Hello, dummies
It's your old pal, Fuzzy.
As I'm sure you've all noticed, a lot of the stuff that gets posted here is - to put it delicately - fucking ridiculous. More backwards-ass shit gets posted to wallstreetbets than you'd see on a Westboro Baptist community message board. I mean, I had a look at the daily thread yesterday and..... yeesh. I know, I know. We all make like the divine Laura Dern circa 1992 on the daily and stick our hands deep into this steaming heap of shit to find the nuggets of valuable and/or hilarious information within (thanks for reading, BTW). I agree. I love it just the way it is too. That's what makes WSB great.
What I'm getting at is that a lot of the stuff that gets posted here - notwithstanding it being funny or interesting - is just... wrong. Like, fucking your cousin wrong. And to be clear, I mean the fucking your *first* cousin kinda wrong, before my Southerners in the back get all het up (simmer down, Billy Ray - I know Mabel's twice removed on your grand-sister's side). Truly, I try to let it slide. I do my bit to try and put you on the right path. Most of the time, I sleep easy no matter how badly I've seen someone explain what a bank liquidity crisis is. But out of all of those tens of thousands of misguided, autistic attempts at understanding the world of high finance, one thing gets so consistently - so *emphatically* - fucked up and misunderstood by you retards that last night I felt obligated at the end of a long work day to pull together this edition of Finance with Fuzzy just for you. It's so serious I'm not even going to make a u/pokimane gag. Have you guessed what it is yet? Here's a clue. It's in the title of the post.
That's right, friends. Today in the neighborhood we're going to talk all about hedging in financial markets - spots, swaps, collars, forwards, CDS, synthetic CDOs, all that fun shit. Don't worry; I'm going to explain what all the scary words mean and how they impact your OTM RH positions along the way.
We're going to break it down like this. (1) "What's a hedge, Fuzzy?" (2) Common Hedging Strategies and (3) All About ISDAs and Credit Default Swaps.
Before we begin. For the nerds and JV traders in the back (and anyone else who needs to hear this up front) - I am simplifying these descriptions for the purposes of this post. I am also obviously not going to try and cover every exotic form of hedge under the sun or give a detailed summation of what caused the financial crisis. If you are interested in something specific ask a question, but don't try and impress me with your Investopedia skills or technical points I didn't cover; I will just be forced to flex my years of IRL experience on you in the comments and you'll look like a big dummy.
TL;DR? Fuck you. There is no TL;DR. You've come this far already. What's a few more paragraphs? Put down the Cheetos and try to concentrate for the next 5-7 minutes. You'll learn something, and I promise I'll be gentle.
Ready? Let's get started.
1. The Tao of Risk: Hedging as a Way of Life
The simplest way to characterize what a hedge 'is' is to imagine every action having a binary outcome. One is bad, one is good. Red lines, green lines; uppie, downie. With me so far? Good. A 'hedge' is simply the employment of a strategy to mitigate the effect of your action having the wrong binary outcome. You wanted X, but you got Z! Frowny face. A hedge strategy introduces a third outcome. If you hedged against the possibility of Z happening, then you can wind up with Y instead. Not as good as X, but not as bad as Z. The technical definition I like to give my idiot juniors is as follows:
Utilization of a defensive strategy to mitigate risk, at a fraction of the cost to capital of the risk itself.
Congratulations. You just finished Hedging 101. "But Fuzzy, that's easy! I just sold a naked call against my 95% OTM put! I'm adequately hedged!". Spoiler alert: you're not (although good work on executing a collar, which I describe below). What I'm talking about here is what would be referred to as a 'perfect hedge'; a binary outcome where downside is totally mitigated by a risk management strategy. That's not how it works IRL. Pay attention; this is the tricky part.
You can't take a single position and conclude that you're adequately hedged because risks are fluid, not static. So you need to constantly adjust your position in order to maximize the value of the hedge and insure your position. You also need to consider exposure to more than one category of risk. There are micro (specific exposure) risks, and macro (trend exposure) risks, and both need to factor into the hedge calculus.
That's why, in the real world, the value of hedging depends entirely on the design of the hedging strategy itself. Here, when we say "value" of the hedge, we're not talking about cash money - we're talking about the intrinsic value of the hedge relative to the the risk profile of your underlying exposure. To achieve this, people hedge dynamically. In wallstreetbets terms, this means that as the value of your position changes, you need to change your hedges too. The idea is to efficiently and continuously distribute and rebalance risk across different states and periods, taking value from states in which the marginal cost of the hedge is low and putting it back into states where marginal cost of the hedge is high, until the shadow value of your underlying exposure is equalized across your positions. The punchline, I guess, is that one static position is a hedge in the same way that the finger paintings you make for your wife's boyfriend are art - it's technically correct, but you're only playing yourself by believing it.
Anyway. Obviously doing this as a small potatoes trader is hard but it's worth taking into account. Enough basic shit. So how does this work in markets?
2. A Hedging Taxonomy
The best place to start here is a practical question. What does a business need to hedge against? Think about the specific risk that an individual business faces. These are legion, so I'm just going to list a few of the key ones that apply to most corporates. (1) You have commodity risk for the shit you buy or the shit you use. (2) You have currency risk for the money you borrow. (3) You have rate risk on the debt you carry. (4) You have offtake risk for the shit you sell. Complicated, right? To help address the many and varied ways that shit can go wrong in a sophisticated market, smart operators like yours truly have devised a whole bundle of different instruments which can help you manage the risk. I might write about some of the more complicated ones in a later post if people are interested (CDO/CLOs, strip/stack hedges and bond swaps with option toggles come to mind) but let's stick to the basics for now.
(i) Swaps
A swap is one of the most common forms of hedge instrument, and they're used by pretty much everyone that can afford them. The language is complicated but the concept isn't, so pay attention and you'll be fine. This is the most important part of this section so it'll be the longest one.
Swaps are derivative contracts with two counterparties (before you ask, you can't trade 'em on an exchange - they're OTC instruments only). They're used to exchange one cash flow for another cash flow of equal expected value; doing this allows you to take speculative positions on certain financial prices or to alter the cash flows of existing assets or liabilities within a business. "Wait, Fuzz; slow down! What do you mean sets of cash flows?". Fear not, little autist. Ol' Fuzz has you covered.
The cash flows I'm talking about are referred to in swap-land as 'legs'. One leg is fixed - a set payment that's the same every time it gets paid - and the other is variable - it fluctuates (typically indexed off the price of the underlying risk that you are speculating on / protecting against). You set it up at the start so that they're notionally equal and the two legs net off; so at open, the swap is a zero NPV instrument. Here's where the fun starts. If the price that you based the variable leg of the swap on changes, the value of the swap will shift; the party on the wrong side of the move ponies up via the variable payment. It's a zero sum game.
I'll give you an example using the most vanilla swap around; an interest rate trade. Here's how it works. You borrow money from a bank, and they charge you a rate of interest. You lock the rate up front, because you're smart like that. But then - quelle surprise! - the rate gets better after you borrow. Now you're bagholding to the tune of, I don't know, 5 bps. Doesn't sound like much but on a billion dollar loan that's a lot of money (a classic example of the kind of 'small, deep hole' that's terrible for profits). Now, if you had a swap contract on the rate before you entered the trade, you're set; if the rate goes down, you get a payment under the swap. If it goes up, whatever payment you're making to the bank is netted off by the fact that you're borrowing at a sub-market rate. Win-win! Or, at least, Lose Less / Lose Less. That's the name of the game in hedging.
There are many different kinds of swaps, some of which are pretty exotic; but they're all different variations on the same theme. If your business has exposure to something which fluctuates in price, you trade swaps to hedge against the fluctuation. The valuation of swaps is also super interesting but I guarantee you that 99% of you won't understand it so I'm not going to try and explain it here although I encourage you to google it if you're interested.
