Tag Archives: pain trade

Greece and The True Pain Trade-A Rare Global Macro View

June 22, 2015 MarketsMuse Staff Reporter Leave a comment

The True Pain Trade in Yields and Euro…Not the Wall Street Pain Trade of Equities

Greece, Grexit and the notorious ‘pain trade’ commentary below is courtesy of MarketsMuse’s extracted rendition of today’s above-titled edition of “Sight Beyond Sight”, the global macro commentary and investment insight newsletter published by Rareview Macro LLC. Added bonus: a thesis for trading EEM.

Those like us who have been in this business for some time will be familiar with Futures Magazine, a cornerstone property of The Alpha Pages and its sister publication FINalternatives. Their new flagship publication, Modern Trader, has just been launched and hit the newsstands last week. The full publication can be viewed HERE (Password: prophets). Our article “Riding The Dollar Bull” begins on page 28. We were pleased to be a centerpiece of this inaugural issue and would like to use this moment to wish CEO Jeff Joseph and Editor-in-Chief Daniel Collins the best of success in this new endeavor.

The True Pain Trade in Yields and Euro…Not the Wall Street Pain Trade of Equities

The professional community is fixated on a “pain trade” – that is, a durable European equity relief rally that lifts all other risk assets in sympathy.

The “Shenzhen-style” bid in European equities this morning argues in favor of that theory and clearly validates the view that risk reduction has been thematic the past two weeks and professionals are left without enough of a position should risk assets continue to appreciate.

This is where this theory stops working, however.

We think this is the wrong way to think about what a Greece resolution means for asset prices going into the third quarter of 2015 and it also tells you why this conversation is about much more than just a 5-10% rally in the German DAX.

Now those who have followed us for years appreciate that we actually have two definitions for the widely-touted phrase “pain trade” – one for the true meaning – that is, lower prices because that leads to investors actually losing money – and one for sales people on Wall Street – that is, some terminology that makes them sound like a “cool kid” who is “in-the-know” for their hedge fund clients who do nothing more than try to capture 60% of any market move up or down so they can justify their existence for a bit longer.

While we appreciate that the “cool kids” believe equity markets can go higher, we think real investors, ones that are not forced to be “close to the Street”, are much more concerned about a breakdown in the correlation of the European carry trade relative to the US dollar.

Let us explain what we mean…

The three drivers of global macro investing during 2012-2015 have been and still are: the US Carry Trade (SPX + UST 10-yr), the Japanese Yen, and the US dollar.

The additional driver of global macro investing during 2015 is: EU Carry Trade (DAX + German 10-yr BUND).

Now, let’s combine a key long-term driver with the additional driver…In today’s edition of Sight Beyond Sight, we provide our readers with an illustrative of the EU Carry Trade (DAX + German 10-yr BUND) versus the U.S. Dollar Index (DXY), and a detailed thesis as to our proposed trade idea.

Model Portfolio – New Position – Emerging Markets Book Hedge

On Friday, in the model portfolio, we spent 10 bps of the NAV and added a long emerging market volatility position in the portfolio overlay return stream to protect the existing long risk positions in the Real-Yen (BRL/JPY) and crude oil (CLX5).

Specifically, we purchased 10,000 iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (EEM) 06/26/15 C41– 39.5 option strangles for $0.31. For the purposes of this model portfolio being liquidity verified, not just time-stamped, we paid $0.02 through the asking price.

Given the binary risk around possible Greek capital controls, we were genuinely shocked to see that such a trade existed in the marketplace. Additionally, the hedge was cheaper than using S&P 500-related options, and has a higher correlation to the Greek stock market. This makes EEM one of the best kept secrets in the market.

The break-even for the trade at the time of execution was 2.23% by next Friday, or exactly the historical 1-sigma move by the end of this week. On a 2-sigma move, the expected profit return is 2.5:1.

On further analysis, we discovered that about 33% of the weekly occurrences during the last 12 months (i.e. last 52 weeks) exceeded the expected 1-sigma move, and that doesn’t even include the potential Greek risk next week!

