This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
A Serial Short Seller Asks "Do Governments & Central Banks Ever Lose?"
Submitted by Jared "The 10th Man" Dillian via MauldinEconomics.com,
We are about a week into the Greek non-crisis, and nothing especially scary has happened. Stocks opened up lower a couple of times, and there was one wild trading day in EURUSD, but everything is essentially unchanged. Which surprised everyone. Including me, a little.
I used to be a plunger. Loved shorting stuff. I had one muscle, and I flexed it constantly. By my rough calculations, I was up about 18% by the time Lehman went bankrupt in 2008. The more turmoil, the better.
I was born in a bear market. Literally, in 1974, and figuratively—I learned to trade in the dot-com bust. Seven years into my trading career, I had experienced two crashes. I know lots of people who got rich buying GE at six bucks. I almost shorted it there.
So the past six years have been tough on me. I’ve made money, but not a lot. Worse, I’ve been conditioned to expect that whenever I spend a bunch of money on S&P puts, I’m going to get sconed and watch them melt to zero while the market rips higher.
The real kick in the nuts was when the market was melting down on Ebola fears in October and St. Louis Fed President Bullard walks out with a “buy” ticket stapled to his forehead.
Here’s another way to look at this: We had two crashes in seven years, and if you go back in history, the market doesn’t crash all that often.
Like the ‘50s. Stocks went up, quietly, for a decade. Nothing happened.
But this isn’t the ‘50s. There’s an IPO boom, a VC boom, valuations are stretched, and crap like Fitbit is going public. Shake Shack has a bigger valuation (I am told) than the entire coal industry.
We have unicorns and decacorns, and it’s only a matter of time until we have a centicorn. All the kids are going to startups. Talk about risk-taking.
I have seen worse bubbles, but the markets are definitely running hot.
So a developed country is about to default on a couple of hundred billion dollars worth of debt, and the market just shrugs. Worse, it sets a nasty precedent for other, larger economies defaulting on debt. Seems much more contagious than Russia in 1998. And stocks are bulletproof. The only selling going on is in China.
Serious question: Do you give up shorting? Like, throw in the towel?
The thing that gets a lot of people is that they believe the market is engineered by the authorities to go higher. Like Bullard with his rate comments. But it’s gotten so bad, there are wide swaths of people who think the Fed is actually buying stocks. ZeroHedge talks about this all the time.
There is a pretty funny Twitter account called 3:30 Ramp Capital, LLC. Plunge Protection Team rumors have been around since the beginning of time, but six years of stocks going straight up have given rise to all kinds of other theories. (For the record, the Fed fully acknowledges its interventions in the bond market, but it has never admitted to trading stocks.)
And it’s true that “the authorities” want the price of financial assets (stocks, bonds) to go up, and the price of hard assets (commodities) to go down… which is exactly what has happened.
So do governments and central banks ever lose?
In the old days, they lost all the time. In one extreme example, an individual hedge fund took out the entire Bank of England. But central banks are currently on a massive winning streak.
So to answer the question, “Will we ever have a crisis,” you need to answer the question, “Will we ever be allowed to have one?”
I’m not just some crazy guy asking these questions. Market professionals I talk to, hedge fund managers, mutual fund managers, will freely discuss the widespread distortions in the market. They feel like they can’t ply their trade. What I mean is, you can’t buy stuff cheap and sell it dear. Everything is dear, and it keeps going up, and you have to participate or get left behind.
That’s not the way it was in the ‘50s. There was all kinds of value to be found. That was how Warren Buffett made his money.
Today, I realized that, outside of some biotech stuff, I haven’t written about an individual stock in months. There’s just nothing interesting to buy, and you certainly can’t short anything. You’ll get your head blown off.
At one point in my career, I was really good at market timing. Calling tops and bottoms. You just can’t do it anymore. Tops never happen, and bottoms don’t get deep enough to find value. We haven’t had a 10% correction in how long?
Honestly, it’s so hard to invest in this environment, I’ve made nearly all my money in the last two years trading FX. It’s the only thing that makes sense.
This is a lot of me whining. And I’m secretly hoping that this letter means there will be a return to rationality soon.
But probably not. Stupid usually gets stupider.
- 19104 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -


There is no spoon, Neo.
Only oligarchs.
"I had one muscle, and I flexed it constantly."
yup.
those were the days.
International Socialism MUST be destroyed
Then you must bust the trusts.
Banks must fail, or burned.
They have been losing all along. Productivity and effeciency are going down the toilet. Think about it; technology makes things CHEAPER - so why the fuck has everything gotten MORE expensive over the past decades? Eventually this will screw things up so bad producers will just go out of business for lack of either customers or supplies/raw materials.
They are just dragging it out for far longer, grinding the middle class into poverty, and making the eventual blow up that much more epic. Kind of like going from swords to guns to nukes, ya know?
