1/x Vanna is back & ready to turn back on the charm! Overnight the market hit our weeklong target of **3705 and pulled back... We were able to take profits & play for a bit of morning digestion. It’s been a nice +3.5% in a week w/a few extra scalps along the way...But the best

4/x keepers are calling in the Fed(s) (Fed/sec) for some help getting the animals back under control, so they can feed Gary & get the zoo back under control. As they are likely giving guidance to the brokers to get this under control, as every major retail broker seems to be

5/x restricting trading in the short squeeze names to closing only. The Wheel of Fortune has a taping on Fri & w/out Gary at his best the show will be overrun by the animals. If they can make it to the EOM & keep Gary above the 20 day, calm him down & start feeding him,vanna will

6/x be back & should be able to nurse him back to his usual self & save the show. But there’s a lot of time between now & then & holding the animals @ bay until then seems like a colossal task. Given the pop in Ivols & backwardation of the curve, when vanna gets back she will be

7/x refreshed & in preelection form. The only question is will the animals be so out of control so as to not even be managed by Vanna in her best shape.. This decline fits into a narrative that I’ve had brewing for 4 months, that after a monster run since Sep this is a healthy &

8/x reasonable time to expect the animals to be tired of being caged up & want to blow off some steam. All the biggest wall of worry narratives have been solved 1 by 1. Sentiment & bullish positioning was at all time highs. Hedging activity was low. Breadth was deteriorating. W/

1/x The market continues to try & shake out weak hands from overextended positioning by both HF & Retail...After a strong Vanna run up overnight, as expected, retail exuberance exploded on the open in the form of retail call buying, this fragility, paired w/a)Mean reverting flows

2/x from pinned Index Vol b) well documented, risk parity rebalancing flows & c) selling flows tied to bank EOY liquidity constraints. In combination, these flows have together have amounted to substantive selling pressures, strong enough to counteract the positive vanna/ charm

3/x flows, & point to continued likely index RVol an IVol pinning...Historically, the week of quarterly OpEx markets are notoriously volatile intraday, but also mean reverting like we saw today. I think it is fair to expect continued IVol compression & more of the same underlying

4/x chop. Vanna/Charm flows will lose their oomph after Wed 12/16 vixperation morning. There’s a window of weakness which I’ve spoken to for a month that falls 12/16-12/23. That could open a brief window that could lead to revaluation of the real risk & short interest,post 1/6...

5/x but the overwhelming 10k 🦍 of index Vol compression should still hold any correction in time & price in check in the shortterm and it’ll be hard to have anything blow up too bad in SPX land given how cheap & abundant Xmas Vol is 12/23-12/24. NTM, a stim deal & potential Fed

1/x The window we have been targeting for 2 months has officially opened... i Can not imagine a more textbook display of the power of Vanna at expiration as we saw on Friday. The capital building was overrun by an insurrection, but all that that meant was a bigger late day rally.

2/x that ended at ATH on the close. Between Gary the 🦍 & his RVol suppression & his hand off to late day Ivol compression & the Vanna index bid, the 🐻’s never had a chance... but Gary’s getting tired after 2 months battling complacency & Vanna’s 2 week vacation, 1 of her only

3/x 2 week departures of the year (a 5 week OpEx) is quickly approaching on 1/15 morning. That means she’ll be increasingly absent as she prepares for her trip. W/ a $59 1 week straddle & $50 1 day range on Friday, & another $30 overnight drop, it’s hard to see why you wouldn’t

4/x want to take a chance on a little long gamma at this juncture. Especially given the obvious warning signs coming from the steepening of the yield curve, underperformance of the Growth complex, complacency in sentiment & positioning, anecdotal signs of bubbles in BTC & TSLA,

5/x NTM the growing exuberance surrounding a fiscal stimulus deal near $2 Trillion. The wall of worry of 3 months ago is gone. The vaccine is being deployed, the election is resolved, fiscal stimulus was passed & w/2 Georgia 🍑 🍑, ever moar 🚁💰is on the way. But what happened

Having now taken a few days to digest the detail of the UK-EU agreement, here's a couple of observations from me on the deal, what it means, how we got here, & where it might take future UK-EU relations.

(A long thread)

First, let's be clear that negotiating a deal in 9 months, against the odds, and in the middle of a pandemic, is an achievement. It's too easy to underestimate the difficulty of negotiating over the screen for 4 months, from Mar-June, and under enormous pressure. /2

Both @DavidGHFrost & @MichelBarnier and their teams, deserve a lot of credit for sticking up with it in hard circumstances, often with lacking political clarity, & high stakes.

This shouldn't preclude us, or MPs and MEPs, from looking critically at the deal on the table. /3

That we have a deal is a result of the UK & EU having found a way to protect their core defensive interests.

From the EU's view, integrity of the single market is preserved with level-playing field obligations which go virtually beyond any other 3rd-country (even the Swiss). /4

For its part, the UK has negotiated down EU ask on dynamic alignment on state aid; eliminated any references to EU law; removed any role for the ECJ (NB not in the whole future relationship, due to EU law in NI Protocol); and preserved its right to control access to waters. /5

So..had a great conversation last night with older investment types, old friends whom I traded with/against and managed money against or for. Age diff from me is > 10+ years so the takes were interesting but the common theme was a little disturbing (depends on your view)

Was looking at the landscape of the world & quite concerned where we are (I do not share your optimism for a shinny happy future). I am a Bond guy + Cycles & my view approach is ALWAYS what is the worst that can happen (that is how I was taught to trade & manage money) As a Bond

Money manager you never every want to apologize for a negative year, most people don't understand bonds can lose lots and lots and lots of money. So my view on life is always negative & fuck you approach.

The others are similar but have more equity exposure and FX, one other is really good via commodities so the conversation was from a top down look with some bottom up approaches. So.....after looking at the notes of the great conversation this is how it looked:

basically the world changed 2007/2008 especially North America. The GFC set in motion financial engineering games and here we are. The issues pre this (2000 to 2007) set ALL this up so lots of blame to go around but to pin point certain things the real problems started with QE &

As part of our Knowledge sharing initiative by @FinnacleAcademy and @Investmentbook1, here we are on our post 2 with some of the most important key takeaways of the book “Masterclass with super investors” by @vishalmittal22 & @basrars

Here we go! (1/n)

Masterclass with super investors is one of the best books covering the investment strategies & journey of renowned domestic investors. Our summary has been segregated in 2 parts, A) Common traits in investment ideologies of these stalwarts B) Investor specific key takeaways (2/n)

A)Let's look at a few common points in these Stalwarts' investment ideologies 1)Invest (higher % of portfolio) when you have conviction backed by sound logic 2)You need to be bullish on India to make investments in Indian cos. bcoz majority of Indian cos. are domestically focused

3. New Bull markets have new leaders when a bull markets ends the stocks which have gained the most falls the most 4. The entry price that you pay for a company should be very cheap so that even if your assumptions go wrong in future you don't end up losing money (4/n)

5. We get attached to stocks which have given us a lot of returns in past even though in current & future expected scenarios they seem overvalued 6. Focus on art of disciplined selling-it's imp. to have a sound selling mechanism just buying at right price wont create wealth.(5/n)