Tuesday, April 19, 2022

Trading Update X

In my IRA, all in on TLT @ $119.20. No longer sitting in cash awaiting opportunities. Long-term interest rates have reached the level I predicted in March of 2021. The 20-year bond looks to be the best bargain of the bunch, perhaps because TLT is now so unloved by retail investors and has a similar maturity.

The following chart shows the natural log of the 20-year Treasury bond yield. When using natural logs, constant exponential growth (or in this case, decay) is seen as a straight line. We have reached the trend line in red.


As is usual with my investments, this is intended to be a long-term holding. There's a lot of risk here, but if I am right about the particular path of our long-term future, then I feel pretty good about it. Well, as good as I could feel believing in an illusion of prosperity anyway. Counting on the Fed to engineer some sort of a landing. I do expect the plane to touch the ground again. Hindsight may easily show that touch was way too gentle a word though.

Markets are constantly in a state of uncertainty and flux and money is made by discounting the obvious and betting on the unexpected. - George Soros

6 comments:

Mr Slippery said...

TLT is about the same price as Feb, 2019. Looks very oversold. 20 year yield > 30 year yield so that's a plus. Technicals look good. The bet is that the Fed won't raise too far too fast. That is a big question mark and the mysterians. Hope it doesn't end in 96 tears.

I don't have any investment decisions to make until September when my next bond matures. The picture on real rates might be more clear by then, or not.

Stagflationary Mark said...

TLT is definitely in falling knife mode. Heaven help us all if there is no floor. *cringe*

Anonymous said...

I like that trade for sure. My faith, as you know, in the FED is wildly low. Plus thy have zero room to do much here. Ugly.

I had a sizeable amount to go into GLD, SLV if their March monthly chart held a nice pattern I was watching, but alas, neither confirmed. Oh well, get some scratch tickets!

If you want a change of pace, I now write this weekly if I feel like it. Be warned it's not kind to another US "expert" agency:
https://hystericalblindness.substack.com/

Stagflationary Mark said...

Scratch tickets? Baby needs new shoes!

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=OosR

This latest shoe trend better fail soon or I’ll definitely regret buying TLT.

Anonymous said...

Yep. I’ve been incrementally adding to TLT in my Roth over the past two weeks as well. Put a large amount in yesterday. Ready to make one last buy if it falls again.

I’m betting on a not-so-soft landing.

Stagflationary Mark said...

When it comes to engineering soft landings, there are 10 things the Fed chairmen always count on.

Their fingers.

Badum-ching. ;)