HOW ONE iTuliper IS INVESTED?

[Jim Nickerson]

Re: HOW ONE iTuliper IS INVESTED?

Jim: From what I've followed since you started this thread I notice you pretty consistently trade 10% gains, which is none too shabby! Well done!! :cool:

I don't know, Greg. SLV bounced $5 today which would have kept me holding it, had I waited a day. But who picks turning points, certainly not I.

But that is life, you make decisions and act or get callouses from hand wringing.

[Jim Nickerson]

Re: HOW ONE iTuliper IS INVESTED?

Tuesday 12/5/07

I got out of a SLV position on 11/19/07 @140.61 hoping it would go down. Today I added back SLV at a 1.33% position of my total portfolio. I also added a bit of GLD to bring that up to 2.22% of my holdings. Totally, I have 5.38% in GLD, SLV, GTU and CEF. I want to hold more PM's and keep thinking there will be an opportunity ahead, but that is just a hopeful guess that such may occur. I added the SLV and GLD today on thinking it might not occur.

I've been watching SKF which moves -200% to the DJ US Financials Index. Back in October I watched it touch 80.50 and sat there thinking I should wait to buy some, only to see it then go up above 111 on three days I believe it was. I bought two lots of SKF today at an average of 97.01, and I may add more if it drops which most things I buy usually do. SKF is 1.81% of my portfolio.

http://www.djindexes.com/mdsidx/?event=showTotalMarket is a link that will show all the components of the DJUS Financial Index.

SKF's top holdings in decreasing weight are BAC, C, JPM, AIG, WFC, WB, GS, AXP, USB, BK, MS, MER, PRU, CME, TRV, FNM, LEH, STT, AFL (QUACK), ALL, HIG, MET, PNC, & SCHW. BAC is 7.436% and SCHW 0.8983% in the weightings.

Now I am 15.3% in -200% shorts between DXD, SDS, QID, TWM, SRS, and SKF.

I am 5.38% long in PM's.

I am 33% long split between HSGFX (19.7%), JPY (10.2%), and actually part of the 33% is a short position on the 30-year bond RRPIX (2.11%). The last one is down 9.5% since I bought it in two lots. The way things are looking, it will go lower, but I am going to stay long interest rates for the long term.

If I haven't screwed up my entries, I am 47.3% in US Bonars--money market funds.

[Guest]

Re: HOW ONE iTuliper IS INVESTED?

Jim -

I think you should commit one half of your portfolio to the guidance of Grapejelly and Charles Mackay, and put the other half in Jim Roger's commodity index RICI fund, and take a long vacation - 5-7 years - with zero trades, and come back and be very pleasantly surprised.

Best advice.

Tuesday 12/5/07

I got out of a SLV position on 11/19/07 @140.61 hoping it would go down. Today I added back SLV at a 1.33% position of my total portfolio. I also added a bit of GLD to bring that up to 2.22% of my holdings. Totally, I have 5.38% in GLD, SLV, GTU and CEF. I want to hold more PM's and keep thinking there will be an opportunity ahead, but that is just a hopeful guess that such may occur. I added the SLV and GLD today on thinking it might not occur.

I've been watching SKF which moves -200% to the DJ US Financials Index. Back in October I watched it touch 80.50 and sat there thinking I should wait to buy some, only to see it then go up above 111 on three days I believe it was. I bought two lots of SKF today at an average of 97.01, and I may add more if it drops which most things I buy usually do. SKF is 1.81% of my portfolio.

http://www.djindexes.com/mdsidx/?event=showTotalMarket is a link that will show all the components of the DJUS Financial Index.

SKF's top holdings in decreasing weight are BAC, C, JPM, AIG, WFC, WB, GS, AXP, USB, BK, MS, MER, PRU, CME, TRV, FNM, LEH, STT, AFL (QUACK), ALL, HIG, MET, PNC, & SCHW. BAC is 7.436% and SCHW 0.8983% in the weightings.

Now I am 15.3% in -200% shorts between DXD, SDS, QID, TWM, SRS, and SKF.

