Peter C3 and myself had been planning to have a ‘Guest’ on an episode of the infamous, award breaking, ‘Twin Petes Investing’ Podcast for ages and never really got around to it; until C3 had this genius idea to coincide with our Xmas output, of having a sort of opportunity for a Listener to appear in a future episode with us.
The basis for choosing who was going to attend was based on a simple Tweet response to explain why the Listener enjoyed Investing, and then we looked through the responses and chose one that stood out for the deep meaning within it and the simplicity of the message. Anyway, we had never spoken to Ryan before (although we have both interacted with him textually on Twitter) and of course we ran a huge risk of picking someone who really wouldn’t make an enthralling episode.
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I’m hoping I can complete this Blog but there is a real possibility I will have to abandon it partly written !! Sadly I am still suffering from these tedious health problems and what I believed was caused by a Bladder Infection seems to be continuing despite the Infection being cleared up with Antibiotics. I have no idea what is wrong and unless I have a miracle recovery tomorrow (I am typing this on Saturday Night), I will be talking to my GP again on Monday with regards to what can be done next and I suspect a Blood Test is needed and maybe that will highlight a problem.
Anyway, I will do what I can, but it is very awkward trying to sit at my desk and type and if it gets too uncomfortable, then I will have to abandon it. I will try to keep this short and get it done as fast as I can with a focus on updating the usual ‘admin’ type stuff and hopefully looking quickly at some Charts.
This probably won’t be hugely lengthy because I am actually starting it on Friday Night and hopefully I can get it nailed and published on Saturday Night – because I am off to the Pub on Sunday if everything goes to plan. After weeks and weeks of Lockdown and all that, I am pretty desperate to do something a bit more ‘normal’ although in truth I don’t tend to go out all that much over the Winter hibernation period anyway. I don’t do cold and I certainly don’t do wet and that icy stuff is just not in my vocabulary……
Earlier today the latest Podcast TPI 37 was issued and I think Listeners will enjoy it. We cover loads of Stocks and some in quite a bit of detail, and also there is a lot about the likely Roadmap for the Markets through December and into January and Springtime next year. It is impossible to be 100% correct on such predictive slants, but having a rough idea what is most likely to occur, and having a plan for if/when that doesn’t play out, gives a very good direction to head off in.
In case you don’t read my Tweets (you don’t need a Twitter Account – there are Twitter Feeds embedded in several places on my Websites – have a poke around), I didn’t put out a Charts Blog last weekend because I had some health niggles. Hopefully those are better now and the flow of Blogs shouldn’t get interrupted again.
I am typing this bit on Saturday Evening, the 28th Nov, and we are really just 1 month to go in what has been a year that has thrown our emotions all over the place and our Portfolios as well !! I am sure everyone will be very pleased to see the Calendar turn over to 2021 and whatever happens, it will be a big ask for it to be worse than 2020.
So Monday in particular and then the remains of the Week, turned out to be pretty momentous with both the fundamental news of a potential Vaccine and the Biden win (most likely tempered by the Republicans keeping control of the Senate), but also from a technical viewpoint the Markets have done some pretty significant stuff which I will come onto later in the Charts bit.
I got caught out on Monday and this hurt my returns for the week, although I didn’t really do much ‘wrong’ that I can actually fix as such. If anything, my only error was in having a FTSE100 Short Hedge which was too large and I should have kept it more in line with the level of Long Exposure I had in my Spreadbet Portfolio; in reality it was probably about 50% higher than the ideal.
I’m typing this first chunk of text on Saturday Night, and from what I am hearing it looks like Grandpa Biden will be the New President and with any luck the craziness of the Trump Administration will now go away. Although of course, none of the division within the Country will be resolved and it is remarkable how the US is split 50/50 down the middle, in a similar way to how the UK was over the Brexit Vote.
Of course nobody can know what the next 4 years will bring, although what we do know is that the American Public have somehow managed to orchestrate a Political Machine that will be pretty powerless and unable to get almost anything done. With the Republicans still holding power in the Upper House, then it will be quite a challenge for the Democrats to get much new Legislation through and on the plus side for Markets, it should mean that the more extreme Left-wing policies should hit the buffers.
I was truly astonished back in March when the Government willingly forced the UK Economy into Recession as throughout modern history governments of all colours have understood the link between bad economic times and social problems such as increased poverty, wealth inequality, worse health, shorter lifespans etc. etc.
So I am really taken aback that a Government – and above all that, a TORY GOVERNMENT – would deliberately force a Recession for the second time in around half a year. It is truly history in the making; although of course it would be fully justified to get a sense that this will not play out well at all.
I’m starting this on Saturday night (and hopefully I can complete it tonight !!) as I am hoping to watch MotoGP all morning tomorrow and then in the afternoon/evening I am popping down to Fleet in Hampshire to visit a mate. Time is quite tight (mainly because I have spent all day watching the MotoGP Qualifying !!) so it may not be the longest Blog I have bashed out.
We got quite a sell-off during the week on the FTSE100 and the Triangle that I was talking about broke to the downside. This is clearly not good news although there was a huge bounce on Friday and it is pretty opaque with regards to how far this can continue in the coming week. I will look at the relevant Charts in a bit, and if I remember I will also look at how the Monthlies are shaping up because we have just one week left in October and the Candlesticks for September were a bit rubbish. Bearish Candles for October might suggest we will not have an easy close out to 2020. With the Economic disaster unfolding no one should be shocked.
Rightly or wrongly, we seem as a Nation to be fully in the tractor-beam of another total Lockdown and of course the economic, social, cultural, health, political, etc. ramifications of this are immense and there are no upsides here. With such a backdrop it seems to me that this is an extremely dangerous time to be buying Stocks and I am now up to 50% Hedged via FTSE100 Short Spreadbets (see my ‘Trades’ page on WD1) and I have no intentions of buying anything, and my bias will be to the sell side.
On top of all the Virus challenges, we also have a potentially very messy Presidential Election in the US and later this coming week there is another TV debate between Biden and Trump which is unlikely to calm the waters in any way. I think the Election is a couple of weeks away and it would be nice to see that sorted but my fear is that if Biden wins then Trump won’t accept it with any kind of grace (blimey, what an understatement that is) which could mean all sorts of strife both in the Courts and on the Streets.
No, I’m not talking about the performance of my Portfolio last week, but this was how Kier Starmer (Labour party so-called Leader) characterized the mess that our current government is creating. He isn’t far wrong !!
The latest GDP figures (looks like they are for August so the situation in September is likely to be pretty scary) shows GDP growth of 2.1% and this was a fair bit behind some expectations of 4%+. After a strong bounce-back after Lockdown was eased, it is clear that growth is slowing and I think the most likely scenario is that growth continues to contract as we get into the ‘Second Wave’ (that’s not waving, it’s drowning !!), and the government policies destroy any remaining flickers of economic life. With such a background it is difficult to get bullish on Stocks although the Charts are telling me that the US wants to go higher, even with the Presidential Election not far away (and the potential for mess that creates). I will look at how the Charts stand later in this blog but just on fundamentals the outlook for the UK is pretty rough and that is without the Brexit situation as well. On the subject of Brexit, it strikes me that a deal will be cobbled together and a lot of the noise we have been hearing is the usual idiot politicians (on both sides !!!) playing the macho bully boys. Pathetic. I hope you like Fudge. |
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