"Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor." --Robert Lee Frost

BUSTING HEDGE FUNDS (December 17, 2023): I had worked at Thomson Reuters for 16-1/2 years; the person sitting next to me had the responsibility of tracking hedge funds and reporting on their behavior. After doing this job for a couple of decades, he pointed out to me how the vast majority of hedge funds which had shown little correlation in their investing behavior through the early 1990s had become increasingly alike by the second decade of this century. The proliferation of hedge-fund conferences where they discussed their "best ideas," combined with nearly identical computer algorithms and momentum strategies becoming increasingly much more popular, almost totally displaced former tendencies toward value investing and identifying compelling bargains.

Although there remain key exceptions including money managed by Seth Klarman, Marc Faber, Jim Rogers, Howard Marks, Ray Dalio, and some others where it is unlikely that you will be able to have them handle your accounts, more than 90% of hedge funds are crowding into identical concepts at any given time. This herd following is especially prevalent at key extremes and has almost certainly caused many of those extremes to become much more exaggerated than they would have been if they hadn't existed. It is also increasingly the case that hedge funds as a group are doing almost exactly the opposite of top corporate insiders and commercials. Thus, tracking insider behavior and the traders' commitments has demonstrated repeated multi-decade extremes where the insiders and commercials are heavily on one side while hedge funds have been piling even more aggressively the other way.

Doing the same as insiders and commercials and the opposite of hedge funds has become an increasingly available and profitable investing strategy which I have been doing more consistently as the 21st century has progressed.

As a result, the most consistently successful strategy in the 21st century has been to do whatever the insiders and commercials are doing at any rare extreme, while going against the hedge funds. During the past year we have already seen several examples of this behavior with hedge funds establishing an all-time record short position in U.S. Treasuries in October 2023. This was followed by the biggest Treasury rally in four decades which intensified during the past week as hedge funds rushed to close out their shorts ahead of all the other hedge funds, and were not particularly successful in doing so. TLT had traded at 81.92 in the pre-market session on October 23, 2022, and less than two months later was trading above 99.

Hedge funds piling into the AI bubble is their latest extremely overcrowded trade, while the top corporate insiders of these companies have done all-time record selling of their shares.

The latest overcrowding by hedge funds has been in being long AI stocks. While most U.S. and global stocks and their funds including IWM have been in bear markets since they had topped out in November 2021, funds which are concentrated in the biggest and most popular megacaps which have generated the most investor excitement in this year's AI bubble have dramatically outperformed in spite of their unimpressive profit growth. QQQ has almost regained its all-time top, while XLK and SMH are among those funds which have experienced the greatest percentage gains during the past year and have achieved new record highs. The top insiders of these companies have never sold more aggressively than they have done during the past few years, while the only time hedge funds had been more committed to any concept was when they had been massively short U.S. Treasuries in October 2023.

This chart, just updated, highlights the amazing recent overcrowding by hedge funds into QQQ and Nasdaq 100 futures which has achieved an overwhelmingly lopsided extreme by a large factor even when compared with 2021 or 2022:

Less historically extreme but still massive overcrowding has created other 2023 situations ripe for busting.

Hedge funds, as is evidenced by the official exchange data at cftc.gov, had never demonstrated a higher ratio of shorts to longs for palladium, thereby leading to PALL plummeting to 85.25 at 12:06 p.m. on December 5, 2023. Since then it has rebounded above 100. Hedge funds piled massively into gold on Sunday evening, December 3, 2023 to reach a spot price of 2137.50 U.S. dollars per troy ounce for the first time in history. Given how hedge fund crowding leads to huge reversals, gold bullion is likely to drop to around 1750 during the next several months before enjoying its next strong rally. The traders' commitments for gold as of December 5, 2023 showed commercials (who are those that own physical gold, such as miners, jewelers, and fabricators) long 103,193 contracts and short 330,138 which is more than 3:1 short to long. Not surprisingly, almost all of those on the other side of this trade were hedge funds and related managed money organizations which the commodity exchange calls "large speculators."

Silver's commitments the same week showed commercials long 40,974 and short 92,988 which was clearly also bearish for silver. Hedge funds were thus aggressively long gold and silver and even more aggressively short palladium. Palladium commercials that week were long 12,814 and short 1,537 which is more than 8:1 long to short.

