Has the market peaked?

economic

westernpromise wrote: »

Would be the same regulation in either case.

Incidentally I mean to say CFTC expects exchanges to order players to exit their long positions until normal contango resumes

Yeh i figured you meant that.

Zinc is in backwardation. Why have CFTC not done anything about that?

westernpromise

economic wrote: »

Yeh i figured you meant that.

Zinc is in backwardation. Why have CFTC not done anything about that?

Probably because nobody has what it considers a large long position in either futures or zinc stocks. A lot of small longs = OK, one larger long = probably manipulated.

But the CFTC's regulation is not homogeneous. They have a price view of coffee and cocoa, but not of WTI. Oil can go into backwardation and for some reason that's fine.

All regulators have their neuroses. The CFTC is obsessed with certain things - EFP paperwork, coffee backwardation. The FCA is obsessed with others: three lines of defence, money laundering controls. They're all irrational and are just something for them to do.

Over-regulation is a thing, however.
https://af.reuters.com/article/ivoryCoastNews/idAFL6N0PZ5XV20140725

A disconnect between the futures and cash prices for London coffee and cocoa, partly due to intervention by the exchange to keep markets orderly, has led to a depletion in Liffe stocks...“If the physical market is paying you vastly above what the terminal market is paying you then there’s no way people will put cocoa on the exchange, they’ll sell it instead on the physical market,” another analyst said.

economic

ilovehouses wrote: »

You're not shy about claiming an edge.

So, what do you mean and how do you profit?

I think we get a bit too dazzled by technology. It's a tool. Companies are using more and more but it doesn't make a fizzy pop maker a technology company.

if the fizzy pop maker can produce a custom made fizzy pop with a few clicks of a button online and has it delivered by a drone, then it sure is more of a tech company.

chucknorris

ilovehouses wrote: »

In the context of this discussion it sort of doesn't matter because, IMO, the split between risk assets (say a world tracker) and minimal risk assets (as much as they exist) has as much to do with circumstance as age.

I disagree, if I was younger I would stay in property and equities, but I am approaching retirement and my retirement portfolio will hold cash and bonds (as well as equities and property). These are a reluctant choice for me, and it really goes against the grain for me to opt for these. But the problem (especially with shares) is that I don't have the years left to invest significant amounts of cash during a correction to take advantage of the lower prices, it would be madness for me to risk losing significant capital in a correction, when I can't mitigate that loss with new investment. Also I would risk having to sell investments before they had recovered.

economic

ilovehouses wrote: »

In the context of this discussion it sort of doesn't matter because, IMO, the split between risk assets (say a world tracker) and minimal risk assets (as much as they exist) has as much to do with circumstance as age.

Well circumstances has a lot to do with age.

Generally the biggest factor in someones asset allocation is age especially as one gets older. but if you are a billionaire you wouldn't care as much.

economic

GreatApe wrote: »

Human knowledge grows with time. It is also a massive prize perhaps worth in excess of $100 trillion so lots of people are going to spend lots of time thinking about it and doing R&D to crack it.



From my understanding Google with its Alpha Go team seem to have the beginnings of a general AI on its hand. Likewise a company called open AI seem to have something similar.

Yes it needs to train by doing and learning from its mistakes but how can it be otherwise.
It is said they need huge amounts of information and humans only a little bit of information to learn new things. But I think that is a mistake humans need a huge amount of information we just dont realize that seeing is huge amounts of data. If you show a person who has never seen a car a car for the first time they dont just have 1 picture of a car. If they look at it for 5 minutes they have 60,000 images of that car at different angles and distances etc go through their eyes to their brain. So what looks like small data...just show a child a car once and it knows what a car is...is more than just small data it is a lot of data perhaps in the 100 GB range

The marginal cost of technology (capital) is less then the marginal cost of humans (labour). So technology is surely the future to boost productivity right? Am i correct?

Filo25

Just looking at starting out on my self investing time, and have to admit am struggling with the bonds portion, anything long dated and you are buying into a fair amount of interest rate risk in the current environment, short dated gilts you may as well be in cash for the returns on offer.

So find myself pushed towards higher yield which undermines the whole point of having them in the portfolio in the first place, the joys of the long run impact of near ZIRP and QE!

chucknorris

ilovehouses wrote: »

You're mid-fifties (?), wealthy, will never spend the assets you've accumulated and will be leaving everything to a dog's home.

You don't want to move into cash & bonds but don't have to. You've got another 30 years and can afford the risk. Someone on here was saying they consider their investments to be generational so, in that case, it's just mindset - you'd invest in risk assets because you'd be investing for time horizon beyond your lifetime.

The alternative is to say you've got enough so why take ANY risk and just stick it in low/ no risk assets. IMO that's the point of wealth accumulation - it buys choices.

The ugly truth for most investors our age (I'm a little younger) is they can't afford to take the risk but won't be able accumulate the funds they 'need' if they don't.

But there isn't any point in taking on risk, if you can't spend the reward for doing so, that is another reason why I needed to change my investment approach. I'll be 60 in less than a month, I will certainly be leaving something (but not everything) to the Dog's Trust and the Last chance rescue centre (I give them both money now, and have done for quite some time).

economic

Filo25 wrote: »

Just looking at starting out on my self investing time, and have to admit am struggling with the bonds portion, anything long dated and you are buying into a fair amount of interest rate risk in the current environment, short dated gilts you may as well be in cash for the returns on offer.

So find myself pushed towards higher yield which undermines the whole point of having them in the portfolio in the first place, the joys of the long run impact of near ZIRP and QE!

You are just starting out now? Bonds are at all time highs and so are stocks. Probably best to drip feed for sanity.

Filo25

economic wrote: »

You are just starting out now? Bonds are at all time highs and so are stocks. Probably best to drip feed for sanity.

For a variety of reasons yes, ISA is just being dripfed, but had some old AVCs on an old expensive platform which I am moving into a SIPP so that will be a bit more important, not a huge amount of money but still enough to take seriously.

Am light in pension for my age as well but aim to put 30-40k in per year from here (at least as long as the tax advantages and yearly limits allow for!)