QUICK REFLECTION AND TESLA VAPORIZES SHORTS

As I have done quite often throughout my career, I spend a little time reflecting back to my earlier days in order to rekindle my old thought processes. I don't think we generally spend enough time as we grow to look back and reflect toward our past and try to remember just a bit of who we were and how we once thought. Earlier in my career, I never generally worried about my trading expenses, my commissions, my fees as I felt they were just part of the overall cost of doing business. Looking back now, and seeing how much I actually used to pay, it’s quite an astounding number. Yet I suppose it is all just relative right? Anyway here is a post I shared on LinkedIn:
When I look back at my trading career and coming off what is probably the hardest year of my life I find myself reviewing some of my old notes, logs, P+Ls to try and remember how my perception on markets was and how it has changed. At one point I was among the largest bond traders at my firm, trading billions worth of bonds a month and I excelled at it. When it comes to trading, it is a difficult grind, but much like poker, we need to forget our focus on our bad beats and rather focus on what it is we do really well. At points in time, I felt I was the best bond trader there was, I wasn't trading at Morgan or Goldman and front running customer flow, I was a grinder at one of the largest prop firms in Chicago. So, when I get down in the dumps and start to question my abilities I go back to these items and really think back of the time and how I felt as a person and as a trader. We don't often know what life has in store for us, we can never predict that we would be with our newborn spending his first year in the hospital undergoing multiple heart procedures to repair a defect. But one thing I know is certain, we can never make it an excuse for mediocrity. To all traders, keep grinding, keep pressing and focus on the craft! I attached a pic of 2 months’ worth of commissions that I paid to my cash brokers, BrokerTec and Cantor Fitzgerald. In back to back months I paid over $75k in commissions and over the course of that year, nearly $500k just in commissions. We used to pay a 1/8th of a tick for every million traded that is $39, imagine HFT doing that today!

Here is a follow up post to that:

With January behind us, we can look at how the bond market performed and it was a clear sector standout thus far as the 30yr bond is up an impressive 7.63% on the month. Five-year yields fell 21% falling to 1.325% down 36bps in January alone. We can only surmise that the FED is going to have to eventually cap long term interest rates as they are clearly hell bent on providing liquidity forever and yeah we know, expanding balance sheets and permanent Repo Re-rolling operations don't play any part in equities rising, oh wait, what's this, did anyone see Tesla this week? Well after starting the year out near $400 it has run up to nearly $970 and has firmly carted out any short sellers’ feet first through the doors of infamy. No games no gimmicks right? Here is what I posted yesterday on LinkedIn:

I couldn't help but incorporate two of my all-time favorite movies, Wall Street and Trading Places. HolgerZ on Twitter posted this excellent graphic and no doubt some heavy hitting butterfly equity arbs are going to hammer Tesla back into place, which as the last chart has already shown, must already have begun:

So how do we sum up such thievery and gimmickry, well this picture of the ongoing liquidity bonanza ala the NYFED is the only fuel I need for the fire. I can't help but think I am the only moron dumb enough to believe that you make money the old fashioned way EF Hutton style, rather when trillions of repo are floating around, hard work has nothing on financialized leverage and all the while the SEC thrills us with basement pajama wearing quants responsible for market manipulations and flash crashes with their $5 million dollar accounts, some real cheddar is being chopped every single day by the largest Funds and Banks in the world, no risk, no harm, no foul, just straight up, pyramid style money multiplying levered biz, sponsored by the most powerful private company in the world. I entitled this next picture, my Daily Equity Fuel Tank Gauge because I know the devil is in the details and every 2-week due Repo is promptly re-rolled for another 2 weeks:

Thanks for reading, we will continue to monitor the ongoing virus news but for now it seems as if the markets have shaken all that off like nothing ever happened. Anyway, we hope you have a great week and as always thanks for reading and supporting our week, subscribe, like and share, cheers!

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