I am 5.38% long in PM's.

I am 33% long split between HSGFX (19.7%), JPY (10.2%), and actually part of the 33% is a short position on the 30-year bond RRPIX (2.11%). The last one is down 9.5% since I bought it in two lots. The way things are looking, it will go lower, but I am going to stay long interest rates for the long term.

If I haven't screwed up my entries, I am 47.3% in US Bonars--money market funds.

[c1ue]

Re: HOW ONE iTuliper IS INVESTED?

It is probably a tad early, but definitely the dead cat dollar/gold retrace has begun.

[Jim Nickerson]

Re: HOW ONE iTuliper IS INVESTED?

No one reading this can imagine my happiness from having learned how to paste a table from Excel into this "Reply to Thread" window. Thanks so much to FRED who wrote how to do it somewhere in these threads.

The table below reflects my positions at Y/E 2007.

12/31/07	POSITION	% INVESTD	GAIN	% GAIN	ALLOCATION
REAL ESTATE	SRS	2.09%	$3,326.85	17.67%
FINANCIALS	SKF	2.82%	$1,744.55	6.18%
DOW	DXD	2.84%	$1,661.09	5.84%
NDX	QID	2.65%	($584.25)	-2.04%
SPX	SDS	3.42%	$1,972.12	5.74%
RUT	TWM	3.31%	$2,990.16	9.29%	17.13%	-200% INVERSE
GOLD & SILVER	CEF	0.72%	$1,636.11	27.09%
GOLD	GLD	2.33%	$3,416.76	16.03%
SILVER	SLV	1.38%	$468.05	3.29%
GOLD	GTU	1.18%	$2,890.05	30.07%	5.62%	PM'S
COMM AGRIC	DBA	0.93%	$3.00	0.03%	0.93%	COMMODITY
YEN	FXY	10.13%	$5,654.20	5.55%
-YIELD ON 30YR-BOND	RRPIX	2.18%	($1,813.93)	-7.26%
HEDGED EQUITY	HSGFX	19.74%	$7,083.93	3.50%	32.05%	OTHER
	TOTAL	55.74%	$30,448.69	5.43%
	CASH	44.26%			44.27%	CASH
For 2007, I gained 9.48%		100.00%

[Jim Nickerson]

Re: HOW ONE iTuliper IS INVESTED?

I wanted to post more above but was having some difficulty writing beneath the table.

I added a small position in DBA yesterday. Deutsche Bank Agriculture ETF http://www.etfconnect.com/select/fun...sp?MFID=172310 because I am woefully underinvested in commodities. I keep thinking that there will be some reasonable correction in commodities, and there has been in base metals DBB.

My two year compounded gain is 7.88%, 3-year 11.31% and 8-year
-1.51%.

Anyone willing could figure out the actual value of my portfolio from using the numbers I put in the table. To save any inquisitive minds from the task, it comes out to be a bit over 1 million bonars.

[jk]

Re: HOW ONE iTuliper IS INVESTED?

your 8year number brings up the maxim about the importance of avoiding the big hit. the first hard task is to earn it. the second hard task to keep it. the fallback position on that second task is to learn real, long lasting lessons if you don't keep it, so that you keep it on the next cycle. good luck to us all.

[Jim Nickerson]

Re: HOW ONE iTuliper IS INVESTED?

your 8year number brings up the maxim about the importance of avoiding the big hit. the first hard task is to earn it. the second hard task to keep it. the fallback position on that second task is to learn real, long lasting lessons if you don't keep it, so that you keep it on the next cycle. good luck to us all.

So totally true, jk. I just wonder if I'll live long enough to profit from the hard lesson. Actually, since it didn't wipe me out, I did learn to more critically decide between "wants" and "needs" when it comes to spending.

Also, I have never had the cojones to figure out what my loss from my personal porfolio high on 12/31/1999 was when considering inflation. Nevertheless, I survived it, at least nominally, thanks to Greasespam.

[jk]

Re: HOW ONE iTuliper IS INVESTED?