Because they're OTC, none of them are filed publicly. Someeeeeetimes you see an ISDA (dsicussed below) but the confirms themselves (the individual swaps) are not filed. You can usually read about the hedging strategy in a 10-K, though. For what it's worth, most modern credit agreements ban speculative hedging. Top tip: This is occasionally something worth checking in credit agreements when you invest in businesses that are debt issuers - being able to do this increases the risk profile significantly and is particularly important in times of economic volatility (ctrl+f "non-speculative" in the credit agreement to be sure).
(ii) Forwards
A forward is a contract made today for the future delivery of an asset at a pre-agreed price. That's it. "But Fuzzy! That sounds just like a futures contract!". I know. Confusing, right? Just like a futures trade, forwards are generally used in commodity or forex land to protect against price fluctuations. The differences between forwards and futures are small but significant. I'm not going to go into super boring detail because I don't think many of you are commodities traders but it is still an important thing to understand even if you're just an RH jockey, so stick with me.
Just like swaps, forwards are OTC contracts - they're not publicly traded. This is distinct from futures, which are traded on exchanges (see The Ballad Of Big Dick Vick for some more color on this). In a forward, no money changes hands until the maturity date of the contract when delivery and receipt are carried out; price and quantity are locked in from day 1. As you now know having read about BDV, futures are marked to market daily, and normally people close them out with synthetic settlement using an inverse position. They're also liquid, and that makes them easier to unwind or close out in case shit goes sideways.
People use forwards when they absolutely have to get rid of the thing they made (or take delivery of the thing they need). If you're a miner, or a farmer, you use this shit to make sure that at the end of the production cycle, you can get rid of the shit you made (and you won't get fucked by someone taking cash settlement over delivery). If you're a buyer, you use them to guarantee that you'll get whatever the shit is that you'll need at a price agreed in advance. Because they're OTC, you can also exactly tailor them to the requirements of your particular circumstances.
These contracts are incredibly byzantine (and there are even crazier synthetic forwards you can see in money markets for the true degenerate fund managers). In my experience, only Texan oilfield magnates, commodities traders, and the weirdo forex crowd fuck with them. I (i) do not own a 10 gallon hat or a novelty size belt buckle (ii) do not wake up in the middle of the night freaking out about the price of pork fat and (iii) love greenbacks too much to care about other countries' monopoly money, so I don't fuck with them.
(iii) Collars
No, not the kind your wife is encouraging you to wear try out to 'spice things up' in the bedroom during quarantine. Collars are actually the hedging strategy most applicable to WSB. Collars deal with options! Hooray!
To execute a basic collar (also called a wrapper by tea-drinking Brits and people from the Antipodes), you buy an out of the money put while simultaneously writing a covered call on the same equity. The put protects your position against price drops and writing the call produces income that offsets the put premium. Doing this limits your tendies (you can only profit up to the strike price of the call) but also writes down your risk. If you screen large volume trades with a VOL/OI of more than 3 or 4x (and they're not bullshit biotech stocks), you can sometimes see these being constructed in real time as hedge funds protect themselves on their shorts.
(3) All About ISDAs, CDS and Synthetic CDOs
You may have heard about the mythical ISDA. Much like an indenture (discussed in my post on $F), it's a magic legal machine that lets you build swaps via trade confirms with a willing counterparty. They are very complicated legal documents and you need to be a true expert to fuck with them. Fortunately, I am, so I do. They're made of two parts; a Master (which is a form agreement that's always the same) and a Schedule (which amends the Master to include your specific terms). They are also the engine behind just about every major credit crunch of the last 10+ years.
First - a brief explainer. An ISDA is a not in and of itself a hedge - it's an umbrella contract that governs the terms of your swaps, which you use to construct your hedge position. You can trade commodities, forex, rates, whatever, all under the same ISDA.
Let me explain. Remember when we talked about swaps? Right. So. You can trade swaps on just about anything. In the late 90s and early 2000s, people had the smart idea of using other people's debt and or credit ratings as the variable leg of swap documentation. These are called credit default swaps. I was actually starting out at a bank during this time and, I gotta tell you, the only thing I can compare people's enthusiasm for this shit to was that moment in your early teens when you discover jerking off. Except, unlike your bathroom bound shame sessions to Mom's Sears catalogue, every single person you know felt that way too; and they're all doing it at once. It was a fiscal circlejerk of epic proportions, and the financial crisis was the inevitable bukkake finish. WSB autism is absolutely no comparison for the enthusiasm people had during this time for lighting each other's money on fire.
Here's how it works. You pick a company. Any company. Maybe even your own! And then you write a swap. In the swap, you define "Credit Event" with respect to that company's debt as the variable leg . And you write in... whatever you want. A ratings downgrade, default under the docs, failure to meet a leverage ratio or FCCR for a certain testing period... whatever. Now, this started out as a hedge position, just like we discussed above. The purest of intentions, of course. But then people realized - if bad shit happens, you make money. And banks... don't like calling in loans or forcing bankruptcies. Can you smell what the moral hazard is cooking?
Enter synthetic CDOs. CDOs are basically pools of asset backed securities that invest in debt (loans or bonds). They've been around for a minute but they got famous in the 2000s because a shitload of them containing subprime mortgage debt went belly up in 2008. This got a lot of publicity because a lot of sad looking rednecks got foreclosed on and were interviewed on CNBC. "OH!", the people cried. "Look at those big bad bankers buying up subprime loans! They caused this!". Wrong answer, America. The debt wasn't the problem. What a lot of people don't realize is that the real meat of the problem was not in regular way CDOs investing in bundles of shit mortgage debts in synthetic CDOs investing in CDS predicated on that debt. They're synthetic because they don't have a stake in the actual underlying debt; just the instruments riding on the coattails. The reason these are so popular (and remain so) is that smart structured attorneys and bankers like your faithful correspondent realized that an even more profitable and efficient way of building high yield products with limited downside was investing in instruments that profit from failure of debt and in instruments that rely on that debt and then hedging that exposure with other CDS instruments in paired trades, and on and on up the chain. The problem with doing this was that everyone wound up exposed to everybody else's books as a result, and when one went tits up, everybody did. Hence, recession, Basel III, etc. Thanks, Obama.
Heavy investment in CDS can also have a warping effect on the price of debt (something else that happened during the pre-financial crisis years and is starting to happen again now). This happens in three different ways. (1) Investors who previously were long on the debt hedge their position by selling CDS protection on the underlying, putting downward pressure on the debt price. (2) Investors who previously shorted the debt switch to buying CDS protection because the relatively illiquid debt (partic. when its a bond) trades at a discount below par compared to the CDS. The resulting reduction in short selling puts upward pressure on the bond price. (3) The delta in price and actual value of the debt tempts some investors to become NBTs (neg basis traders) who long the debt and purchase CDS protection. If traders can't take leverage, nothing happens to the price of the debt. If basis traders can take leverage (which is nearly always the case because they're holding a hedged position), they can push up or depress the debt price, goosing swap premiums etc. Anyway. Enough technical details.
I could keep going. This is a fascinating topic that is very poorly understood and explained, mainly because the people that caused it all still work on the street and use the same tactics today (it's also terribly taught at business schools because none of the teachers were actually around to see how this played out live). But it relates to the topic of today's lesson, so I thought I'd include it here.
Work depending, I'll be back next week with a covenant breakdown. Most upvoted ticker gets the post.
*EDIT 1\* In a total blowout, $PLAY won. So it's D&B time next week. Post will drop Monday at market open.