Regards,
Cooter
I recall the Eagles wrote a song on banking and markets. I believe it went something like this ...
Mirrors on the ceiling
The pink champagne on ice
And she said: "We are all just prisoners here of our own device"
And in the master's chambers
They gathered for the feast
They stab it with their steely knives
But they just can't kill the beast
Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before
"Relax" said the night man
"We are programmed to receive
You can check-out any time you like
But you can never leave!"
The short answer is no CB's never lose. When they start lose they call time out and rewrite the rule book.
The long answer can be found in the upper right corner of this web page
"On a long enough timeline the survival rate for everyone drops to zero"
The question, Ramyond K Hessel, is what do you want to do with your life ?!?!
Debt is the sleeping silent monster. Once awoken, it WILL eat everything in its path.
Hahaha.... Perfect!
"101 ways to rig a roulette wheel" by Yu Needa Fukin
thats not busting socialism that's busting American capitalism; now deep into bubble-o-nomics.
You need a socialist like FDR to do that. He did a Glass Steagall and the guys these days in Congress allow a Corzine or a Squid to piss all over us.
Long live the tea drinkers, the repugs and their not so democratic potus; all on the same page.
"Does bank ever lose?"
Does ursus arctos defacate in boreal forest?
No.
.
The lose is saved for the people of the world.
.
We have lost every single 'coin flip' since we started breathing. I think we are zero(0) and 14,845,989,345. I think its pretty much impossible for that to happen naturally in this world...therefore, the game is rigged.
.
Our life is one giant cosmic lie.
.
Think about it - what the fuck are we doing?
.
'They' want to mine an asteroid - yet some poor mofo cant even get clean drinking water. I remember watching as a young Blotz those infomericals about kids in Africa that dont have any water. Now I am 40, the kid from the commercial is 40 - and he STILL CANT GET A FUCKIN glass of clean water?!? Just 1 out of 14,845,989,345 examples.
fuck off.
+ 14,845,989,345
Grand slam. Bullseye. Hat Trick. BINGO!!!
There's no cure for stupid. You sell the tops, idiot child, not the bottoms. I make money over and over and over again selling the miracle moonshot rallies short on the S&P500. It's not the market; it's the idiot behind the keyboard that's the problem.
Most people, including this guy, are waay too stupid to be trading any major market. Either bring your IQ and Math. SATS with you; or stay home. This article is a bunch of crap.
"S&P Puts----" And immediately we know we're dealing with a fool. Options are not appropriate for individual speculators. Use Futures Contracts. Options are great for sending your brokers kids to college; think for christ's sake; what are you trying to do ? Short a spike rally; okay; sell the contract. What the Fuck do you want to get tangled up in an Option for ? Jesus.
What are you talking about? If you trade futures your potential losses are unlimited. At least if you buy options, your losses are limited to the premiums + trading commissions.
"..ever lose?" short answer: as long as Serial Short Sellers exist and Mauldin Econonmics: NO
as long as ZH exists: YES!
If you make all the rules, you always win
A Serial Short Seller AsksI though that breed went extinct years ago
hahaha, Not every body can be Soros and short the big money.
Those who tried to short Japan know that.
Basically systematic Shorting is a totally negative game. It means we are basically not believers in capitalism but in casino capitalism.
Shorting Socialism is easy, shorting predatory capitalism is more difficult. Those guys print the money but also use the big stick of permanent wars. Socialists don't know how to make wars. Just ask Gorby!
Socialists have a tendency towards violent nationalism. Whether you want to term that "war" is an open question.
so do tea drinkers. Jingoism and patriotism are twin brothers.
The only guys who don't like nationalism and wars were the sons of the Tramp and of the MArx Brothers, the Groucho type!
Trusts rule the world.
Their beneficiaies want it all.
Moved to Forex and the futures a few years ago. Haven't looked back and I sleep a lot better since.
Well everyone knows Forex isnt in anyway manipulated....LOL
Joan Maudlin and Maudlin Economics - a globally renowned think tank.
Maudlin is a genius, just ask him, he wrote the book on it.
"Japan is a bug waiting for a windshield"
Joan Maudlin, 2009
"I had this high-level conference with Senator Sukdik and told him straight - we have to reduce the deficit "
Joan Maudlin, 2008
"The Euro is going to parity with the dollar this year"
Joan Maudln, 2010
If I had $7-$8 trillion, controlled all the regualtors and the justice system, I don't think I would lose very often.
You'll have to be as ruthless and inhuman as they are to win.
Which is how you end up with Stalin,Hitler,Pol Pot and........
......Bush, Obama, Hitlary........
Thank you.
"The only hope is with the Proles...the establishment will never change anything"
I feel badly for this author because he hasn't quite grasped that he is the modern equivalent of a buggy whip manufacturer when Henry Ford started mass producing cars. The markets of old are dead. Whilst it is still legal to short US markets the electronic markets have all sorts of ways to stomp you. The Boomers have pensions and 401ks that will need to be sold but sell it to whom. The "great" jobs recovery of the last few years isn't creating jobs where workers can have 401ks. Just like with the Social Security system there isn't anyone to pay into the markets for each Boomer trying to redeem their portfolios. This will become the next big issue in a few short years as the bulk of boomers really retire and need to turn their retirement investments into cash. It is possible that the government will need to intervene. I can see the government having retirees exchange their investments for some type of new social security. The government can print money to pay the retirees and the government can also hold the investments for a very long time to wait out the market.
very astute observation. made my time spent here today worthwhile.
You can bet your ass this has some people at the fed and in washington very, very nervous. and planning for the day.
They're not going to pay the boomers for the pensions, they are going to steal the pensions, either before the fact (by not funding them) or after the fact (by seizing them or forcing you to buy government bonds in your "MY-RA" fund).
Opinions welcome: part of me thinks shorting is F'ed up and shouldn't be allowed, but part of me thinks the shorts keep the other side from inflating the markets. No expert here, so is it a little of both?
"shorting is F'ed up and shouldn't be allowed"
Why?
You think an asset is worth more, you buy it, because you think it's going up. Not because your buying makes it go up, but because you think it's going to be more expensive in the future.
Shorting is just the same thing in reverse.
So do governments and central banks ever lose?
Yes, however today it appears to be only in the big, cataclysmic, “no one could have seen it coming” way.
I'd rather have a few dozen tremors than one gigantic earthquake. Unfortunately, the "Just Us" central planning group apparently believes differently.
Bankers & bureaucrats...the FED is the nexus of both. End of story.
Geez oligarch worship.
They can only kick the can with ever cheaper debt and exponentially increasing debt. Eventually those 2 become mutually exclusive, then they will try to return to historic methods but by then it will be too late. The currency will reset back to a barter based economy from their abuse.
its hard to lose when you don't have to ever worry about margin calls, redemptions, etc.
so-long as they continue to lie about no inflation anywhere and the sheeple are dumb enough to let them continue their policies that continue to make their lives miserable, why should we expect anything different? i fully expect the fed doves to keep buying oil, gold, copper, iron ore, stocks, bonds - whatever they want, whenever they want because there is nobody to check them; how rand paul's audit the fed bill doesn't even get discussed anymore just shows congress doesn't give a fuck so-long as their stocks aren't crashing.
War makes and breaks markets. If Russia and China can pull off Swift II you will have the makings of a market bifurcation that will result in economic war or outright war itself. The US may find itself with a lot fewer allies when there is workaround to their swift stick.
What do you think we've been in since last September ?
The Chinese were dumb with their policies, but I'm not convinced that
somehow Uncle Scam has something to do with pricking their bubble.
If the Chinese also think that, the retaliation is not going to be funny.
What do you think we've been in since last September ?
The Chinese were dumb with their policies, but I'm not convinced that
somehow Uncle Scam has something to do with pricking their bubble.
If the Chinese also think that, the retaliation is not going to be funny.
funny thing about crises - they happen whether they're allowed to or not
Crashes are nothing more than consolidations to the elite........
Shorting requires finesse and patience. When the payout comes, it comes huge. For awhile fantasy will work; eventually, mathematics will matter.
I wrote on this same question yesterday.
My answer was they will never loose again. I don't see how it can happen.
I also clarified that eventually, nobody will care. The financial world is not the world.
Every action causes a reaction. Each intervention deforms the economy and marginalizes more into poverty. Eventually you hit a tipping point via social unrest.
Maybe.
Social unrest is an interesting animal. Please notice, we have not had much of that since the invention of mechanized warfare and the birth of the police state. We can joke around here about guillotines, but I don't think the cameras they have mounted all over town will overlook us building anything that big, nor in the numbers they will be required. I don't think they will overlook us gathering in public places even in small numbers. I don't think they will overlook this exact post on ZH. And as for "sentiment" social unrest never was a past-time of the masses. Most sit it out. These days that means a few thousand marchers -- but hundreds of millions more sitting on the sidelines, getting in the way, muddying the waters, providing counter-marches on payment. Their prescribed poverty will have been accepted long before the unrest shows up, reinforced by fear of disappearances. The visuals on TV are controlled and contrived, people long accustomed to getting their orders from Fox news will thump their chests and mutter about those radical leftists.
Imagine yourself, called a leftist. Just imagine it. What a world. You will throw up your hands and go home just to avoid leftist.
No, I don't think there will be a lot of unrest. Healthy mutterings meant to discharge fear of TPTB, but nothing more. This is what we have become, or maybe it is what we ever were only now we see it writ large.
