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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

I've been told by a professional it's unhealthy to tell someone else how to feel, so let me instead offer a suggestion: take a deep breath and think differently about the situation, and seek out opportunities to still profit from manipulations sanctioned by the economic system.

For example, those of us who knew this was coming bought certain ETFs to front run the Fed and BlackRock, knowing they were going to begin purchasing them. Continue to seek out such opportunities in the future. The game is "rigged", so play along.

"When you can't change the direction of the wind, adjust your sails."

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>The game is "rigged", so play along.

Yup, just keep buying long term debt.

Fun fact, long term us treasuries have crushed stocks over the last 25 years. 1.5x leveraged LTTs gained 1% more yearly that stocks since 1992, with the same volatility, but a maximum drop-down of 25% as compared to 50% for stocks. Thanks FED!

According to Professor Damodaran's data here : http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/ (See Historical Returns on Stocks, Bonds and Bills - United States ), Average returns from stocks from 1994 to 2019 was 11.36% and returns for T-Bonds were 5.51%, pretty close to their 1928-2019 average returns of 11.57% and 5.15% .

These results are not inflation adjusted.

#1: LTTs are almost separate asset class from generic "T-bonds". They have a long duration, 20+ years to maturity. I get this data from the VUSTX fund, which tracks a long bond index.

#2: We used leverage to match volatility. This can realistically be done using futures. (and yes, I am claiming a leveraged bond portfolio is less risky than a 100% stock portfolio; the numbers back it!)

Perhaps you need to compare with 3X bull equity portfolios for a better comparison.

3x bull equity portfolios are not a good comparison, because their volatility is much much much higher. They are strictly worse portfolios, which take on great risk.

My point about bonds is that they take __less__ risk and still make more money.

60% TQQQ / 40% TMF is the best portfolio.

Someone once said: “Bitcoin is the real OWS movement.”

The system is corrupt and unfixable. Exchange your dollars for an engineered money which can be confiscated via inflation or freely printed to funds endless wars.

> those of us who knew this was coming

How does one join that club?

Consume relevant data from reliable sources. The Fed was very clear they intended to provide "unlimited support" to "maintain liquidity" when they made their March statements.

> When asked if the Fed would run out of ammunition to support the economy, Powell said no.

> “When it comes to this lending, we're not going to run out of ammunition. That doesn't happen," he said.

TLDR "Okay, so you're going to buy everything you can without any discrimination about price to hack around fiscal policy failure, good to know."

https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/mone... (Federal Reserve announces extensive new measures to support the economy)

https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2020-03-26/fed-chair... (Fed Chair Powell Says Will Provide Nearly Unlimited Lending)

The issue is that those "in the know" will just rig it in some other way as soon as the peasants start to try to mimic them. Its a cat and mouse game and we are not all that sophisticated to play it.

I do expect that at some point this pumping of economies (by increasing money supply) will fail miserably. I am not really that confident of how to position myself to profit or at least not loose my wealth when it happens.

My position is in mostly in real estate that I purchased during the last housing bust period. Hopefully that turns out.

Yeah so assets that are outside of the system altogether are a good hedge. This is why gold & Bitcoin are good hedges against the Great Monetary Experiment of 2020. Own the physical gold and hold your own keys.

>>The Fed was very clear they intended to provide "unlimited support" to "maintain liquidity" when they made their March statements.

Yes, but it's not reasonable to expect them to say anything else. The moment they even seemingly waver in their commitment to back the markets, stocks would take a very deep dive. So they need to maintain the illusion.

This was discussed publicly months ago:

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/18/ben-bernanke-and-janet-yelle...

That's not proof. But considering the markets have largely "recovered," I think it's safe to say that it was semi-public knowledge that this was in the works.

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