Fellow idiots,
I posted this comment which seems to have angered the highly sophisticated /investing community. I don't mind being downvoted but at least provide some counter arguments if you're going to be a dick. So in the pursuit of truth and tendies for all, I have prepared some juicy due diligence (DD) for WSB Capital on why China is on the verge of collapse.
TL;DR at the bottom.
Point 1: Defaults in China have been accelerating aggressively, and through July 2019, 274 real estate developers filed for bankruptcy, up 50% over last year. A bonus? Many Chinese state controlled banks have been filing for bankruptcy as well. Just google "china bank defaults" or something similar. Notice how many articles there are from 2019? When the banking system fails, everything else usually fails too.
Point 2: The RMB has depreciated significantly. Last time this happened, in 2015-2016, there was a significant outflow of foreign invested capital. According to the IIF, outflows reached $725bn due to the currency depreciation.. This time is different why again? I have heard some arguments why there will be less outflow this time, but I struggle to buy them.
Point 3: Despite wanting to operate like a developed economy, China still has not been able to shrug off the middle income trap. Their GDP per capita is comparable to countries we normally associated with being developing/emerging markets. Tangentially related to point 10.
Point 4: China is an export-dependent economy, with about 20% of their exports contributing towards their GDP. Less exporting means less GDP, less consumption (because businesses make less money, they pay people less, who in turn spend less), which has a greater effect on GDP than any declines in exports would have at face value. Guess what? Chinese exports dropped 1% in August, and August imports dropped -1%, marking the 5th month this year of negative m/m export growth..
Point 5: Business confidence has been weak in China - declining at a sustained pace worse than in 2015. When businesses feel worse, they spend less, invest less in fixed assets, hire less until they feel better about the future. Which takes me to my next point.
Point 6: Fixed asset investment in China has declined 30 percentage points since 2010. While rates are low, confidence is also low, and they are sitting on a record amount of leverage, which means they simply will not be able to afford additional investment.
Point 7: They are an extremely levered economy with a total debt to GDP ratio of over 300%, per the IIF, which also accounts for roughly 15% of global total fucking debt. Here's an interview with someone else talking about it too.
Point 8: Their central bank recently introduced a metric fuckton of stimulus into their economy. This will encourage more borrowing....add fuel to the fire. Moreover, the stimulus will mechanically likely weaken the RMB even more, which could lead to even more foreign outflows, which are already happening, see next point.
Point 9: Fucking LOTS of outflows this year. As of MAY, according to this joint statement, around 40% of US companies are relocating some portion of their supply chains away from mainland. This was in May. Since May, we have seen even more tariffs imposed, why WOULD companies want to stay when exporting to the US is a lot more expensive now?
Point 10: Ignoring ALL of the points above, we are in a global synchronized slowdown, with many emerging market central banks cutting rates - by the most in a decade. Investors want safety, and safe-haven denominated assets are where we have seen a lot of flocking into recently. Things that can be considered safe-havens have good liquidity, a relatively stable economy, and a predictable political environment.
Would love to hear opposing thoughts if you think China is a good buy. I am not against China, nor any other country for that matter, but I am against losing money (yes, wrong sub etc.), and I can not rationalize why anyone would be putting in a bid.
TL;DR: the bubble is right in front of your face, impending doom ahead, short everything, fuck /investing.
Edit, since you 'tards keep asking me how to trade this, there are a few trades that come to mind:

