Monday, September 24, 2012

Alpha-D Update for 09/24/12

Let's make this as quick as possible.  My GDX holdings rose through the strike price of the covered call options I wrote last month.  I bought some back and let some go.  Gold stocks are rising again thanks to QE3 hurting the dollar so I'll be trimming my position as it rises.  Remember, gold and other precious metals  respond positively to the beginning of hyperinflationary periods but they are poor long-term hedges against the entirety of a hyperinflationary period.  That means I'll be looking to buy other hard asset equities pretty soon.

I sold off the last of my FXI, just as I said I would do for the past few weeks or so.  My FXI holdings have greatly diminished since I opened the position a couple of years ago, and they did quite well much of that time.  I have since come to my senses on the China story now that their economic figures are pretty much known to be fabrications.  I won't return to any more non-U.S. indexed equity investments for the foreseeable future.  The world's biggest economies have not decoupled and they'll all head down the slope together, at some point.

Here's how the Alpha-D looks right now.  I'm long GDX, FXA, and FXC.  I tried to renew the short option positions that expired for those two currency ETFs (and also FXF, which I'm not holding right now) but the orders wouldn't execute.  I couldn't even write short options on GDX.  What is up with that?  I'll try again tomorrow.

My pile of cash awaits deployment after the inevitable crash.  If I'm lucky, and the market crashes before the Fed and Uncle Sam launch their coordinated wage-price spiral, I may be able to buy U.S. equities at lifetime low prices.  If I'm unlucky, and hyperinflation hits first, I'll buy a basket of hard asset equities I've been tracking and hang on for the ride.

BTW, you may have seen an excess of haiku and a dearth of analysis on my blog for the past few months.  I am heavily engaged with several other projects that have come to dominate a huge amount of my time.  You'll just have to deal with what I publish until I'm finished doing some important work.  I'll tell you all about it when I'm done.  I promise.