Hedge funds had done all-time record crowding into shorting the Japanese yen, enabling the yen to fall to its lowest point since July-August 1990. Since then the yen, which trades as an exchange-traded fund via FXY, has experienced its strongest short-term rebound since the Bretton Woods agreement was terminated over a half century ago.

Hedge funds formed a lesser bubble by massively overcrowding into energy commodities and their shares two months ago.

Several times since November 2022 including around the middle of September 2023, hedge funds massively crowded into anything relating to energy while energy insiders sold shares at their most intense pace ever recorded. This was an especially notable reversal for top energy executives who in 2020 were their most aggressive in buying their own shares in their entire history. Starting on September 14, 2023, when XLE reached an all-time dividend-adjusted zenith of 93.685, energy shares and their funds including XLE have been among the biggest losers of all unleveraged exchange-traded funds in any sector.

The media often encourage ordinary investors to do as the hedge funds are doing, which is not surprising since they get a lot of their information from hedge funds which are naturally trying to get others to follow whatever will benefit their own portfolios.

Why have the media suddenly been talking about a "Fed pivot?" It's not because financial journalists have suddenly discovered how to interpret whatever the Fed has been doing. It is because they receive a lot of their data and even more of their interpretation of that data from hedge funds which naturally want to get retail investors to pile into their largest positions. In addition, whenever any asset is especially popular or depressed, the media will seek out stories which will allegedly explain "why" U.S. Treasury yields will keep climbing even when they are at their highest levels since 2000 (as in October 2023) or why AI stocks will keep rising regardless of how overpriced they are (as in December 2023). If you follow the media then you will repeatedly buy near each top and sell near each bottom.

The current U.S. equity bear market is following its usual sequence of sector bottoms.

The Russell 2000 and nearly all related funds such as IWM, along with most stocks worldwide which are unrelated to the AI bubble, have been in notable bear markets since their November 2021 tops, on average losing about 20% of their value during the past 25 months. Before any U.S. equity bear market intensifies, as the current one will almost certainly do soon, we have a sequence of historic sector bottoms which are completed in the following order: 1) U.S. Treasuries which probably completed their nadirs in October 2023 and are in major uptrends; 2) gold mining and silver mining shares which I expect will bottom around the spring of 2024 before initiating powerful rebounds; 3) emerging-market stocks and bonds which will perhaps bottom around the summer of 2024 with Chinese shares notably underpriced and which could thereby become compelling bargains at that time; 4) non-precious commodity producers which might also gain by substantial percentages after they bottom later in 2024; 5) special situations which vary from one bear market to another. In this case, the sectors which could approach multi-year lows in 2024 and thereafter rally strongly might include currently unpopular biotech shares and their funds like XBI along with airline shares and their funds including JETS.

I also plan to be open-minded about other sectors becoming worthwhile for purchase sometime during 2024.

The ultimate bottoms for most AI shares won't occur until 2025 or 2026.

As a general rule, those shares which achieve historic bubbles tend to lose over 80% of their value and to take two to three years to complete their total downtrends. After QQQ had topped out on March 10, 2000, it lost 83.6% of its value by the time it bottomed exactly 31 months later on October 10, 2002 (see stockcharts.com which includes all reinvested dividends by default). If QQQ loses 83.6% of its recent high of 406.5, which could potentially go even higher in the short run, then this would mean an eventual QQQ bottom of 66.666 which looks to me like a very lucky number indeed.

The bottom line: An increasingly profitable strategy during the 21st century capitalizes on the tendency of the vast majority of hedge funds to use momentum methods and to thereby overcrowd massively into various positions. Top corporate insiders and commercials throughout various points in 2023 have been doing almost exactly the opposite of those hedge funds near all key extremes for a wide variety of assets including AI stocks in December (QQQ,SLK,SMH), U.S. Treasuries in October (TLT), the Japanese yen in November (FXY), large-cap energy shares in September (XLE), and all precious metals in early December including palladium (PALL), gold (GLD), and silver (SLV). You can therefore consistently make money, although not always immediately, by following the insiders and commercials and doing the exact opposite of the most overcrowded hedge-fund concentrations during the next several years.

