Flakey stocks

$SNOW, Snowflake, is looking shakey after a meteoric IPO. $FDX has had a terrific run, but looks over extended too. $SPCE took a dive, like its faulty rocket test the other day. My guess is that it has further to go.

Nordea Nuggets

There are some great ideas from Andreas Steno-Larsen, here. The list is well worth reading, but the themes are:

• the Fed may lose its nerve and tighten. Options on this are practically free,
• Salmon prices might explode, can be exploited via CAD/NOK option spread (‘the fishiest trade of all’),
• ECB curve spreads are going to be compressed by Lagarde: buy BTP, sell Bunds,
• The consensus on gold might be wrong: real rates may go higher,
• SEK might go up. Suggested trade is via an FRA. Possible Riksbank rate hike,
• RMB (aka CNH) takes a dive: Biden turns out to be not such a China dove after all. I’ve never got very far with the RMB myself: it’s barely convertible, but this is an attractive idea,
• Buy Green: Barclays Euro Green Bond index against Barclays Corp. Bond index. Certainly, govts are throwing money at anything faintly tinged green,
• Curve steepner: Steno-Larsen recommends 2s10s steepeners for USD and 10s30s for EUR. In general, steepeners are conviction trades for me,
• Boom or bust trade. Currently, the stock market is discounting a boom, but the bond market a bust. They can’t both be right, but maybe a staddle type trade can be crafted to profit whichever comes to pass. S-L recommends a swaption trade, not accessible to mere mortals,
• Similar idea re EUR/USD: go for a strangle.
• (another trade involving a knock-in FX option, which exploits a particular Brexit sequence. Probably brilliant, but definitely reserved for the institutional investor.)

Crumbs

• $AAPL shot up on a report, not by the company itself, that they’d sell a lot more phones. Smells like $TSLA stock pumping, but worked fine. Stock up 5%. Call volumes for $AAPL have collapsed, so they need all the stock pumping they can get.
• $PEN makes catheters that kill people. It might be a sell.
• Vaccine play - $VXRT
• Virus cure play - $CYDY
• Telehealth play - $DOCRF
• Solar play - $FSLR
• Solar / EV play - $VVPR
• Marijuana play - $CBDD
• 5G play - $INSG
• AI play - $AITX
• Augmented reality play - $NEXCF
• Consumer play - $CWH
• Cyber play - $VISM
• Rare Earths play - $MP

Wrap

It was the Fed Press Conference today. Lots of Fed haters had their normal reactions. The basic moan is that the Fed creates inequality. I think that’s basically right, but maybe it’s an unwanted side effect of monetary policy, which is forced on the Fed as a result of gridlock in Congress & the Senate. For the opposite view, checkout Rudy Havenstein, art blogger.

His favourite chart is this: