Thursday 17 September 2009

L: 135% S:79% G: 214% N: 57% ~ $D 0% $G 0% $V 0% $P 0.00%

The Raven has been relatively quiet this week, he's not traded around his positions too much, he covered some shorts earlier in the week, he's also collected his theta and watched as this market has really flown out of the door. Its hard not to get carried away with how easy its been to be long, which gives him the feeling its going to get pretty nasty pretty quickly on a pull back.

He's long some NRG again which has been very strong over the last week. He cut his SNDK short for the same reason.

Its also VERY interesting to see where commodity prices are.

The Raven also did a little bit of work on the Kraft bid for Cadbury, he thinks there are just too many moving parts to really make any money on the deal.

Tuesday 8 September 2009

L: 125% S:126% G: 251% N: -1% ~ $D 0% $G 0% $V 0% $P 0.00%

So Cadbury's got bid for by KFT, the market is expecting a huge bump, which statistically doesn't look outlandish. The Raven is waiting however, he believes the stock will drift back towards 760p, where it'll be a better buy as enthuisasm runs its course.

He's also been buying a little more ETI over the last couple of days, it looks attractive versus PUB fundamentally, it looks good technically as well.

He also bought some Gold and some NZD on Friday night, just for the big number attractor play which seems to work relatively well. He's sold his gold already this morning and is now looking at the USD/JPY. Its interesting the that dollar is getting a hiding against everything including the JPY, hmmmm.

He's also spent the weekend looking at the SPX vol surface and thinks that some downside might not be a terrible play here, for both the gamma and the trading optionality, but thats far from conclusive.

He's also looking to increase his NRG position today and will be keeping a very close eye on MCO.

CYCL has rallied back yet remains at a very wide spread, he's happy with his position size now.

IPCR deal went through on Friday, so it'll be interesting to see how VR trades today.

Thursday 3 September 2009

a choppy Thursday

Just when he thought it was safe to get back in the water, the short squeeze of a shark reappears. Its been a very choppy week given how tight the real range is and this has been particularly painful for intraday trading. The Raven gave back all his profits in the NZD, and then a little more as interest. However he did enjoy the intraday move in SNDK, which partial compensated.

He's getting murdered in PUB today with it squeezing back 5%, interesting to see that ETI isn't tracking it.

It'll be interesting to see how the US opens today and the way that the market reacts to the jobs numbers. He's got the feeling it'll be the same as it has been for the last 6months, ie bad number up small because that means interest rates are staying lower for longer, of and a good number well then that confirms the hypothesis that we're going to see great growth, in short the market has been clearly saying it wants to go higher and perhaps the Raven has been a little hard of hearing the last couple of months and missed a great opportunity.

He still likes his relative value positions and his M&A spreads so he's going to keep running a tight ship with a few tweaks tighter to hedges so that he spends more time on nailing the small details rather than worrying about how each trade reacts to each tick in the SPX. However this has been a relatively difficult strategy as "value" has clearly been lagging and getting hurt and specultive trades have outperformed ie. the market has been reacting to speculation in changes in earnings rather than caring to much about balance sheets and historic margins, sales volumes, etc. which does feel rather frothy. Perhaps we're in the middle of a large margin expansion where earnings fail to materialize? thats enough spec for one day...

Wednesday 2 September 2009

L: 121% S:159% G: 280% N: -37% ~ $D 0% $G 0% $V 0% $P 0.00%

The Raven has been rather preoccupied with external requirements this week, however its been a pleasant trading week so far. He's been looking at FX a little and noticed the NZD has been a painful short for a lot of punters, he gets the fundamental story and agrees, he thinks its worth a twirl as the technicals look like their blowing in the right direction now.

He's reduced his CYCL position due to pain and rebalancing. That made room for a nice BJS long, which has performed well as he bought a large position in the pain that was Monday nights close. Additionally he's been adding to his MVL over the last couple of days and hedging with a little bit of DIS, on a slightly lighter ratio than theory would suggest.

The macro picture has been looking a little more interesting and he's definitely hearing a lot more chatter and perky voices amongst the bears of the world. He's been running things slightly with a short bias, although he'd look to start to get flat at the 980 level in the SPX, its a big technical level and he'd be rather shocked if we shot through it.