1/ Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes (Turn and face the strange)... as futures, sit pinned @ an odd elevated morning perch awaiting Janet Yellen’s confirmation hearing & her call for the new admin to ‘act big’...this narrative has markets on high. But the truth is that it’s actually just Gary

2/x behind the curtain, pulling the usual levers. Until Vixperation on Wed, it‘ll be nearly impossible to break the IVol oversupply. This pinning of IVol was so strong on Fri that despite a peak to trough drop of nearly -2% in SPX, fixed strike straddle were down across the board
3/x & particularly decimated in the very front of the curve. IVol particularly in the 30 day range is showing dramatic signs of oversupply relative to the rest of the IVol surface, giving a nod to the Vix strip driving the compression. Even during windows of vanna weakness as we
4/x are in now, this oversupply phenomenon paired w/ a market decline & a slide to higher fixed strike IVols can still lead to a temporary ‘Dead Cat Bounce’ where residual Vanna/charm morning flows lead to brief AM market support. These supporting flows are generally just strong
5/x enough for a countertrend thrust &, unable to meaningfully impact more important macro flows & hence generally should be faded starting around 9-10am CST. That said Gary’ll likely see to it that there is no major technical break below 1 stdev in the 20 days, likely preventing
6/x a waterfall until Wed. This will coincide perfectly w/ the inauguration & this could serve as an ideal narrative for a decline. Watch for continued NDX weakness in the face of more bear steepening, retail call buying optimism, trolling of my account, & more of the shooting of
7/x generals as signs of coming weakness. Until Wed morning, calendar expansion should continue to be the name of the game,& given the coming wave if policy news that should begin to flow, I would expect more policy winners & losers to drive dispersion for the next 2 days w/ Gary
8/x still firmly in control of the index’s wheel of fortune.The broad macro assumption by investors that MOAR stimulus is great for markets will ultimately be a miscalculation.The shift will be great for the economy & cyclical earnings.However the continued march higher in yields
9/x will eventually lead to multiple contraction...& this market is all about liquidity & multiples at this juncture.The wall of worry is still fading, & the exuberance of a reopening economy is building, which increasingly means that this window of weakness will most likely come
10/x & go as just a correction in time. But we must be on alert still until 1/22. We will continue to trade this market tactically from the short side at our levels taking profits into a likely stair step correction or sideways chop. Watch for our 3718.25 level as well as our
11/11 1 stdev bollinger down of the 20 day. If we can‘t close below the later by 1/22 EOD, we will be forced to begin looking to position longer for a potential blow off euphoric reopening top in a future coming window in 1 or 2 months... Remember, it’s never EZ. Good Luck! 🍀

More from Cem Karsan 🥐

1/x As we’ve been calling for since Nov, today we finally got our 2 ‘Georgia Peaches’🍑 precisely on schedule, as we’ve called for since Aug, & the underlying rotation has confirmed now for months, this matters. This is a historic turning point. It matters not only https://t.co/BFxKGrI1Oo


2/x for this year, but for the economic trajectory of America & likely the macroeconomic regime of the developed world for the coming decade. That said, contrary to popular belief, the market does not move based on news in the short term if the positioning doesn’t allow it to.

3/x & our old friend Gary the 🦍 & his sidekick Vanna are positioned to have this market pinned through 1/11. So, as explained ad nauseam, the election news, though fundamentally important, won’t matter to the index itself in the ST. As predicted, the largest moves from the GA

4/x runoff INITIALLY have come from factor rotation. This should continue to be the case, as the street is oversupplied IVol & the index is pinned. This not only allows for idiosyncratic risk moves in constituents, but it actually FORCES extreme noncorrelation & rotation, as we

5/x have witnessed now for the past 2 days. This Vol compression will be increasingly difficult to break free from until 1/11-1/15, but the window of weakness is coming...soon the final hedges from the ‘election hump’ in Nov will expire with the Jan monthly options. Once the

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Two things can be true at once:
1. There is an issue with hostility some academics have faced on some issues
2. Another academic who himself uses threats of legal action to bully colleagues into silence is not a good faith champion of the free speech cause


I have kept quiet about Matthew's recent outpourings on here but as my estwhile co-author has now seen fit to portray me as an enabler of oppression I think I have a right to reply. So I will.

I consider Matthew to be a colleague and a friend, and we had a longstanding agreement not to engage in disputes on twitter. I disagree with much in the article @UOzkirimli wrote on his research in @openDemocracy but I strongly support his right to express such critical views

I therefore find it outrageous that Matthew saw fit to bully @openDemocracy with legal threats, seeking it seems to stifle criticism of his own work. Such behaviour is simply wrong, and completely inconsistent with an academic commitment to free speech.

I am not embroiling myself in the various other cases Matt lists because, unlike him, I think attention to the detail matters and I don't have time to research each of these cases in detail.

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So the cryptocurrency industry has basically two products, one which is relatively benign and doesn't have product market fit, and one which is malignant and does. The industry has a weird superposition of understanding this fact and (strategically?) not understanding it.


The benign product is sovereign programmable money, which is historically a niche interest of folks with a relatively clustered set of beliefs about the state, the literary merit of Snow Crash, and the utility of gold to the modern economy.

This product has narrow appeal and, accordingly, is worth about as much as everything else on a 486 sitting in someone's basement is worth.

The other product is investment scams, which have approximately the best product market fit of anything produced by humans. In no age, in no country, in no city, at no level of sophistication do people consistently say "Actually I would prefer not to get money for nothing."

This product needs the exchanges like they need oxygen, because the value of it is directly tied to having payment rails to move real currency into the ecosystem and some jurisdictional and regulatory legerdemain to stay one step ahead of the banhammer.