• US treasuries still have room to run (before the autists say that's not yolo enough you could trade OTM calls on UST-linked ETFs, US govvie futures for gainz)
  
• Japanese yen
  
• Sell SPX companies with big supply chain exposure and heavy cost of capital, buy their competitors without these features.
  
• Open up apparel factories in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and sell to the US.
  
• Buy soybeans assuming farmers get a bailout from US
  
• I am sure there are plenty of China based ETFs which could be played, DYOR.
  
• Short any US listed company with mainland China domicile. If shit REALLY hits the fan between US/China, there are levers that US Govt. can pull to fuck them.
  

^{*not investment advice*}

Not many people like to talk about bear markets, especially not when the more emotive terms such as "Stock market crash" are used. It's often looked upon as fear mongering, and sensationalism. Preparation is practical, though.
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This post is not intended to be fear mongering. In fact I want to discuss ways we can look at the market and plan for different scenarios that can mean we have no reason to be afraid.
Even if the S&P500 was to trade at 1,000 (big drop from current price (Today is the 31st August 2019, price is 2,946), we can plan and act in such ways this is a non harmful event for us. Particularly those who have net worth's to protect that has heavy stocks exposure.
This is not going to be one of these, "It's the top RIGHT NOW ... everyone panic!" sort of posts. Regardless of my views on this, I know this is a message that would not be well received. You do not know me, and too often people have cried wolf on this and been laughably incorrect. Instead what I will do is describe price moves in the indices that most people will have every reason to believe at this point can't happen.
Hopefully, they do not happen. I am not gleefully fangirling for a market crash. I just think there is prudence in preparation. These events will not happen in the hours after I post this, so I'd ask you kindly suspend prejudices. There is nothing to be gained by bickering over opinions of whether this will happen or not. I just want to give my perspective on how a person should protect themselves after it happens, if it does.
I'll cover some of the things I'd forecast will be points people will want to raise or questions likely to be asked. If you'd like to skip to the forecast and subsequent trade plan you can scroll down to the line break (unless you're going to make a common comment, then please read the following section first).
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Why Do I think My Opinion Matters?

