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educational blogs |
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I have no doubt that regular Readers (please no Wheelie, I can’t take anymore purile and unimaginative All-Bran references), will be well aware of my borderline imbecilic obsession with Hedging my Portfolio and you must be exasperated beyond belief to see that I am writing about this well-treaded subject yet again. Anyway, it is what it is, and after the recent heavy sell-off in the Markets (which after all is exactly why I have been mucking about with Hedging for so many years, in anticipation and preparation for such an event) I feel it would be worthwhile to just get down in blog format some thoughts and observations etc. that have arisen after this episode and the Global tragedy of the Coronavirus.
Overall I am quite pleased with the Hedging I did although of course in an Ideal World I could have done it better. I guess my main area of weakness was in not Hedging in larger size (more on this in due course) and I would say another failure was in not getting a big enough Short on early enough. Other than that, and some moments of panic when I shorted more and really was lucky to get away with it, I am overall fairly happy.
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I have been meaning to get on with writing this Blog for quite some time now but for various reasons (mostly good old-fashioned procrastination and farting about), I have been putting it off but at last I have to bite the bullet and get it done.
My interest here is to look at the Charting (Technical Analysis) factors which surrounded the eventual Bottom when the Markets floored out in 2009 before that monster Rally of 11 years or whatever it was. Of course we will struggle to find Signals and Indicators that point to precisely where the Bottom is (I may use the term ‘Proper Bottom’ for this because I am sure we will have lots of little Bottoms on the way to actually reaching the final one), but I think many Readers will be surprised by what I dig up here and the implication is that we can use some pretty basic Technical Indicators and Tools to help us ascertain the Proper Bottom.
My mate Simon Jackson kindly wrote this Guest Blog to try to capture some of the essence of how the recent Market collapse has played out from his point of view. Having read it through for the proof-read, I can say it is a very helpful piece and brings some perspective to what is going on and also shows how someone with Simon’s background of Accountancy can make errors. I particularly endorse his comment that it would be a big shame if newer Private Investors get scared off and leave the great game. I had to smile also when I read his words about selling his Winners too fast !! (or in this particular case his selling being perhaps motivated by simply the relief at getting back to break-even after a difficult Investment had turned around.)
Anyway, it’s a really good read and BIG THANKS to Simon for providing WD Readers with this and for helping me fill up my Website with yet more content !! Cheers mate, Pete.
Fairly recently I caused a bit of a stir on the Tweets when I suggested that People who have regular payment plans into Funds (normally Unit Trusts – see my ‘Funds’ page for definitions of what the different types of Funds actually are), might be wise to suspend the automatic payments prior to the Coronavirus problems when it is highly likely that we could see Stockmarkets really struggling.
I got a lot of flak for this and it is very understandable why because there are maybe some advantages of such drip-feeding over time; but for me personally, I wouldn’t do this at all. But then I am perhaps a different type of Investor to many others and there is an element of ‘Horses for Courses’.
I first wrote the text in the following Blog back in September 2019 and tweeted out that I had written it but that it would be ‘parked’ in my reserve of half completed Blogs until a time when I was under pressure of having too much on, and I could pick it up and release it.
Funny enough in light of a bit of a Twitter Storm I have caused today, this actually seems highly appropriate although it is very much at the risk of chucking more petrol on the inferno !! Cheers, WD.
If you haven’t read Part 1 yet it is probably a good idea to do so and you can find it here:
https://wheeliedealer.weebly.com/educational-blogs/bubble-bubble-toil-and-trouble-part-1-of-2 When that Part finished I was going through the reasons why I am thinking that a proper full-on Bubble has become more likely, and here are a load more: Technical ‘Breakouts’ on Major Indexes If you keep up with my Weekly ‘Stocks & Markets’ Blogs which usually come out late on a Sunday Night, then you will probably have seen me mentioning the strength in the Indexes and how many have either recently ‘Broken-out’ to new All Time Highs (the US Markets) or they are very near such Break-outs and I expect to see them soon (German DAX, CAC40, FTSE100) and such Price Action is extremely Bullish and supportive of the start of a Bubble if that is how things are going to play out. It is pretty remarkable that after 11 years of the Longest Bull Market ever, we still have such strength and demand for Stocks.
In a recent TPI Podcast we talked at length about a potential Stockmarket Bubble and I also wrote a bit in a Weekend Charts Blog. Both times I think I promised to write a more detailed Blog specifically on the subject and in theory as I start writing, this Blog is intended to fulfil that commitment. You can find the Podcast here by the way:
https://soundcloud.com/user-479955511/conkers3-wheeliedealer-152-market-bubbles-high-pe-stocks-gaw-fevr-amzn-googl-mpac-1 First off I must make it very clear that I am not saying a Bubble is definitely going to happen; nobody can foresee the future (least of all me !!) and all we can realistically do is to assign probabilities to possible future outcomes. Using such an approach, I would guesstimate that perhaps a year or more ago, I would have said that a Bubble was a very low likelihood, perhaps something like 5 to 10%. The fact is that Stockmarket Bubbles are very rare and hence a low probability is appropriate, but with the various factors that I will get onto shortly, I would now say that the probability has risen to perhaps 15 to 20%.
Needless to say if you have not read Part 1 yet then it probably makes sense to go back to that one first before you start on this one. You can find it here:
https://wheeliedealer.weebly.com/educational-blogs/how-to-hold-for-the-long-term-part-1-of-2 Anyway, I was going through various Bullet Points around the subject matter concerned and here are the next bunch:
I often think of subject matter that is way too short to justify its own blog, yet at the same time far too long to just send out via a Tweet and also I would like to store such stuff in the Website Archives so it can be retrieved by anyone who wants it; and of course with Tweets they tend to be quite ephemeral and soon lost in the River Twitter. On the basis of that, I am envisaging that this blog will cover a few possibly unrelated subjects but at least they get captured in ‘black and white’ electron imagery for the future.
Stay in control of your Position Sizes This is something I see so often and I know I have fallen into this trap many times myself in the past. It’s a very simple concept where we buy into a Stock, and we quite like it, and we give it perhaps 4% of our Portfolio and then we leave it to do its stuff. Then it turns out that this one is a real beauty and it keeps steadily pushing higher and after a period of time we find that it has grown to be much larger and could even be up to 12% or our Portfolio or more. If we have a very focused Portfolio with maybe just 10 Holdings or something, then a Stock like this could easily grow to be 20% or more.
The inspiration for bashing out this WheelieBlog came whilst I was reading an excellent article written by Philip Ryland in the Investors Chronicle from 16th August 2019 (the one with the Chameleon/Lizard thing on the cover) entitled ‘Debt by any other Name’ and starting on page 33.
If you have access to the magazine in whichever format, I suggest you have a good read of it and perhaps it is best to read my (hopefully simple) blog first and I also suggest reading these excellent Guest Blogs by Justin Scarborough which are particularly useful if you need to brush up on basic understanding of Accounts (this is to Part 2 and there is a link inside it at the top to Part 1): https://wheeliedealer.weebly.com/educational-blogs/guest-blog-from-justin-scarborough-finance-for-non-finance-people-part-2-company-valuation |
'Educational' WheelieBlogsWelcome to my Educational Blog Page - I have another 'Stocks & Markets' Blog Page which you can access via a Button on the top of the Homepage. Archives
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