Author Archives: Alex Krainer

Economics, Energy crisis, Inflation, Market research, Market trends, Oil market, Policy, Risk management, Stock market, Trend following

Perfect storm gathering: the three converging disruptions

In the near future, we are likely to experience severe consequences of three converging disruptions:

  1. Stock market crash
  2. Oil price shock
  3. Inflation

Since the last recession we’ve enjoyed the longest ever period of economic expansion with low interest rates, low inflation and subdued commodity prices. But this all could be coming to an end.

Bursting of the “everything bubble”

Throughout the west, unprecedented government and central bank stimulus programs helped inflate the current “everything bubble.” This is not a new phenomenon; monetary expansion always creates asset bubbles. The one thing we know is that without exception, asset bubbles ultimately burst. The examples are many and some of them made a mark in the collective conscious of entire generations, from the 1630s Tulip Mania to the 1990s dot-com bubble. Continue reading →

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Asset management, Hedging, Market psychology, Market research, Risk management, Trading

Sack your quant!

Last few years saw something of a gold rush into quantitative investment strategies. Their appeal is obvious as a way to put discipline into trading and take the emotion and stress out. Quantitative strategies might even help improve performance. Here’s how Black Rock President Rob Kapito articulated the industry hopes:

“As people get the data and learn how to use the data, I think there is going to be alpha generated and, therefore, will give active managers more opportunity than they‘ve had in the past to actually create returns.” [1]

In pursuit of the great expectations, Black Rock assembled more than 90 scientists, 28 of them with PhDs and even went as far as poaching one of Google’s leading scientists, Bill McCartney to develop the BlackRock’s machine learning applications. In practice Black Rock’s and other firms’ results have proven to be a mixed bag at best and it seems that most quantitative strategies have tended to underperform or even generate losses. The question is, why? Continue reading →

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Eurasia, Policy, Politics, War and peace

CIA’s Mike Morell: the covert war in the Middle East is ongoing. It might escalate…

During the night on Sunday, 26 January, five Katyusha rockets were launched on the heavily fortified U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Three of them allegedly made a direct hit with at least one striking the embassy dining hall. This event followed the massive demonstrations in Baghdad demanding the U.S. troops to leave Iraq. Indeed, the tensions in the Middle East are unlikely to dissipate any time soon… Hopefully however, they won’t lead to the “horrendous” and “devastating” world war that a bi-partisan panel commissioned by the U.S. Congress predicted might break out within four years. Continue reading →

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Asset management, Commodity price, Commodity risk, Hedging, Market psychology, Market trends, Oil market, Risk management, Trading, Trend following

Trend following and the impact of unforeseen events

“Yes, but how can your system know if XYZ happens and markets go haywire?” This is one of the two most frequently asked questions about systematic trading strategies I’ve used over the last 20 years. Most traders tend to rely on analyses of supply and demand fundamentals to form a judgment about future price changes.

My contention is that this simply does not work and I can make a strong case to back this up (see here, here or here). I can also offer evidence that my systematic approach does work (see here or here) even if I know nothing about the supply and demand economics of most markets I cover. This usually elicits the objection that my system can’t know if some XYZ event might happen tomorrow  (recently, XYZ tended to refer to Trump tweets), upsetting the markets and rendering my strategies ineffective. Recent experience afforded me an (almost) perfect answer to this question (plus another important issue related to trend following). Continue reading →

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Social development, Something completely different, Truth

100 million!

No, I did not win the lottery. “100 million” refers to an idea I’ve meant to share for a while now. If you are like me, you may be a bit frustrated seeing the many ways our world could be a better place for us all, if only we took better care of it. We could have less of what we dislike – things like pollution, poverty, lies, wars, alienation and disenfranchisement, and more of things we long for like clean air, clean water, safe streets, kindness, community, family, security, time to connect, to enjoy life and one other… Continue reading →

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Asset management, Behavioral finance, Commodity price, Commodity risk, Expertise, Hedging, Market research, Market trends, Risk management, Stock market, Trading, Trend following

Do trend followers move markets? (they do).

A few months ago, when reviewing our trades on US Treasury futures, I was so delighted, I drafted a bragging article titled “How we knew yields would collapse?” summarizing the results of our trading. That performance was entirely generated by my I-System model, first built in 1999. I still find myself awestruck that this works… We generated profitable trades through both the bear and the bull market in bonds, literally without needing to know a single thing about the market fundamentals. The trades were strictly based on the knowledge framework built into the system more than 20 years ago (by the way, our strategies are still generating excellent signals in those same markets). Continue reading →

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Asset management, Central banking, Economics, Inflation, Market trends, Stock market, Trading, Trend following

The one force moving stock prices and what it tells us about the future

Back when I traded stocks in late 1990s, I got a gnawing suspicion that beyond the nonstop noise of the news flow, there was some force pushing the rising tide, but I couldn’t discern what it was. By today I think I worked it out. The most surprising thing about it is that it’s been so hard to work out.

Stocks are principally driven by money supply

The first time I encountered an explicitly formulated hypothesis that justified my suspicions was years later while I researched for my book, “Grand Deception.” The hypothesis, relating to Russian stocks, was articulated by Bill Browder, CEO of Hermitage Capital Management in his 2006 HedgeWeek interview: Continue reading →

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Commodity price, Energy crisis, Market trends, Oil market

More bad news from Saudi Arabia

 

Over the years I’d highlighted the increasingly dubious status of Saudi Arabia as the world’s oil production powerhouse. This year we learned that their flagship oil field Ghawar produced much less than everyone knew, now courtesy of Bloomberg we find another disconcerting bit of information corroborating these doubts as the following chart illustrates:

SaudiCrudeStockPile

There can be little doubt that we are facing a grave and serious energy predicament going forward. Our economies and societies better begin preparing yesterday. Links to my research outlining the fundamental supply and demand conditions can be found here: Continue reading →

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Commodity risk, Economics, Energy crisis, Market research, Oil market

The oil price shock: has it arrived?

Experts seldom expect surprises. In spite of the ever deepening economic and political uncertainties gripping most oil producing and oil consuming regions, most market experts surveyed last year predicted that oil price would fluctuate between $65 and $70 through 2023.

That forecast assumes that nothing unforeseen would happen over the next five years. Such an assumption, to put it politely,  is unjustified and the list of reasons is long and complex, and it can be neither ignored nor wished away. Over the recent months I’d written a handful of articles on the subject of the ‘coming oil price shock.’ Here are the last three: Continue reading →

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Asset management, Commodity price, Market trends, Risk management, Trading, Trend following

How we knew yields would collapse?

While most market experts completely failed to predict this year’s collapse in interest rates (see the chart below), we traded the event profitably. In this article I summarize the the hows and the whys of our performance.

AgeOfQE_CTAsVsS&P500vsExperts

How did we know to short US T-Notes starting in Q4 2017, then reverse and go long in November of 2018? Did we know interest rates would first rise, then collapse at the fastest rate in 50 years? Are we so brilliant as forecasters? Did we have insider information? The answer is, none of the above.

We did not know what would happen – but profited from the events anyway. Here’s how: Continue reading →

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