Many of you may be smarter than I in many ways, but few of you will have spent as much time assessing charting patterns as I have. Indeed, many people will scoff at the very idea of "lines on a chart" being worth anything. I'm not here to have this debate, I fully agree your view point is rational and logical. If I'd not spent years watching price charts every day, I'd think the same.
I focus mostly on Forex markets. I know these well. There are many ways currencies look like they may move that are ways they should not move unless there is big problems in stocks. These are nagging warnings. The attitude to risk in the Forex markets is negative, and stock markets show dangerous patterns. I watch these topping sorts of patterns every day. I see them in intra-day crashes, intra-week crashes and intra-month crashes.
Most major moves fit into these patterns, and when the same patterns are applied to previous stock markets in the months before they crashed, the way the patterns form and then complete (in a crash) is the same. From my perspective, these are just intra-decade crashes. There is little technical difference on the charts - although it's very different in the real world it affects.
This is why I am doing this in a "IF we see this ... then this is likely". I know at this point in the pattern, my methods predict something that will be highly unusual. If that thing happens, if we do not crash after that, we'd be breaking the trend of all market crashes in history (this is not likely, it does not seem the smart way to bet your net worth).
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Technical Analysis is Tea Leaves!

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You're welcome to your opinion on this, and I do understand your point of view. I will not post examples to try and prove my perspective on it, since it will always be called "curve-fitting". All I will say is nothing I have done in my years of trading has involved me persuading others what I do works. I do not sell training or anything of the like. I've spent many years using the things I've learned to bet my own money, and I've done well.
I will not debate on this subject, because it's always a deadlock. You can not convince me I've not seen what I've seen, and I can not show you what I've seen, and do not expect you to believe it without proof.
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Stop Fear Mongering!

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I really would like to re-iterate, I do not want you to be afraid. I am going to describe something that might happen that will be scary if it does happen. If it does not, there is no problem. I do not wish you to be fearful before, during or after.
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This is like "Stop, Drop and Roll". None of us ever expect to be ablaze. If we are, this is good information. It will be better than running about waving arms and feeding the flames to engulf us. All I want to do here is to give you the "stop, drop and roll" of a market crash. To prevent you panicking and making bad decisions at bad areas. To allow you instead to go, "Fuck! Okay ... well that's not good. Now I have to ..." if scary things do happen.
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No One Can Time the Market!

People have predicted and traded every stock market crash in history. The fact that many people try this and get it wrong does not take away from the fact people get this right, then place the right trades and make millions. Not many people make understanding the ways a market moves their life's work. If you do, you get a good feel for it's mood at any given time.
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[Fundamental Analysis ] Says That Won't Happen!

I am not here to debate analysis viewpoints. Doing so has little use, it's better to forecast, assess and then take the best actions. I'll confess I am too ignorant on many of these topic to engage in debate. I wake up every day 5 days a week and decide where to bet my money. In doing this, I've found charts forecast and news reports. I can find no way of making money by being told what happened already, so I use the charts.
What I will say is for the warning move I will discuss to happen, something news related will have to change. Some catalyst event will have to happen. In 2008, it was Lehman. Make no mistake, the warnings were on the chart long before the bankruptcy was in the news.
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Time in the Markets is Better than Timing the Markets

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I am perfectly fine with this perspective, and not here to argue against it. If the market could drop 50% or more and you'd not be concerned because you think it will be back up in 10 years, this is none of my business.
I'm a day trader, so for me personally timing the markets is everything. Spending a lot of time in the market day trading often means you've made a mistake. I'm looking for ways to get foresight into what market moves may develop and understanding of what times and conditions I can enter into these moves to profit from the.
I want to stress I am not necessarily advocating the average person tries to time the markets. In the same way an electrician would not suggest you re-wire your own home. You also could not say to the electrician it's better to leave the lights off than risk getting a shock. Different preparations and skills sets give different possibilities. I spent a lot of years and lost money through a lot of them starting out learning how to do this.
The things I will explain here will not allow a person to consistently time the market. If I may be excused a cheesy pun, this "crash course" will be dealing with only single event, and one single set of scenarios. What I want to put forward for you in this is price moves to watch for and then (really quite specific) levels of price that are likely to offer us the best prices to protect long stock portfolios, or take speculative short trades. Very thin area of assessment.
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Forecast and Plan.
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What if the S&P500 Went to 2,200 ... Quickly?

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It's the weekend, and the last day of August in 2019. The S&P500 has closed 2922 after rallying through the week after some sharp drops from all time highs. We may see record highs again if this keeps up ... but what if next week it opens and starts to fall? Or maybe rallies higher but can not make a new high and starts to fall.
What if it falls faster than it did in the last drop, and what if this time it does not stop? What if it gets to the lows of 2790, and goes from there quickly to 2700. These big levels act as resistance and the market can not trade higher than them. Instead it hits them, reverses and goes down more.
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I think people would be nervous, but there'd be still the feeling of this being a normal, albeit tough, corrective move. There's weekly lows of 2,333. Above here the market is still technically up-trending. What if we got there, and the market went through it like it was nothing? What if the coming weeks or months we seen candles bigger than any we've seen recently? What if we were hearing news reports of record falls, rather than record highs?
What if over the development of only weeks and some horrific trading days we went from today's 2922 to break under the 2015 lows of 1,886?
I think people would be afraid!
Nothing I am saying is for the purposes of fear mongering, but I think this is possible. I'd like to say I think it's "highly unlikely", but I am thinking a lot about how to structure real bets on it and I like my odds. If this happens, it's likely the market will go lower still. What you do during the following weeks and months may have a huge affect on your financial health by the start of 2021.
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How Does This Scenario Look on a S&P500 Chart?

