Whew! I feel like Ritholz - the last two big market moves I've been traveling. The first one, during the Sendai Tsunami and Fukushima nuclear disasters, I bought a netbook and attempted to put on some trades from my hotel. This time I followed along and put in trades from a smartphone.
Performance wise I've been okay. I went in net short US equities, but with most of my assets in US cash - so on a yen basis or 50/50 USD/YEN basis I'm slightly down for the last few months. I actually cut two short positions during the prior two weeks, and bought some HII on the Friday before the big drop. Beautiful timing eh? On fundamentals I think it's quite strong though. At these prices it's at a tasty multiple. It wasn't hit as bad as some other stocks but had declined quite a bit. The Navy is the only significant customer, which won't be affected by an economic downturn. And a wind down in Iraq/Afghanistan military spending shouldn't affect them much (although they trade at roughly the same multiple as army/air force companies).
I've since put on the long gold miners/short gold trade too. On a dollars term it's a net short position but in the current markets trades like a long - so I consider myself net long now. Still primarily in cash.
Currency is something I've been working to understand more but have a long ways to go. I didn't focus on it while studying for the CFA; my rationale was that I would never have a competitive advantage vs large institutions/macro traders, so it would be better to specialize in other areas and bypass currency sensitive issues. I had essentially the same reasoning for not learning about oil and energy markets. Now I don't think I can even look at many securities on a micro level without a better understanding, and perhaps even a position, on these things. My current list of areas to study:
-the oil/energy industry. I'm particularly interested in gas. Read The Prize, reading Oil 101, will read ...
-currency/inflation. Read This Time is Different, need to read - and think - a lot more.
-technical analysis. I've stayed away from this in the past because it was drilled in to me at school that technical analysis is garbage, and the little I did read looked like mysticism. I'm very aware of the human, and my own, tendency to see patterns where there are none. That said, there are times where it seems relavent and makes sense logically. I suspect learning about technical analysis will give me insight into the yen's strength...
