively down in the coming days. Thursday/Friday was a very clear exit day. If it squeezes north and over extends further, it’s a very clear short. If it sits flat for a week until OPEX, it’ll be a clear buy for another leg up, then you reevaluate again. This is what I mean when I say treating it like it’s your job. Go back and look at the big downturn last year. To anyone who was paying attention, it looked like a car crash in slow motion. Only to those of us with other work to do, did it look like a flash crash out of nowhere. The writing is very clearly on the wall for all of this stuff, because the big players needs days to reposition, and will be moving billions of shares, and you can literally watch them do it. The reason active funds don’t do as well as the market is because they have to hedge. You’re always paying a premium to minimize losses when you’re hedging, and you can’t exit fast when your position is worth billions. It’s like turning a freighter, versus turning a speed boat.

Trasmatta 5y ago
> Only to those of us with other work to do, did it look like a flash crash out of nowhere. The market crashed last year because of COVID. Nobody saw that coming. Everyone has been predicting a major correction or recession every year for at least the past 6 years. Claiming that they predicted what was going to happen last year is pretty blatant confirmation bias. People predict a recession every year, and then when one finally hits, they say "see, I was right! Ignore all the years where it didn't happen!" There will be another correction in the future, we don't know when it will hit, and the same pattern will play out again.
- thrav 5y ago
  No one saw it coming in January. Everyone saw it coming the week that it was starting, which is my point. It’s really easy to tell when the big players start taking risk off. These people are also tracking senators and congress people’s positional moves, as additional macro indicators.
  - Trasmatta 5y ago
    Did those same people see the subsequent bull run, that occurred much faster than most were predicting? There's a lot of people who think they're smart enough to time the market, but have just been lucky. In the long run, that catches up to most of them, which is one of the reasons passive investing wins out in the end, on average
- voces 5y ago
  I found private information posted on 4chan around the 28th of January 2020. It spoke of: the upcoming variant strains, the upcoming lockdowns in Italy, the downright panic with public health officials as they were made aware of how awful COVID is and the need to avoid this panic --so large cities would not find refugee in small towns, leaving only criminals and the poor, effects of "long-COVID" and teleworking on the future economy, the sad fate of those who would die after cytokine storm caused their lungs to fill with bloody liquid and choke (financial analysts are more blunt, reputation-free, than epidemiological analysts). That the financial elite was preparing for the upcoming impacts, and that all money managers were working day-and-night to rebalance and counter risks, aware of the possibility of a (malicious) lab leak (economy collapse, world war, CEO's dying, ...). The posts said that gold would see decent increase (was around 1650$/kg at the time). That everyone with hotel or travel investments was expected to severely lose, and that most such players were putting their liquid money into other investments, to counter the blow, and avoid charges of insider trading. That the Euro would be the most stable currency, when currency trading due to localized pandemic and the lockdowns effecting purchasing power. That the US stock market will see a short boom, with Fed support, and little other investment opportunities, before a crash and world-wide stagnation will become inevitable. That you want to be in two growth niches for the next 3 years: biotech, for it will see free government-funded research & development, when it can profit in the future on new high-margin (HIV/Herpes) vaccines. Plastics industry, because everything will be wrapped in plastic, environmental regulation will be low priority, and it will be overlooked by retail and play-safe pension funds. Not only did the financial elite predicted it, they predicted it right. Then felt bad for keeping it private, when they saw US senators selling their hotel stock positions after being informed of the situation in China and prospect of a pandemic, so they posted it publicly for everyone to see and with nothing to personally gain. The pandemic was predicted (+5 -5 year error bars). The correction was predicted. Individual recession predictors are mostly made through survivor bias. When Goldman Sachs sees a market recession upcoming, they don't put that on Twitter or a newspaper to gain a following. They have people pay for what its worth. It is also fun going back to 4chan /biz section 5 years. People are not saying now: see, I was right. They did better than the majority of the best, highest-paid, analysts and quants and remained anonymous. But I agree it was really hard to not hit a fish when shooting in a barrel.