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That looks like it's not going to happen, right? I think that this looks like it's not going to happen. We learn through our life experience, and my life experience has taught me when I ignore what I think about things like this and build well structured trade plans that would assume it will happen, money comes. For me, this makes sense to bet on at the moment, as unlikely as it looks. That's getting a bit into "Calling the high", though. \Which this is not about.
Edit: Hmm, it sounds like it's not going to happen. I can not post pictures here apparently.
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This is about what do you do if this happens? What if there is a day when they say on the news that the market just made it's lowest point in the last five years ... and economists and experts say it can go down more!
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1 - Filter and assess your sources.
Before you act or even think about the information these sources have (pertaining to what trades to make or expect), check what they were saying now. If they're not saying this could happen - don't worry too much about what they say happens next. They have as much chance of being wrong.
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2 - Do not panic.
This is a time to remain calm. Bad things have happened, and there will have been multiple days the market has dropped precipitously. Different economic factors explaining these moves may be threatening to get worse and the market may take more dangerous swings spiking under recent lows. This is the point at which most people will panic and make bad choices with their portfolio.
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3 - Buy Around 1,800
This obviously sounds like something anyone would do right now, with price at 2,922; but with the conditions that'd have to be occurring for this of move to happen will make this highly counter intuitive at the time.
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4 - Understand Something Changed, New Highs are Not Coming
From peak pessimism around 1,800 I expect the market to start to rally. Rallying strong. Making markets great again.
At this point, you should understand something has changed. The market is not meant to trade at that level in an up-trend. Frequently when these levels 'break', there is a strong counter move that is fierce. It's also brief. We can buy here and offset some of the losses in the mini bounce (but be very cautious).
2,129 area is where the danger of a bear move comes back in. It might rally a bit above here into 2,333.
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This is where the second mistake many people will make will be. Not buying the lows, but then starting to buy into this rally thinking it's going to new highs.
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Very Important: If price makes moves consistent with what I've described 2,220 - 2,300 are hedge areas.
If you take appropriate actions in these areas you can protect yourself from the chance of excessive loss if the market is to crash in 2020. You can also do this without taking on much risk. Granted if you hedge long portfolios there is some risk of losing a little, but your area of risk on these hedges is less than the area of risk on a long portfolio after this has happened.
When this has happened, historically it's always led to a crash in the coming months/year. We'll have done something the markets do not usually do. Big corrections may look similar, but when you deal with this all the time, you come to know there are specifics that should be noted. If the levels I've mentioned for a buy fill, the market is crashing. It's no longer a question of if.
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5 - Hold Hedges Until 1,100
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If we crash, the low will probably be only a bit below this level. Anything more than this in a fall would be truly horrific (I know many people think this is horrific, but from a technical point of view this is really to be expected, and not unusual. It only happens after long periods of time, so it's unexpected and uncommon. It not unusual in trend formation).
I am not a financial adviser, and can not tell you any trades you should be making to hedge portfolios or to take speculative positions. I've given these levels on the S&P500, and there are many things correlated to this you could use to protect portfolios. If this happens, I will be very much 'In the trenches'. I'll be trading in various markets every day and sharing some of my insights and trade plans, but I can't tell you specifically what to do.
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I am only sharing this with you to let you know there are strategies people have used in the past to predict crashes, and I've used these strategies a lot and become good with them. They now predict a market crash starting in 2019, developing through 2020, and the things I've explained in this post would be the next steps if the prediction is accurate.
If the next steps happen, the strategy would then forecast the S&P500 to go from 2,200 - 2,400 sort of range to 1,000.
I am asking no one to take this seriously at the moment, but I would suggest if the market makes moves similar to what I've described - you then consider there may be a lot of merit to what it further forecasts.

Originally posted by Darkstar at Forex Factory.
Disclaimer: I did not write this. I found this post on ForexFactory written by a user called DarkStar, which I believe a lot of redditors will benefit from reading.
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There has been much discussion of late regarding borker spreads and liquidity. Many assumptions are being made about why spreads are widened during news time that are built on an incomplete knowledge of the architecture of the forex market in general. The purpose of this article is to dissect the market and hopefully shed some light on the situation so that a more rational and productive discussion can be undertaken by the Forex Factory members.
We will begin with an explanation of the purpose of the Forex market and how it is utilized by its primary participants, expand into the structure and operation of the market, and conclude with the implications of this information for speculators. With that having been said, let us begin.
Unlike the various bond and equity markets, the Forex market is not generally utilized as an investment medium. While speculation has a critical role in its proper function, the lion’s share of Forex transactions are done as a function of international business.
The guy who buys a shiny new Eclipse more then likely will pay for it with US Dollars. Unfortunately Mitsubishi’s factory workers in Japan need to get their paychecks denominated in Yen, so at some point a conversion needs to be made. When one considers that companies like Exxon, Boeing, Sony, Dell, Honda, and thousands of other international businesses move nearly every dollar, real, yen, rubble, pound, and euro they make in a foreign country through the Forex market, it isn’t hard to understand how insignificant the speculative presence is; even in a $2tril per day market.
By and large, businesses don’t much care about the intricacies of exchange rates, they just want to make and sell their products. As a central repository of a company’s money, it was only natural that the banks would be the facilitators of these transactions. In the old days it was easy enough for a bank to call a foreign bank (or a foreign branch of ones own bank) and swap the stockpiles of currency each had accumulated from their many customers.
Just as any business would, the banks bought the foreign currency at one rate and marked it up before selling it to the customer. With that the foreign exchange spread was born. This was (and still is) a reasonable cost of doing business. Mitsubishi can pay its customers and the banks make a nice little profit for the hassle and risks associated with moving around the currency.
As a byproduct of transacting all this business, bank traders developed the ability to speculate on the future of currency rates. Utilizing a better understanding of the market, a bank could quote a business a spread on the current rate but hold off hedging until a better one came along. This process allowed the banks to expand their net income dramatically. The unfortunate consequence was that liquidity was redistributed in a way that made certain transactions impossible to complete.
It was for this reason and this reason alone that the market was eventually opened up to non-bank participants. The banks wanted more orders in the market so that a) they could profit from the less experienced participants, and b) the less experienced participants could provide a better liquidity distribution for execution of international business hedge orders. Initially only megacap hedge funds (such as Soros’s and others) were permitted, but it has since grown to include the retail brokerages and ECNs.
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Market Structure:
Now that we have established why the market exists, let’s take a look at how the transactions are facilitated:
The top tier of the Forex market is transacted on what is collectively known as the Interbank. Contrary to popular belief the Interbank is not an exchange; it is a collection of communication agreements between the world’s largest money center banks.
To understand the structure of the Interbank market, it may be easier to grasp by way of analogy. Consider that in an office (or maybe even someone’s home) there are multiple computers connected via a network cable. Each computer operates independently of the others until it needs a resource that another computer possesses. At that point it will contact the other computer and request access to the necessary resource. If the computer is working properly and its owner has given the requestor authorization to do so, the resource can be accessed and the initiating computers request can be fulfilled. By substituting computers for banks and resources for currency, you can easily grasp the relationships that exist on the Interbank.
Anyone who has ever tried to find resources on a computer network without a server can appreciate how difficult it can be to keep track of who has what resources. The same issue exists on the Interbank market with regard to prices and currency inventory. A bank in Singapore may only rarely transact business with a company that needs to exchange some Brazilian Real and it can be very difficult to establish what a proper exchange rate should be. It is for this purpose that EBS and Reuters (hereafter EBS) established their services.
Layered on top (in a manner of speaking) of the Interbank communication links, the EBS service enables banks to see how much and at what prices all the Interbank members are willing to transact. Pains should be taken to express that EBS is not a market or a market maker; it is an application used to see bids and offers from the various banks.
The second tier of the market exists essential within each bank. By calling your local Bank of America branch you can exchange any foreign currency you would like. More then likely they will just move some excess currency from one branch to another. Since this is a micro-exchange with a single counterparty, you are basically at their mercy as to what exchange rate they will quote you. Your choice is to accept their offer or shop a different bank. Everyone who trades the forex market should visit their bank at least once to get a few quotes. It would be very enlightening to see how lucrative these transactions really are.
Branching off of this second tier is the third tier retail market. When brokers like Oanda, Forex.com, FXCM, etc. desire to establish a retail operation the first thing they need is a liquidity provider. Nine in ten of these brokers will sign an agreement with just one bank. This bank will agree to provide liquidity if and only if they can hedge it on EBS inclusive of their desired spread. Because the volume will be significantly higher a single bank patron will transact, the spreads will be much more competitive. By no means should it be expected these tier 3 providers will be quoted precisely what exists on the Interbank. Remember the bank is in the business of collecting spreads and no agreement is going to suspend that priority.
Retail forex is almost akin to running a casino. The majority of its participants have zero understanding how to trade effectively and as a result are consistent losers. The spread system combined with a standard probability distribution of returns gives the broker a built in house advantage of a few percentage points. As a result, they have all built internal order matching systems that play one loser off against a winner and collect the spread. On the occasions when disequilibrium exists within the internal order book, the broker hedges any exposure with their tier 2 liquidity provider.
As bad as this may sound, there are some significant advantages for speculators that deal with them. Because it is an internal order book, many features can be provided which are otherwise unavailable through other means. Non-standard contract sizes, high leverage on tiny account balances, and the ability to transact in a commission free environment are just a few of them…
An ECN operates similar to a Tier 2 bank, but still exists on the third tier. An ECN will generally establish agreements with several tier 2 banks for liquidity. However instead of matching orders internally, it will just pass through the quotes from the banks, as is, to be traded on. It’s sort of an EBS for little guys. There are many advantages to the model, but it is still not the Interbank. The banks are going to make their spread or their not go to waste their time. Depending on the bank this will take the form of price shading or widened spreads depending on market conditions. The ECN, for its trouble, collects a commission on each transaction.