So totally true, jk. I just wonder if I'll live long enough to profit from the hard lesson. Actually, since it didn't wipe me out, I did learn to more critically decide between "wants" and "needs" when it comes to spending.

Also, I have never had the cojones to figure out what my loss from my personal porfolio high on 12/31/1999 was when considering inflation. Nevertheless, I survived it, at least nominally, thanks to Greasespam.

my guess is that although you've come up almost back to your peak of 8 years ago [at least nominally], you don't have the euphoria and feeling of genius i imagine you might have been feeling back then. your humility and caution can only help going forward.

[Jim Nickerson]

Re: HOW ONE iTuliper IS INVESTED?

my guess is that although you've come up almost back to your peak of 8 years ago [at least nominally], you don't have the euphoria and feeling of genius i imagine you might have been feeling back then. your humility and caution can only help going forward.

Actually I am still 172.4K below what I had in liquid assets at top. I was euphoric and remember thinking "I can't believe I made that much money the year just ended." Without looking it up, it was about 375K, which was more than I ever made in a year beating my brains out working. I don't think I ever thought I was a genius, I think I thought for once I had been in the right place at the right time--only to stand there the next two year and watch that sandpile get washed away.

[Nicolasd]

Re: HOW ONE iTuliper IS INVESTED?

Jim ,

Learning by failure and learning by doing are 2 powerful learning methods !

Looks like you went through both and survived so I wish you many more succesful investing decisions in the years ahead of you !

[Jim Nickerson]

Re: HOW ONE iTuliper IS INVESTED?

Heres's what I posted earlier from http://hussmanfunds.com/wmc/wmc071217.htm


Quote:

Originally Posted by Hussman I'm back to the more typical position of having no specific short-term views. That said, there is one particular scenario that would be ominous in my view. That would be if we see a relatively uninterrupted series of declines that breaks cleanly through the August and November lows, followed by a one-day advance of 200-400 Dow points. That's a script that markets tend to follow pre-crash. Though it's not a strong expectation or forecast, it's something worth monitoring, because we've started to see the pattern of abrupt jumps and declines at 10-minute intervals that is often a hallmark of nervous markets.

Note Hussman's comments were written on 12/17/07, then from 12/26/07 we have witnessed an "uninterrupted series of declines that breaks cleanly through the August and November lows." Without starting a debate about what "cleanly" absolutely means, the intraday low on the DJI on 1/9/07 took out the 8/16/07 intraday low by 16 points, and the closing low day before yesterday definitely took out the August and November closing lows.

Since 2:16PM ET yesterday (1/9/08) until 3:10PM ET today, the DJI went up 428.96 dollars. That covers a bit over the length on one trading day and occurred in the course of two trading days. [edit:7:30PM CT, I believe it is correct that from the intraday low yesterday 1/9/08 to the intraday high today 1/10/08 the DJI gained 499.76. I had and continue to have some trouble with the 2 day charts with one minute intervals in seeing the reported lows for yesterday which I believe was 12431.53. The reported intraday high today was 12931.29. From that high to the close today the DJI lost 78.20 dollars.][edit:11:20PM 1/12/08 I was just going back over some things, and the number above 428.96 appears to have been correct, the 499.76 was not.]

Whether or not over the next few days, or today's decline from the intraday highs and several more days, we see a crash is going to be interesting to watch. My thinking about the odds of anyone actually calling a crash is that the odds must be small, but then I watched Marty Zweig do it on Wall Street Week in 1987, only to then watch utterly dumbfounded on Monday after his Friday night call as it occurred.

I have recently been influenced by a couple of "calls" about market direction, one was
Quote:

Originally Posted by EJ Takes patience to wait out the funds that control more than 50% of the money in the markets today. Now at last I am taking a few speculative short positions before end of year, Monday Dec 31. I will share my analysis and conclusions on this thread and invite members to participate and comment.

and in the post

see the link

I noted another call made by Mike Burk in which he identified technical market conditions that he suggested indicated a market top in the major indices. He did that on 10/1/07 and 10/6/07 and as they say in Olympic gymnastics about good landings, "he nailed it." At least so far that is true.

