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Another Chinese property development firm missed a debt payment

Bloomberg with the report on a missed payment by Fantasia Holdings.

The news was out overnight so it is not new news, posting as an ICYMI.
Says the Bloomberg report (more at that link above (may be gated) )
  • Fantasia didn’t repay a $205.7 million bond that was due Monday, according to a company statement. 
  • Separately, property management company Country Garden Services Holdings Co. said that a unit of Fantasia didn’t repay a 700 million yuan ($108 million) loan that also came due on Monday and that a default was probable. 
  • Shenzhen-headquartered Fantasia’s management and board “will assess the potential impact on the financial condition and cash position of the Group” stemming from the skipped bond payment, it said. 
Bloomberg with the report on a missed payment by Fantasia Holdings. 

Learn to be wrong and Who cares?

1.) Learn to be wrong. Traditional education trains us into thinking that we have to be right to get the grade. With investing and trading, focusing on being right will bring assymetric risk to your methodology and will eventually lead to a blowout at least once. – Steven Place

2.) First, invest in yourself.  That is, acquire as much knowledge as possible and analytical skills in a wide variety of disciplines and develop the ability to abstract yourself from the present. Become a mathematician, economist, political scientist, psychologist, sociologist, and futurist. – Gary Evans

3.) You are not a market-timing genius and neither is anyone selling services to you! There is a long-term path to progress, with several good ways to get aboard.  Be interested, be watchful, but do not be too confident. – Jeff Miller

4.) First, understand that ultimately you are responsible for the outcome of your investments and that they shouldn’t blame bad markets, bad advisors, or bad luck if they lose money.  Secondly, always try to stay as objective and unemotional as you can about what you invest in.  And lastly, remember that discipline and risk management is the key.  You can lose all the profits from five well managed trades or investments with one poorly managed one. 

US weekly EIA energy inventories +9281K vs +3000K expected

Weekly US oil inventory data from the EIA:

  • Prior was +2927K
  • Gasoline -2562K vs -1500K exp
  • Distillates -3823K vs -2500K exp
  • Cushing +1276K
  • Refinery utilization -2.6%
The headlines aren’t as bad as they look because the API numbers from late yesterday were so bearish. The drop in refinery runs and draws in products takes the sting out of the report:
  • Crude +10500K
  • Cushing +1600K
  • Gasoline -934K
  • Distillates -2900K

Risk Management

  1.  Risk of Ruin-Never risk more than 1% of your total account capital on any one trade.
  2. Position Sizing-Use your capital at risk to understand the right amount to trade based on the securities volatility.
  3. Capital at risk: Never put more than 6% of your total capital at risk at any given time on all positions.
  4. Trailing stops- Always have an exit strategy to lock in your winners.

True Nature Of Predicting

Here’s how it works.

If I make an outrageous prediction or label a prediction outrageous and I am wrong, I respond to criticism like this:

“Well, I said it was an outrageous prediction.”

This discounts my responsibility for being wrong to some degree. But if I am right, I will say,

“look how brilliant I am. I made an outrageous prediction and it was dead on.”

Outrageous predictions are used to manage impressions. One defers responsibility if wrong and gloats incessantly if right.

It is a manipulative gambit.

People, who make outrageous predictions know exactly what they are doing. Their potential reward is much bigger than the risk they are taking of being publicly laughed at. Many people have made a career by being right once about a major event that nobody expected (usually a big market correction).

Predicting and speculating have a lot in common, but they are also very different. By definition, predictions are about dealing with factors, you have no control over. When you speculate in the stock market, you also don’t have control over which one of your trades will be profitable and for the most part how profitable it will be. You could improve the odds, but you can’t impact the outcome of each individual trade. When you speculate, you put your own money at risk. You could be right for the wrong reasons and make money (lucky). You could also be wrong despite having an edge and still lose money (no approach has 100% success rate). Since you have very little control on some of the variables that impact your results, it doesn’t really make sense to speculate about only one outcome, because in this case you are getting prepared for only one outcome. The solution – You develop several different scenarios and you prepare for each of them.

A) You could be wrong

  • where is your stop loss?
  • How much of your capital are you going to risk?

B) You could be right (more…)

Techniques to Control risk and Increase Safety

  • Before taking a position, know the amount you are willing to lose. -Marty Schwartz
  • If a stock drops 7% below my purchase price, I will automatically sell at the market–no second guessing, no hesitation.  -William O’Neil
  • You should always have a worst case point.  The only choice should be to get out quicker. -Richard Dennis
  • I have a mental stop.  If it hits that number, I am out no matter what. -Paul Tudor Jones
  • Combine that long-term objective with a protective stop that you move as the position goes your way. -Gary Bielfeldt
  • I set protective stops at the same time I enter a trade.  I normally move these stops to lock in a profit as the trend continues.  -Ed Seykota
  • Risk management is the most important thing to be well understood.  Under-trade, under-trade, under-trade is my second piece of advice.  Whatever you think your position ought to be, cut it at least in half.  My experience with novice traders is that they trade three to five times too big. -Bruce Kovner
  • Why risk everything on one trade?  why not make your life a pursuit of happiness rather than a pursuit of pain? -Paul Tudor Jones
  • Never risk more than 1% of your total equity on any one trade.  By risking 1% I am indifferent to any individual trade.  Keeping your risk small and constant is absolutely critical. -Larry Hite
  • The key is to lose the least amount of money when you are wrong. -William O’Neil
  • You have to minimize your losses and try to preserve capital for those few instances where you can make a lot in a very short period of time.  What you can’t afford to do is throw away your capital on suboptimal trades. -Richard Dennis
  • Most traders have a tendency to take risks that are too large at the beginning.  They tend not to be selective enough when they take risks. – Gary Bielfeldt
  • The object is always to minimize your risk. -Tom Baldwin
  • No matter what happens, I know my worst case.  My loss is always limited. -Tony Saliba
  • You might have a low-risk trade, but if you are afraid, you probably will not take it.

 

Best Practices for Traders

5 Rules1) Preparation to start the day and week: Having a clearly formulated strategy to guide trading decisions;
2) Keeping score: Using a trading journal to structure learning, document progress, and sustain positive motivation;
3) Managing risk and maximizing opportunity: Trading with more risk/size when trading well and clearly seeing opportunity and pulling back risk when drawing down, trading poorly, and perceiving little opportunity;
4) Taking breaks: Stepping back from markets periodically to gain fresh perspective, reformulate views, and tweak strategies;
5) Treating trading as a business: Limiting overhead, having a clearly defined plan to move toward profitability, focusing on distinctive areas of strengths and opportunity.
So much of what makes traders great is what they do between market sessions, how they do it, and how much of it they do.
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