Thank you

Firstly I would like to say a big thank you to everyone who wrote in following the “Friends and Quinto” interview.  We received lots of thanks and praise as well as many questions and suggestions.  I’m simply unable to reply to everyone individually, but didn’t want anyone to think I was ignoring them.  So please accept this rather impersonal message as a thank you.  I had already agreed to do a second interview and to elaborate on the topics discussed.  Now we will also use this as an opportunity to answer several of the questions that were asked following the first interview.

A closely guarded system

The second point I wanted to make concerns an amazingly profitable trading strategy.  I have thought long and hard over several months about sharing this, but have now decided to reveal it to subscribers to this newsletter.  It was developed by a head trader at a well known bank.  He was so successful with this strategy that he retired at the ripe old age of 28!  He never revealed his secret to his former employer, nor to the traders he managed at the bank.  Needless to say I feel somewhat privileged to have had this explained to me and hence my reluctance to share it.  This strategy has been on my mind a lot for the past few weeks as I gather information together for my end of year review and planning exercise for next year.

I think you will be very surprised at this strategy and you will also understand why the gentleman concerned flat out refused to tell his employer how it worked.  The next couple of articles I write for you will give you this strategy for you to consider yourself.  This is powerful stuff indeed and in sharing this I need to protect the trader’s identity and that of the bank he worked at.  So I will email this exclusively to my newsletter subscribers.  There will not be a back up copy on the server.  It will not be reproduced on my website nor anywhere else open to the public.  I know this will be great material that you very well might adopt some or all of for yourself.  In sharing this with you I ask just one thing in return – that you keep this strictly to yourself.  Please do not share it with others and do not reproduce it anywhere.  As you know I am not sensitive about most of my articles, but with this I am going right out on a limb so please work with me on this.  OK, this will be with you by Christmas.

Recession – second dip coming?

On a completely different theme, I will pass on a summary of a chance meeting one of my fund partners had with a guy he sat next to on a plane this week.  This chap is a director of a global ports operator, the largest in world actually.  Inevitably the conversation turned to the economy and an interesting fact was unveiled.  He said that they knew the meltdown would be bad when in Q3 last year, normally stable port volumes “suddenly fell off the edge of a cliff” to use his exact phrase.  Now I am no economist, nor do I believe in forecasting of any kind.  However I cant think of a better barometer of economic activity than freight volumes passing through the major ports around the world.

The dramatic decline varied from country to country of course, but overall volumes suddenly dropped 30-40% almost overnight.  We all know what followed and its not a huge leap of faith to accept that there might be a link between the two.  Actually it makes perfect sense doesn’t it, even if in an unscientific and unsophisticated way?

Anyway activity levels stabilised after that, although fell well short of recovering.  Until last month that is.  “Last month volumes fell straight off the cliff again.”

If that is true (not that I have any reason to doubt it) it may give us a bit of a heads up.  I am not saying it will or it wont, as I just don’t know.  But if we get into the New Year and things suddenly start turning south again, it wont come as any great surprise, at least not to our little group.

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