The week’s biggest (sovereign) CDS movers have been released, and we have some new entrants in the most endangered species list. While by now nobody will be surprised that the UK is a consistent top 2 player (coming in this week with $319 million in net notional derisking, this making it the 8th week or so the country has made the top 3), only behind Italy and its $452 million in net notional, and just in front of last week’s #1 Brazil, the presence of the United States at #4 should be a little unsettling. It has been months since the US appeared in the top 5. And just like in the long gold case, the same types of existential questions once again arise when the interest in US CDS picks up: who gets to pay off your contracts in the case of an event of default? Elsewhere, the presence of Korea and Turkey (or Australia) in the top 10 should not come as too surprising. On the other end, short covering was violent in CDS of Spain, Hungary and Portugal – Europe’s newest lepers. Is the CDS community concerned the EU can actually pull out a rabbit out of the hat that actually works for once? Hardly. The top 10 reriskers also saw the inclusion of France and long-forgotten insolvent Greece.
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rss4 Rules from Great Traders
Overcome Fear :Great traders know that fear can choke our decision process and cause us to avoid taking risks.Fear also can paralyze you when you need to act quickly and decisively to save yourself from danger-the deer-in -the-headlights syndrome.All great traders have mastered their fears and are able to act decisively when needed.
Remain Flexible :As a trader ,you never know which stock or which market may make a move.This is the essence of uncertainty.Your don’t know what is going to happen.When you don’t know what is going to happen ,the best strategy is to be ready for anything.
Prepare to be wrong :If you don’t know what the future will bring and you choose a trade that assumes a particular outcome,you are possibly going to be wrong.Depending on the type of trade,in many cases it can even be more likely that you will lose money then that you will win money.What matters in the end is total money won and lost ,not whether you are right more ofthen then wrong.Great Traders are comfortable making decisions when they know they could be wrong .
Focus on decisions ,not out comes :One of the reasons that great raders can so easily reverse course is that they have a more sophisticated view of the meaning of error for decisions made under uncertainty.They understand that the face that things did not turn out the way they had hoped does not necessarily mean that taking the trade was a mistake.They know that many times good ideas dont’t work out.The very presence of uncertanity ensures that you will be wrong some of the time.All great traders put trades on for a particular reason ,and they take them off for a particular reason too.Great traders focus on the reasons for the trades instead of the outcomes for few given trades.
Why we need to go back to Mars
Planetary scientist Joel Levine shows some intriguing — and puzzling — new discoveries about Mars: craters full of ice, traces of ancient oceans, and compelling hints at the presence, sometime in the past, of life. He makes the case for going back to Mars to find out more.