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By Jani Ziedins | Free CMU
Cracked.Market University:
Yesterday I wrote about the compelling benefits of buying the Covid bounce using a 3x leveraged ETF. No doubt the impressive 200% gains grabbed people’s attention. But no discussion about leveraged ETFs is complete without also discussing the negatives.
I often have people ask me why they shouldn’t just buy-and-hold leveraged ETFs. If 1x is good, obviously 3x is even better, right? Not so fast. There is a weird quirk in the compounding of leveraged ETFs that makes losses loom larger than gains.
I will dig into the math in a future post, but for now, we don’t have to look any further than the current market swings for a striking example of this damaging quirk in action.
The chart in yesterday’s post was a little deceptive because I truncated the timeframe to include very little of the Covid selloff. If we expand the timeframe to include the previous highs, as I did above, it becomes strikingly obvious what the problem is.
While the S&P 500 recovered all of the Covid selloff this week, the comparable 3x leveraged ETF is still down a shocking 29%!!!
Any patient, long-term investor that held a 3x leveraged ETF through the Covid collapse and subsequent rebound is still down a staggering amount of money. And that’s only if he had the tremendous courage required to sit through a 75% plunge during the Covid lows. I don’t know about you, but I would definitely have second thoughts if I saw my life savings shrivel by 75%.
Leveraged ETFs are wonderful tools when used for short-term swing trading. But holding them for longer time frames is a dangerous and foolish thing to do. If you only remember one thing from all of this, let it be:
Leveraged ETFs are ONLY suitable for short-term swing-trades.
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By Jani Ziedins | End of Day Analysis
Free After-Hours Analysis
It was another good day for the S&P 500, this time finishing just a whisker shy of a record close. Not bad for the worst economy since the Great Depression.
But anyone who reads this blog knew this was coming weeks, if not months ago. As I often say, a market that refuses to go down will eventually go up. As counterintuitive as this rebound has been, riding these gains has been fairly straight forward for anyone that wasn’t overthinking the situation.
And to the victor goes the spoils. Anyone who bought the June dip using a 3x leveraged ETF is up nearly 50%. The more aggressive buyer who jumped aboard this bounce in March is up nearly 200%. Not bad for a lowly index trade.
As much hype as highflying stocks like TSLA or ZM get, there is really good money to be made swing-trading the indexes. In fact, I find the risks to be lower and the rewards greater. I’m planning on writing a series of posts covering how I swing-trade the indexes using leveraged ETFs and showing readers just how profitable this strategy can be, even when compared against the hottest stocks.
Granted, I haven’t been snoozing at the wheel since the March lows and I moved in and out of the market several times since them. But when we can move all-in and all-out in a few mouse clicks, it makes sense to step aside when things appear uncertain. As easy as it is to jump out, it is just as easy to jump back in when the latest dip proves to be a false alarm. In fact, if you do it early and get a little bit lucky, you actually make more money selling the top of these little gyrations and buying the minor dips. It doesn’t always work that well, but even riding through a few minor whipsaws sure beats watching a losing position swell or watching the next breakout leave without you.
Now that we finally reached the old highs, what comes next? That’s a good question. We should expect prices to pause for a little bit as investors gather their bearings. After that, a frenzy of breakout buying could push us sharply higher. Or waves of contagious profit-taking send prices tumbling. Or thirdly, stubborn owners refuse to sell, reluctant buyers refuse to buy, and that stalemate leaves stocks drifting sideways for a while.
My guess is we see a modest breakout push prices higher over the next week or two, but that strength ultimately fizzles and the index retreats back to the old highs where we consolidate for a bit. I will continue holding for higher prices but will move my trailing stop nearby so my profits are protected if I’m wrong.
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By Jani Ziedins | End of Day Analysis
Free After-Hours Analysis:
The S&P 500 popped Monday morning, establishing a new higher-high for this Covid rebound.
As bad as headlines have been, this market continues grinding higher and the index is within 3% of all-time highs. This relentless strength feels shockingly counterintuitive. But the thing we can never forget we trade the market, not the headlines. No matter what we think “should” happen, successful traders always focus on what “is” happening.
Institutional money managers need to anticipate what is around the next corner. It takes weeks, even months for them to move billions of dollars in and out of the market. But as independent investors, we can do the same in less time than it takes to read this post.
Far and away the greatest strength we have is the nimbleness of our size. That lets us ride these counterintuitive moves higher with little risk. We don’t need to know what is around the corner because we are fast enough that we can trade around it when we get there.
If we finally come across a headline worse than a global lockdown, the fastest economic collapse in modern history, and the highest unemployment since the Great Depression, we can pull all of our money out in hours, if not minutes. I have no idea what is worse than the headlines this market already shrugged off, but if it happens, I’m confident we will be able to trade around it when it does happen.
What comes next? Well, more often than not, the market moves to the level everyone is looking at. I’ve been saying for a while this market will challenge all-time highs near 3,400 and I don’t see anything in today’s price action that changes my mind. As long as we continue experiencing more up than down, the rebound is alive and well. There is nothing for us to do other than sit back, enjoy the ride, and keep moving our trailing stops up. (Around 3,200 seems like a good level)
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