lever.ventures

“Super Thursday” came and went. Little more than headlines came of it at least initially, certainly the UK election had the most impact causing Brexit fears and GBPUSD getting slammed -1.62% or so.

I’m predicting that this month will have a number of politicians quitting, getting fired, or some other liquidation of political offices in a single day. Right now I’m saying UK or US, but an EU member country or the EU itself could be it. Brazil is another obvious choice.

Next, The 22nd of June (give or take a day or two) has a very high probability of a pretty bad day in the markets or if we continue to sell off (us equities -5%) the 22nd could be a big the reversal/recovery day.

Crypto in a broad sense will get very volatile around that time as well. However Im getting more and more convinced that XRP or Ripple will suffer a major blow, a capitulation or even federal/legal actions.

Anyway, happy Sunday!

The world is nuts, nuts I say! I wanted to time stamp some of my thoughts in here on the state of financial markets as of today, this morning, right now on 7 June, 2017 the day before “Super Thursday” which is

• The ECB interest rate decision and press conference
• Former FBI Director Comey testifies
• Exit polls from British General Election where Theresa May is expected to win, which we’ll have an answer on Friday morning
• Brazil could announce if the 2014 election results are void due to fraud

Then would love to follow back up after all the news is out and update my new thoughts after all this whacky stuff happens!

I’ve no political affiliation here, my job is to interpret the situation at any given time (and hopefully in the future) and position myself in a way to take advantage of the opportunities presented, but more so to prevent from catastrophe. Not implying catastrophe is imminent only that this is how I’m viewing the global macro situation. One party will effect me one way, so I need to interpret and adjust to their system and another party will do it another way so I adjust to that system. I’ve found that being political in my views forces mistakes in my decision making, I already know that paying more taxes is something I don’t like so I have to take that into account when I make decisions. I also know that if my dollars can’t buy as much as before even though I’m paying less in taxes, it’s the same net result as higher taxes. Healthcare, environment, infrastructure, weak dollar, security, or any other number of political initiatives are very emotional for a lot of people, for good reason. My larger goal is to not let any of these issues interfere in my analysis and decision making except anticipating the results of the changes.

To state it even more clearly, none of my views here are political, merely my personal interpretation and I’m sharing with you all because I’m curious of any thoughts you all might have.

Crypto Currency Positions

• Long BTC, ETH, XMR. SJCX, VTC, STR
• Short XRP/BTC and ETH/BTC

To clarify the XRP/BTC play means that I’m short XRP and I’m long BTC at the same time, so as BTC rises and XRP stays the same price, I make money. As XRP drops and BTC rises I make a lot more money. If XRP rises and BTC drops or stays the same, I lose money.

ETH/BTC this is a bet that ETH will pull back a little bit here while BTC runs to 3000, 4000 or 5000. Not that I don’t believe ETH will also run away to 300, 1000, 5000, but on a short term basis I’m looking to trade it a bit lower.

While XRP and Ripple are definite shorts, ETH/BTC is just a trade

I continue to own and buy more ETH any time I get my hands on more cash as I don’t trust the dollar.

Global Macro Positions

• Long GBP/USD, TLT
• Short SPY, USDJPY, USDCAD

The Dollar! I’m short USDJPY and have been since March in a big way, this week it finally materialized and started moving towards the $100 level (my first target) and expect an even bigger move down. I believe this week might be the catalyst for some bad financial times to come, not trying to be an alarmist, but verbalizing what I think is going to start playing out.

At 0% interest rates worldwide, I don’t think there is much else that can be done when another financial crisis happens (China, Canada, Qatar, N Korea, the EU just bailed out Banco Popular in Spain last night) war in western Europe (terror attacks are daily/weekly events that we just shrug at and so common that we don’t even apply Facebook filters for anymore). So I imagine there will be some rate hikes, albeit short lived, so as the central banks have a little ammo to work with.

The Russian hacking of electoral machines report is an actual act of cyber war, by actively hacking a US Federal Government device, it’s the equivalent of the Russian Military shooting US Military, this is not a political opinion and totally different than the Fake News/Russia influenced the election political argument. This is clearly something that is being addressed on so many federal levels, and I’m certain no one in the world wants to go to war with Russia over this, very VERY interesting.