Ultimately, this means that upon entering the trade there is statistically a 1 in 2 probability that we turn a profit on the position. We like those kind of odds.

Neil Azous is the founder and managing member of Rareview Macro LLC, a global macro advisory firm to some of the world’s most influential investors and the publisher of the daily newsletter Sight Beyond Sight.

Global Macro Strategy

Macro View : Bears & Bulls & Sheep; The Pain Trade: Risk Reduction

October 15, 2014 MarketsMuse Staff Reporter 1 Comment

MarketsMuse Editor Note: At risk of pounding the table too frequently by pointing to global macro strategy think tank “Rareview Macro” and their high-frequency of prescient postulating…the below excerpt from this a.m.’s edition of Rareview’s Sight Beyond Sight illustrates why this analyst is become the analyst ..For those confused by our use of ‘high frequency’, please note that we’ve filed a trademark for a new label “HFP” aka high-frequency prescience; and not to be confused with HFT aka high-frequency trading!. Premium merchandise including t-shirts, ball caps, and other items will be on sale soon!

“…The “True Pain Trade” Now Underway…Only Defence is Outright Risk Reduction”

Yesterday, our main argument was that US equity investors needed to be mindful of chasing higher prices as that was a “bull trap”. We specifically said:

“The key point here is that the S&P 500 finally closed below the 200-day moving average after almost two years and the bounce off the break of that record streak can be large enough to make professionals believe that the weakness is now over.

Make no mistake that is the formula for how we get to 1800 in the S&P 500 next. You suck investors back in only for them to have to liquidate all over again. This time, however, the losses are too great and the even lower prices force them to sell the positions they held onto all the way down in the first place and were not willing to relinquish that time around.

The sentiment is no longer about whether this is a correction or not. It is now about whether it is a 10% or 15% correction.”

At some point our microphone may be louder than it is at the moment, but for now this warning was dismissed by the bulk of investors. At the time of writing the S&P futures (symbols: ESZ4) are down -1.8% from yesterday’s highs. That is the very definition of new longs being trapped at higher prices.

Before dismissing this view we would remind you that the majority of professionals in this business are sheep, and to remain part of the asset gathering business they have to always put themselves in a position to capture ~60% of any market move. And, as sheep would, that is what they tried to do yesterday.

Now most participants who use a Bloomberg terminal just walk into the office and look at the World Equity Index (WEI) screen. This is a lazy exercise as it only provides updates for the major developed markets. The point is that a smart investor should also look at the markets not included on the WEI screen (i.e. Greece) and the Emerging Market Equity Indices (EMEQ) and World Bond Markets (WB) pages.

Why? Continue reading →

Global Macro Strategy

Soothsayers Soliloquy “Sell In May…” Is Just Plain Silly in ZIRP Environment

May 13, 2014 MarketsMuse Staff Reporter Leave a comment

Excerpt below courtesy of this a.m.’s Sight Beyond Sight notes to newsletter subscribers. Today’s edition from Rareview Macro LLC also includes the following talking point: “The True Pain Trade is Not SPX 1920-1950 but Beyond 1950”

Sell in May and Go Away?

Historically, we despise the advice to “sell in May and go away”. The main reason is that very few of the people who make that argument do not actually factor the following considerations into their analysis:

What index are they selling? There is a big difference between the Dow Jones and S&P 500, especially when you take into consideration the index rebalances over time.

When does the period actually begin and end? By that we mean there is a big difference between selling on May 1st and May 15th.

What happens if you just remove September from the equation? September is usually the weakest month of the year and the month that has the biggest impact on a risk-adjusted return basis, so if you take that out it makes a big difference.

What are the external factors? By that we mean was the market up or down going into May 1st. Or was the budget in deficit or surplus or are investor cash balances high or low? These factors all matter as well.

What are the real world implications? The analysis never takes into consideration taxes, transaction costs, where an investor would re-deploy the capital or what would happen if an investors circumstances change and they cannot buy back into the market in November.

All that said, we felt compelled this year to chime in with a couple of thoughts that we have not seen made in the market this time around, perhaps because most of the analysis has just focused on the period following the global financial crisis. Continue reading →