naturalauction 5y ago
Maybe I'm a bit of a skeptic but I've seen this sort of behavior repeat itself over and over again with crypto. Maybe the people in your Discord group are really smarter than almost everyone else, but at the end of the day the vast majority of day traders who think they are using sophisticated strategies are just gambling. I'm not saying it's impossible to make money - I just doubt you can intuitively get a sense for the "feel" of the market for something as largely traded as SPY. SPY traded 61 million shares yesterday (at $400 per). If the smartest institutional traders with the best tools can't figure out the direction of SPY in the short run with any kind of certainty, I don't see how an "average" person can. There is enough volume in the markets for institutions to turn around a pretty big freighter.
- thrav 5y ago
  My point is that they can, to a degree. The bigger challenge for them is scaling in and out of the size of positions they need to be in to be profitable. If you’re playing with thousands, you’re playing a completely different game than someone playing with billions. You don’t have to strategize about how to exit. You just exit.
- thrav 5y ago
  My point is that they can, to a degree. The bigger challenge for them is scaling in and out of the size of positions they need to be in to be profitable. If you’re playing with thousands, you’re playing a completely different game than someone playing with billions. You don’t have to strategize about how to exit. You just exit. Many hedge funds outsource the execution of their trades to HFT, which scales in and out over days. Google Archegos if you want to see what happens when you liquidate billion dollar positions in a hurry.
- voces 5y ago
  > Maybe the people in your Discord group are really smarter than almost everyone else. I think this is akin to the unintuitive finding that if you randomly chose someone from your friendlist, there is good chance that this person is more popular than almost everyone else. Just being in the friendlist is a positive factor to the capability of making friends. The vast majority of day traders is not honing their skills and information sharing inside a dedicated Discord group. Especially in crypto, these groups, and not the big Wallstreet hedge funds, are the most sophisticated and skilled at profiting from smaller markets. > If the smartest institutional traders with the best tools can't figure out the direction of SPY in the short run with any kind of certainty This is misunderstanding trading. It is all about uncertainty and willing to take risks if EV+ situations arises. Extremely few are figuring out the short run with any kind of certainty, and these few risk being fined or charged with market manipulation. The average person can find profitable coin flips (56% accuracy), which, while far from certain, can be flipped many times. Sometimes such flips are not possible for the bigger smarter institutional traders, because their plays use way more money, and they focus on what they learned over 30 years. Anyone starting in 2010 is able to be more knowledable about crypto trading, than someone with a 50-year trading career (who pays someone a little-less-knowledgable than you, not in-the-know of Discord or Telegram, to write an analysis).
dionidium 5y ago
What's remarkable to me is that I know you think you're saying something useful and reasonable, but to me you sound indistinguishable from an astrologist. Practically every word sounds more pseudoscientific than the one before it.
yumraj 5y ago
> It’s like turning a freighter, versus turning a speed boat. That is an apt analogy, which is why I believe Rentech’s Medallion fund is kept small and has better returns than other larger funds.
ac29 5y ago
> clear exit, very clear short, clear buy You seem very sure about where the market is going in the short term, you should start a hedge fund! Or course, I'm kidding, internet financial hot takes are a dime a dozen, and generally worthless.