Disclosure of current holdings:

Below is my current asset allocation as of 4:00 p.m. on Friday, December 22, 2023. Each position is listed as its percentage of my total liquid net worth.

I computed the exact totals for each position and grouped these according to sector.

The order is as follows: 1) U.S. government bonds; 2) shorts; 3) bear funds; 4) gold/silver mining; 5) coins; 6) miscellaneous securities.

VMFXX/TIAA(Traditional)bank CDs/FZDXX/FZFXX/SPRXX/SPAXX/Savings/Checking long: 36.32%;

26-Week/17-Week/52-Week/13-Week/2-Year/8-Week/3-Year/5,10-Year TIPS/4-Week/42-Day long: 21.66%;

TLT long: 11.67%;

I Bonds long: 10.54%;

PMM long: 0.01%;

XLK short (all shorts once again unhedged): 28.39%;

QQQ short: 17.23%;

XLE short: 5.15%;

XLI short: 2.77%;

XLV short: 1.69%;

SMH short: 1.01%;

AAPL short: 0.02%;

SARK long: 0.90%;

PSQ long: 0.03%;

PALL long: 0.20%;

GDXJ long: 0.14% (fully hedged with out-of-the-money covered calls);

Gold/silver/platinum coins: 6.28%;

FXY long: 0.17%;

PAK long: 0.03%.

“Macro worries are like sports talk radio. Everyone has a good opinion which probably means that none of them are good.” --Seth A. Klarman

SAFE HAVENS SHUNNED (June 21, 2022): Since January 4, 2022 large-cap growth funds like SPY finally joined the bear market which began in February 2021 when stocks in the U.S. and worldwide began shifting from uptrends to downtrends. It took several months longer for assets like the Nasdaq and QQQ to reach their respective peaks on November 22, 2021 at all-time record overvaluations roughly 3.75 times fair value. Whenever a popular fund like QQQ with its current fair value near 116 is trading at 408.71, as it had been at its peak on November 22, 2021, then it's like drinking an entire fifth of Scotch at one go. It might be a special single malt which has been lovingly aged for decades but you're still going to first get drunk and then suffer a severe hangover. Right now we're 5-1/2 months into that hangover which will likely persist until 2024 or 2025. I expect QQQ to ultimately bottom somewhere around 70, of course with numerous strong bounces along the way including one which is probably happening right now.

I have continued to progressively shift my equity short:long ratio toward the long side and have now become 5:4 short to long versus 2:1 in my previous update.

Especially during the past week we have experienced historic bargains for many individual shares and sectors including GDXJ, GDX, ASA, XBI, INTC, TKC, TLT, and VMBS, thereby encouraging me to add to all of the aforementioned. There is also an above-average likelihood of a quarter-end bounce which could persist into July; 9 of the past 10 quarters have behaved in that manner regardless of whether or not we were in a bear market, plus we are finally seeing some short-term bullish signals. Most likely QQQ will climb to perhaps 310 before continuing its downtrend to its 2022 intermediate-term bottom somewhere around 210. Most investors expect neither a strong rebound nor a continued severe downtrend, thereby making both much more likely than usual.

For those who have not read my numerous previous postings, this does not mean that I have closed out my large short positions in QQQ and related shares. Instead I have added aggressively to the long side in my favorite undervalued holdings with low price-earnings ratios, heavy insider buying, and intense outflows. I have no intention of closing out my shorts just because I think the chance of a short-term bounce are higher than usual. When VIX doubles from its current level it might be time to consider closing short positions. I had previously closed out all of my short positions and related short funds in March 2020, December 2018, and January 2016.

If VIX surges higher, but I don't believe that we are approaching a major intermediate-term bottom for QQQ, then I will likely sell covered out-of-the money puts against some of my short positions.

Gold mining and silver mining shares are especially compelling, not only because they have been trading at their lowest levels in more than two years but because they have consistently and dramatically outperformed during three previous bear markets for large-cap U.S. growth shares.

