Thursday, August 19, 2010

Its always Bonds, Bonds, Bonds...

Everyone is talking about bonds, what does this mean. Do bonds conintue higher? I continually think back the the presentation that Tom Sosnoff gave in June about contrarian thinking. As you all know I tried the short bond trade back in June but I decided that this trade was early. Since then the TLT which is an ETF that tracks 20 year treasury bonds as rallyed quiet a bit. Today it hit a high of 106.61.

Although I think the bigger money is going to be made on the short side of this trade, I do realize that this trade long has momentum behind it. But anyways I decided to go back and find the original post that I did on this idea back in June --> Prior TLT Post

In the prior post I put a chart together showing the historical for the 20 year rate over the last few years. At its low in 2008 the 20 year rate hit 2.86% today it closed at 3.66%. If you go to the Prior post and scroll down to the comment section you will notice that when I first posted this analysis the 20 year had a 4.05% rate and the ETF was trading somewhere around $97.50. In my analysis I looked at the average move in the move in the etf as a multiple of the move in the rate in absolute terms. What I found was that on average the etf moves 13 times that of the interest rate. On one of my comments on the original post I noted that based on this finding if we were to test the low rates reached in 2008 that this would put the value of the TLT at around $120. Based on the fact that we have about 80 basis points to go, using the same methodology that leaves us with a target to the upside of around 117.25 assuming we see 2.86% again.

A few posts ago I wanted to sell the 100/98 put spreads, essentially getting long but unfortetly this trade slipped through my fingers when TLT had a pretty monstoris move followed by yet another monsterous move. The closer we get to 117 the more I favor the opposite or contrarian play. I think the old saying is "the bigger they are the harder they fall", this trade seems to be getting a bit crowded and parabolic but I still don't think it is ready yet. I am going to be watching this one closely. Only I will probably favor options on the TBT as it is a double inverse of TLT.

Not sure when I will execute and how I will make the trade, but I am interested more and more each day this trades up. I don't think it stops going up until after September expiration as I think a fall in equities in the short term can give just enough juice to the upside.

I will be hawking this one!

3 comments:

  1. I am itching to make this play, but I am going to be patient.

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  2. This thing is getting interesting as it approaches my upside target. This morning it traded as high as 109.34.

    I am still sitting on my hands, because I know I am early and everyday TLT reminds me that I am early.

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  3. This thing is crazy right now. Every day I feel like I missed the boat so feels silly to get long now, but every day that would have worked. It was confusing for a few weeks there that this thing and bonds in general were on a tear but equities were staying flat. I was expecting this move in TLT a few weeks ago.

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