What provokes my interest in Hussman's calling attention to a set of conditions that he, for reasons he never explained except in broad terms, warned as "ominous" is that he noted this almost a month ago. Now it seems that those conditions have begun to unfold as explained above.

Yesterday 1/9/08 after the markets' reversals, it made me consider liquidating my short positions (about 18.5% of my portfolio). The single factor besides the markets' reversals (and the money I lost) was the CBOE equity put/call ratio was 0.97 for 1/8/08, the day of the markets' lows so far since the highs in October and before for the RUT and $XVG. I take a reading of 0.97 in that indicator to be fairly indicative of "fear," and at the times of similar reading in the past year, it has been a good time not to be short and to be long.

I was kicking myself today for not selling on the opening, but then I got to thinking about what Hussman had written and upon reviewing it, a part is above, I think being short is still the place to be. Hussman also just commented 1/7/08

The stock market is oversold short-term, which invites the potential for a spectacular “clearing rally” of the typical variety – fast, furious, and prone to failure. While such an upward spike might be embraced as some sort of message that the market has “fully discounted” negative conditions and mark a successful “test” of prior lows, the data suggest that underlying market and economic conditions are rapidly deteriorating. In that context, a spectacular short-term rally (particularly a one-day barn burner) could provide a setup for concerted selling.

My emphasis in bold.

I ask what has really changed with the markets since Friday--the data available to Hussman when he wrote the note just above?

BoA offering to buy CFC? Is that enough to change the direction of a market that is in trouble? I don't think so.

Bananake saying the Fed is going to lower rates ad infinitum (almost), when what the Fed does is follow whatever the market deems rates to be, is that going to change things? I don't think so.

When I finish this note, I am going to figure out how to allocate about another $100,000 between DXD, SDS, QID, TWM, SRS and SKF so that I have nearly equal positions in all six -200% funds.

Using the DJI to follow, I can't watch 5 or 6 things at once, if the DJI continues up in the morning, I'll hold my orders until and if there occurs a 50% reversal from whatever further interim high that is attained. If it meanders down so that its loses half (250 dollars) of the bottom-to-top gains over the last 9 hours the market was open, then I'll put in my orders. The Asian markets as I write are a bit down except for Malaysia and Philippines, so nothing there seemingly pointing to a "crash" tomorrow in our markets.

Why should the market "crash"? I have no idea, except to go on what Hussman has, for reasons known to him, identified as a set of conditions in which one might expect a significant downward reversal off the bounce we have just had.

We'll see. The main reason I am putting this up is that it has made me try to think through the issue.

[Jim Nickerson]

Re: HOW ONE iTuliper IS INVESTED?

Today I added to positions in DXD, SDS, QID, TWM, SKF, and SRS when the DJI lost ~171 points, which amounted to it losing ~250 points from the intraday high Thursday 1/10/08. The amount of each additional purchase brought each total position to about 4.6% of my total portfolio.

On 1/3/08, I opened positions in RJA of 0.94% and RJZ of 0.90% of my portfolio. The pie chart below shows the allocation in RJA.



The chart below shows the allocation of RJZ



http://www.elementsetn.com/ProductsPage.aspx link to the Rogers Commodity ETN's.

I might add that is difficult to find words to adequately describe the pride I have now in having a piece of the action in azuki beans and greasy wool.

[idianov]

Re: HOW ONE iTuliper IS INVESTED?

Jim,

The only commodity missing in the list is fertilizer. I don't know anybody who is long fertilizer. It could be the only unsecuritized commodity with huge upside potential like Uranium.

Igor

[Jim Nickerson]

Re: HOW ONE iTuliper IS INVESTED?

Jim,

The only commodity missing in the list is fertilizer. I don't know anybody who is long fertilizer. It could be the only unsecuritized commodity with huge upside potential like Uranium.

Igor

On the contrary there seem to be very few who are short bullshit--which if it can be obtained in its purest form really makes stuff grow; whereas in its most frequent form it is useless.