This is going down. It is going down like a stone, into the waters of annihilation. Fight or flight got us this far, but there will be nowhere to fly to and no means of fighting, and it will just go down like a stone into the cold depths. We are overall stupid and timid, never meant to master the machines we made with our own hands, and those machines in the hands of our better masters are now turned against us and we are going down like a stone into darkness and whatever it is that lay beyond darkness.
The ones who survive it -- who will write the history of it -- will call us an inferior species and welcome our destruction as a purification of the race. They will lounge around like Roman godlings, eating grapes and enjoying the dancing girls, while our broken and inbred offspring bound in chains of animal stupidity toil in the orchards and vineyards of the victors who we once had the gall to call "the 1%ers". They will have become the 10%ers by the time this is done, but in their own minds and by their own rules they will be the only ones as count at all as human.
Action and reaction but this is not physics. This is history. And you and I will not write it and nothing interesting will have happened.
Well, that was fucking dark. Thanks.
time to get a real job asshole...
So to answer the question, “Will we ever have a crisis,” you need to answer the question, “Will we ever be allowed to have one?”
100% of cycles have a down phase. A crisis is mathematically guaranteed.
Not when the mig mutual fund complexes refuse to sell. and they refuse to sell, because then they take a pay cut.
its essentially collusion.
a down phase does not need to be a crisis
unless you've got a monetary system that absolutely requires there never be a downturn in order to avoid crises
Will we ever have a crisis or be allowed to have one?
Seems to me that is all we have these days. We have one continuious crisis that keeps dying down and heating up, without ever being allowed to run its natural course. The premise that central banks and governments can do anything is silly. China is a good example of this. China pumped a massive credit bubble and have more or less completely destroyed their markets, both by creating the bubble in the first place and also responding to the collapse the way they have. They have all but insured their markets will be illiquid.
Swass - Yeah but the party bosses in US and China are mega rich now. The consequences and dying now is for the plebs. Those that hedge with far less resources may have a chance to plant new seeds. I expect WW3 and 1/3 of the world population dying off. After that if people dont crush those emerging from diamond encrusted bunkers, then I say Beam Me Up Scotty.
Central bank losses have been socialized
"There’s just nothing interesting to buy, and you certainly can’t short anything. You’ll get your head blown off."
That is just silly talk.
When CB's won't allow a crisis to happen... they get a bigger one.
If they wont allow a bigger one, they get an existential one.
I think they are betting modern civilization on the idea that there will be no consequences, and that given enough power and time it will all just dry up and blow away.
Except that's never happened before.
Instead it has always before blown up before drying away.
Plungers and those who believe that valuation matters have all been defrauded by the banks since their bailout and QE made valuation irrelevant.
Pure and simple theft ... sorry.
I thought short sellers were terrorists.
Suicided by nail gun in 3, 2, 1...
I have been selling puts in boring names in case there is an implosion that takes out highly leveraged non-profits like AMZN or NFLX. I sell puts when there is a little downturn never more than two or three months out. Grinding it out, not a lot of excitement, no huge pops but I can not get myself to go for AMZN, NFLX or Shake Shake or plastic umbrella companies with a 36000 PE.
Last time I checked, market manipulation was fucking illegal! I don't think the law states that market manipulation is illegal for bob and sue but not illegal for central banks or HFT's that are in bed with the fed. Illegal is illegal. Also, I hear everyone on TV and elsewhere saying, hey "why doesn't China govt step in and buy stocks or inject money some how to stop the selling. Why doesn't Draghi just buy more to stop the problems in Greece?" How about you leave the markets alone and they'll take care of themselves. When people see value they will buy and we'll get a solid bottom, not this fake shit. This is the legacy of the Bernanke and his Japanese asshole colleagues, they entered the market to stop the selling now pandoras box is open and everyone is going to do it until it ruins the markets.
I believe some douchebag oligarch once said give me control of the money and I care not who makes the laws, or something.
We're fucked because the laws do not matter to them. They simply ignore them without consequence or conscience.
ha ha ha ha ha ha
"illegal"... is that anything like "inconceivable"?
Stop yer whining. You are lucky that you didn't get wiped out like a lot of traders that thought that the US was still a place that had markets.
You didn't recognize the Media's ability to have a loathesome mulatto elected twice, a career PhD cheesepope begin to print money out of thin air, and for Goldman to get to be a bank in 1 day. If you had recognized these imoral acts... you would have not shorted anything.
Smarter people Here:
http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/cms/
Can't take it anymore.
when the referee's are also players in the game it's kind of hard to...
"A Serial Short Seller Asks "Do Governments & Central Banks Ever Lose?"
Only in the guillotines. Only in the guillotines.
Liberty is a demand. Tyranny is submission..
I don't believe in being on the short side or the long side. I believe in being on the right side.
- Jesse Livermore