Friday, April 21, 2017

Modern Monetary Theory and Big Red Numbers



This week I had an awakening.
I recently read an incredible piece, 7 Deadly Innocent Frauds of Monetary Policy, (free pdf) and while I don't agree with all the conclusions, it really simplified the structure of money flow involving central banks, which ties into my previous article about betting on the side of central banks.  I really recommend reading this (and this is coming from someone who can barely read).

The overall premise is that a country that has "debt" in its own currency can never go broke, as it just creates more money.  This "debit" on the Fed's balance sheet becomes a credit to the private sector- It's a zero sum game!  A debt-ceiling is just a private savings cap.
I frantically began scouring, going back to old interview and congressional hearing clips to hear it from their very mouths-
Greenspan to Paul Ryan
Another to congress
Bernanke 60 minutes

There is a lot more economics cooked into that, but my takeaway is for the individual investor, how can we apply that?  It dispelled some fears of mine about which have been repeated by Congress forever, "America is going to run out of money," "how are we going to pay for THAT," etc.  As long as the economy is running, there should always be a "debt" and deficit, that is just how much more money is working in the economy.

I think we are now just dealing with more of a semantic difference between "printing" and "creating" money, as well as the "debt" vs the "score keeper," where the Fed's balance sheet "debt" is just keeping score of the outstanding credit that people use in the economy.  (Again I can't stress enough to please read this pdf, a quick summary isn't that useful)

 So for short VIX, lets keep on rolling with the big guns backing us up.  The Fed's function is to create liquidity, which expands the economy.  The only non-psychological constraint on such printing is inflation/too much demand, which they've "reported" to be under target for a while.

Again, this is not to make a value judgement on the Fed.  My gut reaction sees it as a Bond villain organization.  This is simply to view the mechanical functions and incorporate those into our macro view and trading strategy. 

Now one more thing...

I'm trying to avoid too much trade journaling, but I've had an interesting few weeks with the recent backwardation action, and it does tie into this Fed debt business in terms of something looking worse than it is.
With the market humming along a few weeks ago I continued rolling my ~10% OTM SVXY short puts, which at the time was around the 130 strike.  I think I must have opened that position at the absolute top tick, around 11am -12 pacific, and in the next hour the market closed fairly red.

As of now I'm just between the breakeven and strike price, so conceptually everything is fine, but the daily P/L has had some very angry red numbers for me the last two weeks.

Regardless of volatility spiking up or slowly shrinking back down over the next few weeks, my takeaway is to remember the concepts.  I'm trying to visualize all of this in terms of intrinsic value only.  I pictured this like the Fed's huge balance sheet, where the "debt" is a very big angry red number that most people reference, but what does it really mean and what is the issue?  As long as demand and inflation aren't going crazy, this is just the net public savings working in the economy.
Similarly, even though my daily P/L on some puts looks ugly, I'm above the breakeven so the intrinsic value is there.  (And if assigned, then we just start selling calls against it)

One big step of the options and life journey is figuring out what really matters.  What big angry red numbers can we ignore and which do we pay attention to?  Which big red numbers do people misevaluate, and can we profit from that?

I'll check back in when all these positions go really bad, turn awry and lose the name of action!

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