USDTBULL on FTX is up over 50% in a year.

It holds USDT-PERP rebalanced to 3x leverage.

A long USDT-PERP position only paid funding at an average of about 5% p.a. over that period.

So where did the rest of those returns come from?

What am I missing?

Seems... wrong. 🤔
Most likely what @factorialzeros and @ArchipCapital have pointed out.

The token would be buying more and more USDT-PERP as it rebalanced.

And the cashflows would be relatively consistent and USDT-PERP v low vol, it would compound very effectively.
As my man @IDrawCharts said in the comments, you could DIY this much better yourself.

- Long USDT-PERP
- Re-invest funding received back in by buying more USDT-PERP.

Obviously, there's a reason people are pushing those perps down (it's tether innit) so do your own research.
Actually... still confused tho... 🤦‍♂️

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More from @therobotjames

2 Dec
I see discussion about entries and exits in systematic trading. I don't really think like that.

I trade when:
1) I can get a good price
2) I have to.

1) is dependent on others. You can't force people to trade with you at bad prices.

It needs patience.
Let's say you wait and you take an opportunity to buy cheap.

Now you are long.

The market moves and now it's trading at a price you think is fair.

What do you do?
You would like to reduce your exposure because you have no edge anymore.

Carrying positions with no edge costs you in pnl variance, with no expected returns.

But reducing the position involves trading. And trading at a fair price is an immediate loss. It costs you money.
Read 6 tweets
26 Nov
"how do you know when something is cheap?" 👇
@KrisAbdelmessih better at explaining this than me 🙏
And @bennpeifert too.

There's a podcast he did with @choffstein where he talks about "disturbances in the force" and how traders get paid to provide liquidity where its needed and offset it elsewhere.

A really beautiful description of the art.
Read 4 tweets
26 Nov
You see a lot of trade theses that look like sell-side research.

"We think this will happen, which will cause this to happen, which will cause this..."

"This company/project is better than this one, so I think it will outperform.."

You don't need to play such unreliable games.
Most reliable approaches to trading don't involve grand predictions of the future.

Just...

What's being over-offered now?
What's being over-bid now?

I spend most of my time trading the crypto markets at the moment.

I'm spectacularly uninformed about the projects.
I have no idea what the future looks like.

But sometimes I can buy an asset at $100 and sell a future on it for $110.

Sometimes people place limit orders and leave them alone. And I can take them if the market moves and they become attractive.
Read 6 tweets
16 Nov
"Ask questions now? Or ask questions later?"

Imagine you are trading a futures product.

The prices of the futures as a function of their time to expiry looks like below.

You step away from the desk to make some tea.

And, upon your return, you see a different picture...

1/n
What happened to the Feb expiry?

It kinda sticks up.

The curve looks kinky now.

Why?

2/n
Could be many things:

1. Random large demand for that expiry has created temporary price impact, likely to revert
2. New info impacting that month is being priced efficiently
3. Somebody knows something and you're likely to see more demand come in behind in that expiry

3/n
Read 15 tweets
14 Nov
People say a lot of things about trading, and most of it is worthless.

So it's useful to be able to quickly discard ideas.

Let's take an example...

Many in crypto, including @zhusu, will tell you that buying new highs is a good plan.

Is it? Let's have a look...

1/n
It's important to understand that discarding ideas is a lot easier and quicker than verifying ideas.

Your mission is not to do the most perfect simulation of reality from the offset. You'll waste a lot of time doing that.

You want to do very quick data analysis.

2/n
Plenty of time to go deep later.

We:
1. pull daily price data for all FTX spot contracts
3. for each asset for each day, calculate the 20d high
4. calculate the distance in days from the 20d high
5. calculate next day log returns

3/n
Read 15 tweets
14 Nov
Sunday music post.

I grew up near Stonehenge, in the UK.

On 1 June 1985, the Wiltshire police beat the shit out of the travellers that came there for summer solstice.



"They're getting their kicks, they're laughing at you and me."
I was six years old at the time.

Even at that age, I knew exactly who these people were. 😿
Another great levellers song

open.spotify.com/track/4DjZtPbf…
Read 5 tweets

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