This note was originally published at 8am this morning, November 10, 2010. INVESTOR and RISK MANAGER SUBSCRIBERS have access to the EARLY LOOK (published by 8am every trading day) and PORTFOLIO IDEAS in real-time.
“We're all copycats in this league, ... There's nothing new in the NFL.”
-Wade Phillips (recently fired Coach of the Dallas Cowboys)
Speak for yourself Wade. That’s not how Bill Belichick thinks about coaching against you. Good luck with your job search.
In the New Reality of Google, You Tube, and Twitter, it’s a lot easier to hold professional politicians, athletes, and investors accountable to what comes out of their mouths and when. Amidst the leadership crisis we have in this country, this is critical progress.
I wrote a book about this last year (Diary of A Hedge Fund Manager) and my overall conclusion about modern day finance remains. The days of financiers, central bankers, and “economists” being protected by their old boy networks are ending. Opacity is dying on the vine of time and space. The question players in this game will have to answer for the next leg of this industry’s evolution is: what exactly is it that you do?
On Monday, rather than have some fan in the cheap seats make up an edited version of the game tape, I showed everyone my short book. Every position; every time stamp; and every gain/loss versus cost basis. Being accountable isn’t rocket science. There’s a reason why a lot of players in this game think like Wade Phillips – they should. Last week was not good for us. This week has been very good. This is the game. It’s constantly changing.
Yesterday, one of the fund managers that franchises the Hedgeye strategy sent me an email after the market closed. He was happy. Apparently he was up +0.45% (gross) on the day (the SP500 was down -0.81%). And that made me smile. One of my professional ambitions is to prove that, over time, not everyone loses money on market down days.
For transparency purposes, look at a snapshot of the Hedgeye Portfolio today versus Monday. Better than bad, and thank God we stuck to our guns. That’s the only way to outperform in this business, over time.
Wade Phillips may not see anything new in the NFL, but that certainly doesn’t mean that new strategies cease to exist. One man’s dogma is another man’s opportunity. That’s what has to get your feet on the floor early every morning to play this game. You have to search for the next big market move with passion.
Today, we’re looking at a much different global game of global macro than we were last Thursday. Both the US Dollar and US interest rates are breaking out to the upside.
Then:
- The Republicans swept the House
- The Quantitative Guessing (QG) experiment was squeezing my shorts
- The Burning Buck was getting debauched to fresh lows (down -15% since June)
Now:
- The Republicans are in the House (yes, they are also professional politicians)
- The Quantitative Guessing (QG) experiment = global inflation and the Chinese are raising interest rates
- The Burning Buck has found a bid, trading up a full +2.6% off its lows
That makes Hedgeye 17 for 17 on our US Dollar (UUP) calls since we started the firm in 2008. No, that’s not arrogance. That’s just the score. And, unless Hedgeye highlights it, I can assure you that our competition won’t.
The last time we were long the US Dollar was in Q1 of this year (our Macro Theme was called “Buck Breakout”) when we made a very bearish call on European sovereign debt called the “Sovereign Debt Dichotomy” (which outlines the theme that sovereign debt issues will exist for the next 3-5 years, but you’ll need to manage risk around positions in a Duration Agnostic way).
Yes, sometimes it’s that simple. After all, finding the deep simplicity of the macro matter is the definition of Chaos Theory. Being bullish on the US Dollar simply requires getting Bearish Enough on the Euro at the right time. One is a basket of the other and this morning you are seeing the Euro (which we are short via the FXE), break down through what we call out immediate term TRADE line of support at $1.39.
My opponents don’t like this morning’s reminders. But that’s cool. I wasn’t the most likable player on the ice either. Without consensus what would I do during the day? No matter where “they” go, or who “they” are, I’m not going anywhere anytime soon. Neither is the massive correlation risk associated with the following breakouts we are seeing in US interest rates this morning:
- 2-year US Treasury yields breaking out above my immediate term TRADE line of resistance = 0.37%
- 10-year US Treasury yields breaking out above my immediate term TRADE line of resistance = 2.54%
- 30-year US Treasury yields holding above what’s been an obvious breakout since mid-October (support = 3.86%)
Then and now… different durations… multiple countries … multiple factors… it’s all part of this giant game of Chaos Theory that ultimately results in interconnected global macro market risk. I don’t suspect Wade Phillips could see this coming until it was too late either.
My immediate term support and resistance lines for the SP500 are now 1202 and 1236, respectively. We continue to hold an 18% position in the Chinese Yuan (CYB) in the Hedgeye Asset Allocation Model and it’s hitting its highest levels since 1993 this morning as the Chinese tighten the screws on what was Bernanke’s Burning Buck.
We’ll be hosting a conference call with Peter Orszag, former Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), today at 1PM EST. For qualified institutional investors, please email sales@hedgeye.com.
Best of luck out there today,
KM
Keith R. McCullough
Chief Executive Officer
