Over the weekend, we were surprised to read that none other than recent market cheerleader Goldman Sachs had come up with six reasons why its chief equity strategist believes the market is poised for a material draw down (read "big drop") in the coming weeks. Among these were the following:
In the aftermath of Saudi Arabia's explicit threat to sell off US Treasurys (of which according to the NYT it had some $750 billion) should the US pursue legislation that could hold it liable for the September 11 bombings, Wall Street's analysts quickly tried to calculate whether Saudi Arabia had anywhere remotely close to that amount of US paper available for liquidation.
We have followed the ownership changes of London's massive vaults with keen interest ever since our December 2014 article when we reported that Deutsche Bank's gold vaule was for sale in "Massive 1,500 Ton Gold Vault For Sale In The Heart Of London, One Previous Owner, Asking £4,500,000 O.B.O." The fate of that particular vault was revealed earlier this year when Reuters reported that none other than China's largest bank, ICBC Standard Bank, was buying the lease on Deutsche Bank's London gold and silver vault, "enlarging its footprint in the city's bullion market"
After making over $1 billion in one day last August, and warning that "the markets are overvalued to the tune of 50%," Mark Spitznagel knows a thing or two about managing tail risk.
The outspoken practitioner of Austrian economic philosophy tells The FT, "Markets don't have a purpose any more - they just reflect whatever central planners want them to," confirming his fund-management partner, Nassim Taleb's perspective that "being protected from fragility in the financial system is a necessity rather than an option."
Traders should be able to admit, when they're wrong. As we explain in great detail in Splitting Pennies - there's nothing worse than a trader who takes great effort to explain reasons why he was wrong or why it wasn't in fact his fault, it was the market! (or some such nonsense). Such severe psychological factors is the reason that many traders opt for algorithm developement.