Trade: Tit For Tat

During yesterday morning’s pointless run-up in valuations, I remarked how I wasn’t concerned, because the broader trend was with the bears. Likewise, with this morning’s smack-down, I’m not dancing on the table with glee, because it’s just another knee-jerk response to what now seems like a daly tit-for-tat response between China and the U.S. As I keep saying, it’s all about February 9’s lows. We need to break them and close beneath them to get cookin’.

I saw someone in the comments section yesterday remark how everything would be fine and dandy once the U.S. and China realized this whole “trade war” thing was a mistake and called it off. 

For my own portfolio, I remain 200% short, which has been more or less my orientation for months. Sometimes I’ll crank it up to 270% when I’m feeling particularly bold, and in extreme cases, I’ve dialed it back to maybe 70%. But, on the whole, I’m using margin aggressively, as I am now in 61 different positions, none of which are particularly large. The allotment is fairly even, with not a single ETF among them.

Tomorrow we might see some “tat” from Washington D.C. in response to China’s latest volley of tariffs. For the moment now, we’ll just have to focus on tit and its repercussions.