First blog post in a long time…
It has been a very long time since I have made a post. Been very busy, had a lot of things going on in my life, had some major ups and downs in my trading, and learned and grew a ton. I have a lot of topics that I have lined up, that I hope to cover. I had planned to blog about these topics before, but I just didn’t have the motivation or time to do so. Now I hope to get these out to the world, for free, and with no strings attached. Yes, believe it or not, there are actually people out there willing to share things without charging you for it.
I have transitioned to trading indexes via Futures more than trading individual stocks. For crypto, I have moved to just trading BTC. Crypto has always and will probably always be a side market for me. I still love to trade the VIX, primarily via Options on VXX. I did get caught up in the XIV implosion in February 2018 and lost a lot of money. Was by far my biggest loss. I made mistakes that in hindsight were very preventable. I plan to share that mistake with you, so hopefully, you don’t repeat it.
I still trade small caps, but I have made some changes. It is less a part of what I do now, and I do things differently there now. Over time, I developed a market monitor that I have tweaked a lot to be more and more accurate over time. This made me realize that trading the indexes directly, via Futures, where I have zero slippage when getting stopped out, do not have to worry about overnight risk, and have much better tax benefits, made a ton of sense. I traded the indexes via ETFs and Options for a while, then made the transition to Futures. I had to pay a massive tax bill in 2018 after having an amazing year in 2017. That got me convinced I need to find ways to lower my tax burden. Fortunately, largely because of a major mistake trading the VIX in 2018, my tax burden was much more favorable in 2019.
My website, speculatefreedom.com is no more. I did not see the need to renew the hosting for two reasons. One, I never intended nor ever will intend to try to make a massive amount of money from blogging, sell any sort of subscription trading education or group, or significantly monetize it. I do use, and will continue to use affiliate links where appropriate. That costs the end-user nothing, and I personally feel there is no harm in doing so. It gives me a small amount of money for providing free content and gives me some incentive to do so.
To follow me in the future, Medium will be my blogging platform from now on. I will not be using any other blogging platform at all, just here. You can also follow me on Twitter, where I have become more active. I no longer use StockTwits at all. https://twitter.com/bigurbman
Topics I have planned are as follows:
- Details of how my market monitor works, the things I find most useful, and how to implement that in your trading
- Updates to my small-cap method
- How I trade large caps via Options.
- How I trade sector rotations, and the VIX using options on ETFs
- The bread and butter of how I trade index Futures. ES is my primary market and the one I focus 70–80% of my attention now. Order flow for entry and exit location(and also some longer-term signals can be found in order flow, I will detail that as well), combined with my market monitor and the few things in technical analysis that I think can help a little. TA is not nearly as useful in the modern era, as it maybe was at one time, but using it in conjunction with things that do have some edge, an edge that has backtested proof, can help.
- Updates to the tools that I find most useful
- A list of the follows of other bloggers and social media users that I find most helpful
- Updates to how I am now trading BTC, and why I no longer mess with altcoins
- How I approach the macro-economic environment when trading. My views on the long term economic situation and how it could impact the long term future.
- A case study for how multi-year sentiment and positioning extremes can be some of the best long term signals
- Why I think traditional markets are superior to trade and more predictable than crypto markets.
In the end, I do have a plan to organize all my blog posts, make changes to some of the older ones, and add some new things and create a book. This book will be free. There will be no email list sign-ups to get the book, it will be a free download. I will make a Kindle version as well, and I can’t make that free. But, the free version and Kindle version will be very similar if not exactly alike. I am not here to sell you things at all. The paid version will be there for those that value my content and want to support me.
Current market thoughts
Instead of trying to repost my recent Twitter chains, I thought I would just link you to recent posts I made on Twitter regarding the market:
This will give you some insight into my market monitor. I was thinking 2800 might hold this correction but did have the 2700’s as a possibility. I think we have a decent chance to find a bottom very soon, and then begin to climb the wall of worry. The 10/2 Yield Curve inversion has not yet happened, and the overall economic data is still quite strong.
There are some long term things that I am very concerned about, but I think overall people are still way too pessimistic and the current data does not necessarily support that pessimism. Ultimately though, the actions of our leaders for the last 10 years I do think are setting us up for some major problems in the long run. It is all to be determined, and anything is possible. Anything from another 10 years of bull market, to a 2008 like collapse are possible. It is hard to predict how macro data will affect the long term, but it is fun to speculate.
But it would be hard for the market to go much lower and enter a bear market with sentiment suddenly shifting to levels similar to December 2018. It could happen, but unlikely.
As for crypto, the run for BTC has been amazing this year. I would be lying if I told I played it perfectly or predicted we would be at this level. I definitely did not. But, I do think we are potentially very close to putting in a medium to long term top. It is entirely possible BTC puts in a top soon that lasts the rest of the year.
I am excited to get back to blogging, hopefully, you are excited to have me back. Let me know if there is a specific topic you would like to hear more about. Thanks.