by thrav 5y ago

Trasmatta 5y ago

> Only to those of us with other work to do, did it look like a flash crash out of nowhere. The market crashed last year because of COVID. Nobody saw that coming. Everyone has been predicting a major correction or recession every year for at least the past 6 years. Claiming that they predicted what was going to happen last year is pretty blatant confirmation bias. People predict a recession every year, and then when one finally hits, they say "see, I was right! Ignore all the years where it didn't happen!" There will be another correction in the future, we don't know when it will hit, and the same pattern will play out again.

thrav 5y ago
No one saw it coming in January. Everyone saw it coming the week that it was starting, which is my point. It’s really easy to tell when the big players start taking risk off. These people are also tracking senators and congress people’s positional moves, as additional macro indicators.
- Trasmatta 5y ago
  Did those same people see the subsequent bull run, that occurred much faster than most were predicting? There's a lot of people who think they're smart enough to time the market, but have just been lucky. In the long run, that catches up to most of them, which is one of the reasons passive investing wins out in the end, on average
voces 5y ago
I found private information posted on 4chan around the 28th of January 2020. It spoke of: the upcoming variant strains, the upcoming lockdowns in Italy, the downright panic with public health officials as they were made aware of how awful COVID is and the need to avoid this panic --so large cities would not find refugee in small towns, leaving only criminals and the poor, effects of "long-COVID" and teleworking on the future economy, the sad fate of those who would die after cytokine storm caused their lungs to fill with bloody liquid and choke (financial analysts are more blunt, reputation-free, than epidemiological analysts). That the financial elite was preparing for the upcoming impacts, and that all money managers were working day-and-night to rebalance and counter risks, aware of the possibility of a (malicious) lab leak (economy collapse, world war, CEO's dying, ...). The posts said that gold would see decent increase (was around 1650$/kg at the time). That everyone with hotel or travel investments was expected to severely lose, and that most such players were putting their liquid money into other investments, to counter the blow, and avoid charges of insider trading. That the Euro would be the most stable currency, when currency trading due to localized pandemic and the lockdowns effecting purchasing power. That the US stock market will see a short boom, with Fed support, and little other investment opportunities, before a crash and world-wide stagnation will become inevitable. That you want to be in two growth niches for the next 3 years: biotech, for it will see free government-funded research & development, when it can profit in the future on new high-margin (HIV/Herpes) vaccines. Plastics industry, because everything will be wrapped in plastic, environmental regulation will be low priority, and it will be overlooked by retail and play-safe pension funds. Not only did the financial elite predicted it, they predicted it right. Then felt bad for keeping it private, when they saw US senators selling their hotel stock positions after being informed of the situation in China and prospect of a pandemic, so they posted it publicly for everyone to see and with nothing to personally gain. The pandemic was predicted (+5 -5 year error bars). The correction was predicted. Individual recession predictors are mostly made through survivor bias. When Goldman Sachs sees a market recession upcoming, they don't put that on Twitter or a newspaper to gain a following. They have people pay for what its worth. It is also fun going back to 4chan /biz section 5 years. People are not saying now: see, I was right. They did better than the majority of the best, highest-paid, analysts and quants and remained anonymous. But I agree it was really hard to not hit a fish when shooting in a barrel.

naturalauction 5y ago

Maybe I'm a bit of a skeptic but I've seen this sort of behavior repeat itself over and over again with crypto. Maybe the people in your Discord group are really smarter than almost everyone else, but at the end of the day the vast majority of day traders who think they are using sophisticated strategies are just gambling. I'm not saying it's impossible to make money - I just doubt you can intuitively get a sense for the "feel" of the market for something as largely traded as SPY. SPY traded 61 million shares yesterday (at $400 per). If the smartest institutional traders with the best tools can't figure out the direction of SPY in the short run with any kind of certainty, I don't see how an "average" person can. There is enough volume in the markets for institutions to turn around a pretty big freighter.

thrav 5y ago
My point is that they can, to a degree. The bigger challenge for them is scaling in and out of the size of positions they need to be in to be profitable. If you’re playing with thousands, you’re playing a completely different game than someone playing with billions. You don’t have to strategize about how to exit. You just exit.
thrav 5y ago
My point is that they can, to a degree. The bigger challenge for them is scaling in and out of the size of positions they need to be in to be profitable. If you’re playing with thousands, you’re playing a completely different game than someone playing with billions. You don’t have to strategize about how to exit. You just exit. Many hedge funds outsource the execution of their trades to HFT, which scales in and out over days. Google Archegos if you want to see what happens when you liquidate billion dollar positions in a hurry.
voces 5y ago
> Maybe the people in your Discord group are really smarter than almost everyone else. I think this is akin to the unintuitive finding that if you randomly chose someone from your friendlist, there is good chance that this person is more popular than almost everyone else. Just being in the friendlist is a positive factor to the capability of making friends. The vast majority of day traders is not honing their skills and information sharing inside a dedicated Discord group. Especially in crypto, these groups, and not the big Wallstreet hedge funds, are the most sophisticated and skilled at profiting from smaller markets. > If the smartest institutional traders with the best tools can't figure out the direction of SPY in the short run with any kind of certainty This is misunderstanding trading. It is all about uncertainty and willing to take risks if EV+ situations arises. Extremely few are figuring out the short run with any kind of certainty, and these few risk being fined or charged with market manipulation. The average person can find profitable coin flips (56% accuracy), which, while far from certain, can be flipped many times. Sometimes such flips are not possible for the bigger smarter institutional traders, because their plays use way more money, and they focus on what they learned over 30 years. Anyone starting in 2010 is able to be more knowledable about crypto trading, than someone with a 50-year trading career (who pays someone a little-less-knowledgable than you, not in-the-know of Discord or Telegram, to write an analysis).

dionidium 5y ago

What's remarkable to me is that I know you think you're saying something useful and reasonable, but to me you sound indistinguishable from an astrologist. Practically every word sounds more pseudoscientific than the one before it.

yumraj 5y ago

> It’s like turning a freighter, versus turning a speed boat. That is an apt analogy, which is why I believe Rentech’s Medallion fund is kept small and has better returns than other larger funds.

ac29 5y ago

> clear exit, very clear short, clear buy You seem very sure about where the market is going in the short term, you should start a hedge fund! Or course, I'm kidding, internet financial hot takes are a dime a dozen, and generally worthless.