: Alex Gurevich
: The Trades of March 2020 A Shield against Uncertainty
: Houndstooth Press
: 9781544525143
: 1
: CHF 10.50
:
: Betriebswirtschaft
: English
: 354
: kein Kopierschutz
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
Have you ever wondered what happens in the command control of a global macro hedge fund when US stock markets plunge 35 percent in just three weeks? Welcome to the mind of Alex Gurevich, Founder and CIO of HonTe Investments. As tragic events unfolded around the world, the pandemic ruptured the sequence of price action and devoured financial markets like a black hole. Through Gurevich's personal narrative and the team's actual Slack messages, The Trades of March 2020 follows their frenetic efforts to survive the crisis. From the first terrifying days of loss, both personal and professional, to the team's redoubled attempts to identify emerging opportunities, this account of crucial, in-the-moment decisions is a faithful record of the trading moves made in the unprecedented month of March 2020. Discover the thinking and investment philosophy that led HonTe to survive and ultimately thrive during one of the most extraordinary challenges of our time.

Introduction

In March of 2020, a few days after shelter-in-place was ordered in the Bay Area, my wife woke up in the middle of the night when she heard me collapse on the bathroom floor. I didn’t quite pass out, but I was experiencing shortness of breath, palpitations, chills, and severe sweating. I was certain I didn’t have COVID. It was stress.

The path that led me to that point in my health and personal life is inseparable from my journey in financial markets.

Have you ever wondered what is going on in the command center of a sophisticated hedge fund? Have you ever wanted to be a fly on the wall of a CIO’s office when the markets are melting down?

When I finished my first investment book,The Next Perfect Trade: A Magic Sword of Necessity (henceforth, TNPT), I hoped to call my next bookThe Next Perfect Portfolio: A Magic Shield of Sufficiency. COVID-19 interrupted this plan.

However, in a sense, a book about trading during a pandemic is a natural sequel. In the introduction to TNPT, I compared formulating a trading strategy to preparing for a battle.

If you think of investing as a battle, you need to prepare for it thoroughly. Get in proper shape. Learn your moves, acquire your armor, your shield, your helmet, and your battle horse. A magic formula (or magic weapon in this context) will be wasted if you get killed by the market’s first arrow. But with proper training and equipment this weapon may give you a devastating advantage.

It is only natural to next recount what happened in battle.

Winston Churchill once said that history is written by the victors. So here is a spoiler: this is not a story of how we failed and lost a fortune in the pandemic. Few can truly be considered winners in 2020, but from a financial perspective, this thriller has a happy ending.

This is the story about how HonTe Investments, LLC (HonTe) navigated the pandemic successfully.

A Shield against Uncertainty

We named our investment company after a Japanese strategic term applied to the game of Go.Hon stands fortruth andTe in this context stands formove. A “true move” or an “honest move” is one that applies a patient strategy, which may appear slow but is the best at delivering long-term results.

In the chaos of the pandemic, it was difficult to decide what would be aperfect portfolio. I had to deal with so many unprecedented developments and uncertainties that betting on short-term outcomes was virtually impossible.

I had my weapon, though, my Magic Sword of Necessity, which allowed me to select trades with odds skewed in my favor. But I also had to avoid being destroyed by wild market fluctuations.

My approach was to exclude variables of which I didn’t have expert understanding. I didn’t speculate on epidemiological peculiarities of COVID-19, the effectiveness o