Also WTF, this Reality Winner NSA Contractor, who leaked the documents to The Intercept does not make sense to me. She has a TS, she knows the repercussions of her actions mean federal prison for a long time, her family goes through hell, something is fishy here. So she’s altruistic? Did somebody inside NSA set her up? Is she part of a coup? Might be more to come on this, might not be.

The timing of the Qatar sanctions, Germany pulling out of Turkey, Turkey deploying troops to Qatar, the US having CentCom in Qatar, Iran bombing, so many things happening there right now to name and I certainly haven’t spent enough time thinking about it yet. Though I believe it might very well be WWIII or just nothing.  Regardless I’m going to just make a brief mention of it because well I need to think on it more.

Trump is unraveling a lot of what has been built up since Nixon. A Bush or Clinton has been in the top 3 positions of our government since 1980 save for a few short term windows, and in high level government roles since Nixon. Tillerson was placed by GWB to ensure the wheels don’t fall off, but Trump seems to be making some interesting moves.

This summer is shaping up to be a very exciting time to be alive.

If we make it through June without a major catastrophe then September is the next time frame I’m most worried about.

Have a plan

For the past week or so Crypto Currencies have been all the rage. That is to say, they are RAGING!

Our two core holdings in the Crypto world, Ethereum (ETH) and Bitcoin (BTC) have been rocking since the algo buy signal’s.

• BTC Entry $1060 (April 2, 2017)
• ETH (in Bitcoin vs US Dollars)$.039851 (April 26, 2017)

News of a Crypto ETF being reviewed (again) by the SEC has helped add fuel to this fire, but the train left the station long before the SEC rumors. Crypto’s offer a hedge against catastrophe if nothing else, also a way for people to pull money out of a countries banking system that is regulating withdrawals, or just your everyday momentum trader noting that Bitcoin has return nearly 300% year over year.

Our belief is that there is opportunity and a lot of upside room for these new currencies to run, not to mention the improvement in a financial system that is basically a proxy for wars with major nation states, without firing a single round. More importantly our algorithms really do love trading Crypto’s as the moves are so pronounced, they move dramatically and have distance when they finally take off.

Year to date Crypto’s have returned 4x and it’s just March.

Twitter, holy crap! From the depth’s of hell, this the most hated stock on wall street has rallied off it’s lows of $14.20 to the price at the time of this writing of $18.36.

We’ve been eyeing TWTR since the run up to earnings in February and the subsequent smashing since. Finally a signal was generated at $14.42 on the 12th of April, prior to earnings, and we have moved about $4 since then. Our belief is that all the bad news was out on TWTR, when bad news comes out and a stock stops dropping, that’s about when things change. CEO Jack Dorsey added to his TWTR position, buying another $9 million dollars worth of stock, Mark Cuban bought a bunch, it was obvious that people were starting to see TWTR differently.

And now TWTR bets heavily on the media part, of the social media title, inking more deals with content providers and starting to look a lot less like a social feed and a lot more like what Comcast wants to be. This stock has plenty of room for growth as they change the conversation from competing with Facebook and Snap to being the new scrappy little contender in media.

What got TWTR to where they were in the past, will be what makes them scary in the future. After trimming the fat, pivoting their business, all the while maintaining a strong engineering culture, they are now positioned to take on the biggest of media giants who are all trying to figure out how to get on the small screen. TWTR arguably owns the small screen (compared to their larger competitors at least) and is doing a great job of rounding up content.

We believe that this move by the company will have a major effect, and that TWTR is on the right path, in as much as our strategy continues to confirms this, we will continue to hold and look to acquire more when the opportunity is signaled.

Current Holdings

Longs

• TWTR ($14.22)
• TLT (20 Year Treasury Bonds) $120.07
• ETH-BTC (Ethereum in Bitcoin denomination) $.039851
• BTC-USD (Bitcoin in US Dollars) $1060
• GBPUSD $1.24386

Shorts

• SPY $238.29
• USDJPY $122.907
• USDCAD $1.29865