Congratulations. I hope your gambling continues to pay off.
My grandmother always thought that any investing in stocks was gambling. You sound like her.
I sold all my gold call options on Friday for a 140% gain in three months. I am hoping that gold consolidates and resumes its upward move but I will let the market talk to me before doing anything.
Stocks up 67 percent from their lows? No worries.
There are certainly worries. By my estimation, stocks are expensive now. Stocks are not expensive if there is a strong recovery, but I don't think there will be a strong recovery. I had been selling weak positions that past few weeks and I hedged all the rest of my positions out on Friday. I am now slightly net short and may get aggressively short soon.
As for being up 67%, at the bottom in March, the median trailing price/earnings ratio of stocks in the Russell 2000 was 5.7x. That was comparable to lows you saw in 1982 and 1973. The median PE in the S&P 500 was less than 8x. That's generational cheap. Stocks have rebounded hard because they were priced for Armageddon. Armageddon didn't happen and unsurprisingly, stocks have soared.
Junk bonds were priced at levels as low or lower than they were priced for worse than the Depression. Spreads in the high-yield structured market were 16% above Treasuries and 19% in the physical market, highest ever, implying a greater level of default (outside of banks) than the Great Depression. So, like stocks, when the world didn't end, junk bonds were generational cheap and have soared.
Spreads in the CMBS market implied levels of default in the commercial real estate market multiple times higher than the Great Depression. The fixed income market was beyond stupid.
Sold it. Hope to buy it back. Maybe I'll short it if it becomes apparent it is rolling over.
If you are going to trade it, you have to know what you are doing. Since you think this is gambling, you probably don't know what you are doing and should stay on the sidelines.
Crude at $80 and climbing? Agriculture commodities ramping? Surging prices for sugar ... cotton ... wheat ... platinum ... silver ... copper ... aluminum ... lead ... ZINC? Pu-shaw! Nothing to worry about.
There is no asset bubble. There is no asset bubble. There is no asset bubble. There is no asset bubble.
Can you please tell me who in this thread has said there is no asset bubble?
In fact, the creation of asset bubbles is central to my own investing theme.
The governments are doing the exact same thing to save the economy now as they did in the earlier part of the decade. The differences are that the scale of government intervention is massively bigger now but the transmission mechanisms that existed have been destroyed as the shadow banking system has basically collapsed. Nonetheless, the excess liquidity in the system has to flow somewhere, and it has been flowing into gold and commodities.
All real assets will benefit from this policy as the government is systemically devaluing the dollar. But contrary to what guys like Peter Schiff say, the dollar cannot collapse against other fiat currencies because it is the anchor of the global economic system. If the dollar fell to, say, 3 euros, it would gut the European manufacturing sector, which would relocate to the United States. Thus, if the dollar falls, all currencies fall, and everything that cannot be created ad infinitum, like gold, rises. The best deal in the world right now IMHO is American physical land. I closed on a small but beautiful piece of land this week a minute's walk from one of the most spectacular beaches in the world that I bought down 92%. I don't know anything else in the world that is down 92% that will benefit from the re-liquification of the global financial system. I hope it keeps going down so I can buy some more.
The economy is recovering. The economy is recovering. The economy is recovering. The economy is recovering. This is the bottom. This is the bottom. This is the bottom. This is the bottom.
Keep repeating until you believe it.
I was short the market going into 2008, primarily through shorting REITs. I was up 20% in the fall of 2008 and covered shortly after Lehman collapsed. I started buying but that was too early and wiped out all my gains for the year and then some. I wound up being down 5% in 2008, my worst year ever, but still better than 99% of the other professional money managers in this country. And despite 2008, I've done pretty well since the crisis began.
I do this for a living. I am measured by my bottom line. I've seen too many people get emotionally entangled in their positions. They don't last. Apart from wanting to see people stop hurting and instead do better, from a trading and investing perspective, it makes no difference to me if the economy is getting better or worse. I will find a way to make money on the long or the short side. Doesn't mean I'm always right, far from it, but I have zero invested emotionally or mentally on the economy getting better or worse. Makes little difference to me.
You probably won't enjoy the rest of this post. I apologize if you find it offensive. It is not personal, just the facts as I see them based upon 25 years of investment experience as a high net worth individual. 