We had important peaks or lower highs for large-cap U.S. growth shares on January 4, 2022. Previous similar tops include March 2000, January 1973, and September 1929. In all of the above cases, large-cap U.S. growth shares ended up losing more than 80% from their respective zeniths, while gold mining shares after an initial delay ended up gaining hundreds of percent.

Let's look back at 2000-2003 since it is easiest to find free chart data compared with the 1970s or 1930s. HUI ($HUI on stockcharts.com) bottomed at 35.31 on November 15 and 16, 2000 and climbed to 258.60 by December 2, 2003. This is a total percentage gain of (258.60 - 35.31) / 35.31 or 632.37%. Perhaps we won't repeat that exact percentage surge but, especially as we had similar impressive rallies for gold/silver mining shares during the 1930s and 1970s, an outsized gain is more likely than not over the next several years. I prefer GDXJ to other funds in this sector since its mid-cap focus tends to outperform large-cap shares like GDX especially when fund managers no longer fear repeated net outflows and are confident enough to diversify into holdings other than the biggest and most liquid names.

Here are two useful charts.

We are at the point in a typical bear market where a rebound has become much more likely than usual. If this rebound becomes sufficiently extended so that VIX moves back below 20 then this will be my signal to add to my short positions, as has been the case during the past several months especially in late March when VIX dropped below 19. In general this is a useful guideline during all true bear markets including 2000-2003 and 2007-2009:

At the beginning of 2021 almost everyone in the media and elsewhere had been bearish toward the U.S. dollar. This has been replaced by a nearly opposite consensus about a powerful greenback:

Recently I have been buying shares of FXY (Japanese yen), FXF (Swiss franc), and FXB (British pound). This leads to the next topic which is how safe havens are currently incredibly unpopular.

Investors have been making net ouflows from safe havens of all kinds including U.S. Treasuries like TLT, the above-mentioned currencies, emerging-market government bond funds including TEI, LEMB, PCY, and ELD, as well as other government-guaranteed funds like VMBS.

Investors have become so accustomed to the failed Boglehead approach that they've actually been net sellers of gold/silver mining shares, government bonds of all countries including the United States, safe-haven currencies, and related assets like U.S. government-guaranteed mortgage-backed securities (VMBS). Most of this money has gone into buying still-very-overvalued large-cap growth shares and funds. This has created compelling opportunities for safe-haven sectors which in many cases have been trading near multi-year lows. Long-dated U.S. Treasuries haven't sported such high yields in more than eight years, including TLT which traded at 107.78 at 7:47 a.m. in the pre-market session on June 16, 2022. This marked the lowest point for TLT since April 3, 2014.

TEI is a compelling fund of emerging-market government bonds with a discount that is 50% above its long-term average.

TEI recently traded with a discount of more than 13% versus its long-term average near 8%. Emerging-market government bonds aren't well known to most investors and are usually ignored regardless of their valuations. This fund has been actively managed by the same lead advisor since 2006 and is well-diversified internationally.

Some aggressive underpriced assets have become worthwhile for purchase.

Companies including INTC, TKC, and GEO have recently been trading at unusually low price-earnings ratios relative to their profit growth. Some entire exchange-traded funds including XBI have also been periodically underpriced, with XBI also experiencing very heavy insider buying of many of its components including notable CEO purchases. KWEB had experienced a deep undervaluation earlier in 2022 but has now rebounded sufficiently so that I will continue to hold it but I will not add to my position unless it retreats to an important higher low later in the year.

Considering that we are in a severe bear market, VIX has been peculiarly low so far in 2022.

VIX has remained irrationally depressed throughout 2022, indicating that much greater losses lie ahead even if--or especially if--we have powerful upward bounces along the way which cause VIX to drop below 20. I am baffled by the failure of VIX so far in 2022 to reach 40, not to mention a much higher level like 60 or 70.

If you and I both had perfect advance knowledge at the beginning of 2022 regarding what QQQ and SPY would do during the first half of 2022 then I would have bet you a lot of money that I could forecast the behavior of VIX. And I would have been dead wrong. I have been puzzled that 1) VIX hasn't touched 40 so far in 2022; and 2) VIX has retreated below 20 several times in recent months. Both of these phenomena indicate that even professional investors are mostly unafraid or oblivious to the possibility of a significantly extended downtrend in 2022. It's not going to be different from every other bear market in history: eventually VIX will rally to double or more its current level and when that occurs it may become timely to finally close out some or all of our short positions.

Too many investors are comparing current valuations with their all-time peaks of 2021-2022 and drawing faulty conclusions.

I have met dozens of people who tell me something like this, "Look how much QQQ has dropped from its top. If it's down 30% then it has to be a great bargain." This is like announcing while you're descending from the peak of Mount Everest: "I've come down seven thousand feet so far, so I have to be very close to the bottom." If we look back at the highest-ever peaks for U.S. equities in their entire history then the beginning of 2022 is by far the all-time record, followed by March 2000, September 1929, and January 1973. (You could also count the railroad bubble of 1873 and the canal bubble of 1837 but let's skip those for now.) As of today's closing prices, large-cap growth shares overall were almost exactly matching their January 1973 tops and weren't far below their September 1929 zeniths which many people in the Great Depression believed would never be exceeded. In other words, what looks at first glance like a great discount compared with the top is still enormously above fair value and historic averages. If QQQ were to drop 75% more then it would be at the average level of a bear-market bottom at roughly 40% below fair value.

The bottom line: as the current bear market progresses in typical fashion with periodic sharp surges higher, there are opportunities to make money on both the long and the short side. Be persistent, gradual, and disciplined at all times and continually rebalance your portfolio to adjust to these fluctuations.

Disclosure of current holdings:

Here is my asset allocation in order from largest to smallest position: cash including I Bonds paying 9.62% guaranteed (available to anyone with a U.S. social security number); TIAA Traditional Annuity paying an average of about 3% (for legacy retirement accounts); long TLT (some new); short XLK; short QQQ; long GDXJ (many new); long GEO (some new); short TSLA; long GDX (many new); long KWEB; long EWZ; long ASA (many new); long INTC (many new); long TKC (many new); long XBI (some new); long TEI (all new); long EPOL (some new); long LEMB (all new); long TUR; short AAPL; long T; long ECH; short XLU; short XLE; long PCY (all new); long VZ; short IWF; short SMH; long WBD; long VMBS (all new); long FXF (all new); long FXY (all new); long FXB (all new); long UGP; long ITUB; long BBD; long TIMB.

“The real secret to investing is that there is no secret to investing.” --Seth A. Klarman

UP YOUR ASSET ALLOCATION (February 6, 2022): Surprisingly few people recognize how dramatically the financial landscape has changed during the past year. Exactly one year ago the vast majority of global assets were in bull markets. Today, more than 40% of all Nasdaq shares have dropped over 50% from their 52-week highs while most global stocks, high-yield corporate bonds, cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and perhaps even real estate have been in downtrends. Some oversized percentage pullbacks have created worthwhile bargains at various points in recent months.

I have shifted my equity short:long ratio dramatically toward the long side while remaining 2:1 short to long.

My current total as of the close on Friday, February 4, 2022 was long 20.636% and short 42.13%, or almost exactly 1:2, not counting TLT. If the bear market continues for large-cap U.S. growth shares as I expect then I will likely be more long than short before the end of 2022. I list the exact percentages at the bottom of this essay.

TLT has become very unpopular as investors don't trust a forty-year bull market.

One of my very first investments was purchasing long-dated U.S. Treasuries in 1981. At that time there was a nearly unanimous consensus that U.S. Treasury yields would keep climbing indefinitely due to permanently high inflation and soaring budget deficits. Each year, often more than twice per year even in the early 1980s, there was a proclamation that the bull market for the 30-year U.S. Treasury had ended, and we have continued to experience this gloom and doom each year since then including right now. On Friday, February 4, 2022, TLT dropped to 138.78 at 10:52:28 a.m. Eastern Time. I made my most frequent purchases of TLT on Friday since it had been even more depressed during the late winter and early spring of 2021. The longest-tenured writer at Barron's, Randall W. Forsyth, penned a bullish column about long-dated U.S. Treasuries which is the lead article in this week's print edition and can be found below:

Contrarians Indeed: Two Seers See Lower Rates, Bond Boom

The online version has the same essay but a different title: "Forget About Inflation. Contrarians Expect a Recession and a Drop in Bond Yields." It is probably not a coincidence that The Economist has the following cover story:

How High Will Interest Rates Go?

