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When the Hedge Became the Trade
JPMorgan called its London Whale book a hedge. The harder question was always simpler: what, exactly, was it hedging — and who could prove it?
Jun 27 / LDI
The Hedge That Needed Cash
UK defined benefit pension funds did not collapse because the gilt market moved. They collapsed because the hedge they used to match their liabilities required cash faster than the funds could raise it. That is a different kind of failure, and a more uncomfortable one.
Jun 24 / File
Long-Term Capital Management and the Trade That Was Too Smart to Question
Three Nobel prizes, a Wall Street legend, and a balance sheet that did not survive the week the spreads stopped converging.
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Amaranth and the Trade That Got Too Big
A natural gas calendar spread is one of the cleanest trades in commodities. By September 2006, Amaranth's version of it was a large share of an exchange contract's open interest. That is not a position. That is a financing problem wearing a position's clothes.
Amaranth
The 5% Treasury Problem Is Back on the Desk
Long Treasury yields are close enough to 5% again to make stocks answer a harder question: what exactly are investors being paid for?
Market Notes
Phil Goedeker and the Trades You Should Not Be Taking
Phil Goedeker's sharpest lesson is not the parabolic short. It is the review that found the trades that never should have been there.
Phil Goedeker
The AI Trade Is Starting to Look Like a Power Trade
Elon Musk's space data center idea sounds extreme. The market point underneath it is simpler: AI chips do not matter if they cannot be powered.
AI
Mark Minervini and the VCP Setup That Gets Quiet First
Mark Minervini's VCP is often copied as a breakout drawing. The useful version is more specific: leader, base, contraction, pivot, stop.
Mark Minervini
Peter Brandt and the Position That Is Not an Opinion
Peter Brandt is known for classical charts. In a FundSeeder interview, the stronger lesson is that a chart is only useful when it defines risk.
Peter Brandt
Larry Hite and the Bet Small Enough to Lose
Larry Hite's risk lesson is simple and hard to live with: the trade has to be small enough that being wrong does not become the event.
Larry Hite