Aside from the commission factor, there are some other disadvantages a speculator should consider before making the leap to an ECN. Most offer much lower leverage and only allow full lot transactions. During certain market conditions, the banks may also pull their liquidity leaving traders without an opportunity to enter or exit positions at their desired price.
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Trade Mechanics:
It is convenient to believe that in a $2tril per day market there is always enough liquidity to do what needs to be done. Unfortunately belief does not negate the reality that for every buyer there MUST be a seller or no transaction can occur. When an order is too large to transact at the current price, the price moves to the point where open interest is abundant enough to cover it. Every time you see price move a single pip, it means that an order was executed that consumed (or otherwise removed) the open interest at the current price. There is no other way that prices can move.
As we covered earlier, each bank lists on EBS how much and at what price they are willing to transact a currency. It is important to note that no Interbank participant is under any obligation to make a transaction if they do not feel it is in their best interest. There are no “market makers” on the Interbank; only speculators and hedgers.
Looking at an ECN platform or Level II data on the stock market, one can get a feel for what the orders on EBS look like. The following is a sample representation:
You’ll notice that there is open interest (Level II Vol figures) of various sizes at different price points. Each one of those units represents existing limit orders and in this example, each unit is $1mil in currency.
Using this information, if a market sell order was placed for 38.4mil, the spread would instantly widen from 2.5 pips to 4.5 pips because there would no longer be any orders between 1.56300 and 1.56345. No broker, market maker, bank, or thief in the night widened the spread; it was the natural byproduct of the order that was placed. If no additional orders entered the market, the spread would remain this large forever. Fortunately, someone somewhere will deem a price point between those 2 figures an appropriate opportunity to do something and place an order. That order will either consume more interest or add to it, depending whether it is a market or limit order respectively.
What would have happened if someone placed a market sell order for 2mil just 1 millisecond after that 38.4 mil order hit? They would have been filled at 1.5630 Why were they “slipped”? Because there was no one to take the other side of the transaction at 1.56320 any longer. Again, nobody was out screwing the trader; it was the natural byproduct of the order flow.
A more interesting question is, what would happen if all the listed orders where suddenly canceled? The spread would widen to a point at which there were existing bids and offers. That may be 5,7,9, or even 100 pips; it is going to widen to whatever the difference between a bid and an offer are. Notice that nobody came in and “set” the spread, they just refused to transact at anything between it.
Nothing can be done to force orders into existence that don’t exist. Regardless what market is being examined or what broker is facilitating transactions, it is impossible to avoid spreads and slippage. They are a fact of life in the realm of trading.
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Implications for speculators:
Trading has been characterized as a zero sum game, and rightly so. If trader A sells a security to trader B and the price goes up, trader A lost money that they otherwise could have made. If it goes down, Trader A made money from trader B’s mistake. Even in a huge market like the Forex, each transaction must have a buyer and a seller to make a trade and one of them is going to lose. In the general realm of trading, this is materially irrelevant to each participant. But there are certain situations where it becomes of significant importance. One of those situations is a news event.
Much has been made of late about how it is immoral, illegal, or downright evil for a broker, bank, or other liquidity provider to withdraw their order (increasing the spread) and slip orders (as though it was a conscious decision on their part to do so) more then normal during these events. These things occur for very specific reasons which have nothing to do with screwing anyone. Let us examine why:
Leading up to an economic report for example, certain traders will enter into positions expecting the news to go a certain way. As the event becomes immanent, the banks on the Interbank will remove their speculative orders for fear of taking unnecessary losses. Technical traders will pull their orders as well since it is common practice for them to avoid the news. Hedge funds and other macro traders are either already positioned or waiting until after the news hits to make decisions dependent on the result.
Knowing what we now know, where is the liquidity necessary to maintain a tight spread coming from?
Moving down the food chain to Tier 2; a bank will only provide liquidity to an ECN or retail broker if they can instantly hedge (plus their requisite spread) the positions on Interbank. If the Interbank spreads are widening due to lower liquidity, the bank is going to have to widen the spreads on the downstream players as well.
At tier 3 the ECN’s are simply passing the banks offers on, so spreads widen up to their customers. The retailers that guarantee spreads of 2 to 5 pips have just opened a gaping hole in their risk profile since they can no longer hedge their net exposure (ever wonder why they always seem to shut down or requote until its over?). The variable spread retailers in turn open up their spreads to match what is happening at the bank or they run into the same problems fixed spreads broker are dealing with.
Now think about this situation for a second. What is going to happen when a number misses expectations? How many traders going into the event with positions chose wrong and need to get out ASAP? How many hedge funds are going to instantly drop their macro orders? How many retail traders’ straddle orders just executed? How many of them were waiting to hear a miss and executed market orders?
With the technical traders on the sidelines, who is going to be stupid enough to take the other side of all these orders?
The answer is no one. Between 1 and 5 seconds after the news hits it is a purely a 1 way market. That big long pin bar that occurs is a grand total of 2 prices; the one before the news hit and the one after. The 10, 20, or 30 pips between them is called a gap.
Is it any wonder that slippage is in evidence at this time?
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Conclusions:
Each tier of the Forex market has its own inherent advantages and disadvantages. Depending on your priorities you have to make a choice between what restrictions you can live with and those you cant. Unfortunately, you can’t always get what you want.
By focusing on slippage and spreads, which are the natural byproduct of order flow, one is not only pursuing a futile ideal, they are passing up an enormous opportunity to capitalize on true inefficiencies. News events are one of the few times where a large number of players are positioned inappropriately and it is fairly easy to profit from their foolishness. If a trader truly wants to make the leap to the next level of profitability they should be spending their time figuring out how identify these positions and trading with the goal of capturing the price movement they inevitably will cause.
Nobody is going to make the argument that a broker is a trader’s best friend, but they still provide a valuable service and should be compensated for their efforts. By accepting a broker for what it is and learning how to work within the limitations of the relationship, traders have access to a world of opportunity that they otherwise could never dream of capturing. Let us all remember that simple truth.

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