Many investors confuse the Fed's overnight lending rate with long-term yields.

If we are heading toward increasing recessionary expectations, as the flattening U.S. Treasury yield curve has been telling us, then this would mean higher short-term yields and probably lower long-term Treasury yields to create additional flattening. I plan to keep buying TLT into weakness because it could be one of the top performers as it has been in the past whenever investors have gone from almost zero expectation of a U.S. recession, like now, to a majority of investors expecting such an economic slowdown.

U.S. housing prices may have begun to drop following a more extreme bubble in 2021 than we had in 2005-2006.

The price of the median U.S. house dropped about 34% following the housing bubble we had sixteen years ago. Average valuations were even higher in 2021 by Case-Shiller and many other reliable measures, so the overall pullback is likely to be greater. The U.S. Fed's data for new home prices experienced its first pullback in a long time:

Numerous sectors had become especially compelling in recent weeks including GDXJ, KWEB, and XBI.

In addition to my very recent buying of TLT, I have been accumulating GDXJ, KWEB, and XBI into weakness. GDXJ is a fund of mid-cap gold mining shares; this sector had been one of the largest percentage winners following the collapse of previous U.S. growth-stock bubbles in 1929, 1972, and 2000. KWEB is a fund of Chinese internet companies which has one of the highest ratios of profit growth to price-earnings ratio for any U.S.-listed exchange traded fund. XBI is a fund of biotech shares which recently had more than a 1.5 to 1 ratio of profit growth to price-earnings, according to the sponsor's web site, and which had also featured significant insider buying of several of its components. XBI and GDXJ traded near two-year lows while KWEB had fallen to a five-year nadir. T (AT&T) is sharply out of favor partly over confusion about its upcoming spinoff and related uncertainties. I plan to continue to purchase all of the above into either lower lows or higher lows, especially whenever we are experiencing dramatic net outflows from these and related funds along with continued above-average insider buying relative to insider selling.

Too many investors are waiting for nonexistent triggers.

Extreme deviations from fair value in either direction are sufficient reason for dramatic price changes to occur. People often ask "what is going to trigger a huge drop for QQQ" or "what will cause Chinese internet shares to rebound?" I often answer these kinds of questions with this question: what caused U.S. internet companies to collapse after 1999-2000? What caused the crash of 1929? What caused stocks worldwide to surge in the late winter and early spring of 2009? The answer in all three cases is that, even with years or decades of hindsight, there were no obvious triggers to either of these major trends. Any irrationally huge deviation from fair value will always resolve itself sooner or later.

The bottom line: we have dangerous overvaluations for large-cap U.S. growth shares combined with compelling bargains for several other sectors. Now is a good time to combine long positions in unpopular assets and short positions in the trendiest shares.

Disclosure of current holdings (most recent purchases in red):

Here is my asset allocation with average opening prices adjusted for dividends/splits and newly-opened positions in boldface: 43.6% cash including I Bonds paying 7.12% guaranteed (available to anyone with a U.S. social security number), TIAA Traditional Annuity paying 2.758% to 3.519% (for legacy retirement accounts), and Discover Bank high-yield savings paying 0.50% (available for all U.S. residents with retirement and ordinary savings accounts); 18.0% short XLK (112.7737); 17.3% long TLT (147.86); 15.9% short QQQ (309.7504); 6.4% short TSLA (494.9721); 5.9% long GDXJ (39.68); 5.0% long GEO (7.52); 2.54% long GDX (28.98); 1.68% long KWEB (35.19); 1.32% long EWZ (27.33); 1.23% long TUR (17.17); 1.05% long ASA (19.49); 0.90% short AAPL (125.5481); 0.74% long XBI (86.14); 0.62% long ECH (22.98); 0.53% short IWF (223.0119); 0.40% short SMH (170.7813); 0.27% long T (23.33); 0.12% long UGP (2.565); 0.10% long ITUB (3.83); 0.052% long BBD (3.39); 0.014% long TIMB (9.99). It doesn't add up to 100% since short positions require less cash; there is no margin involved.