No ETF For You!

True to form the entire crypto community just flipped from a state of suicidal depression back to mania. Turns out a federal appeals court ruled that the SEC must review its prior rejection of Grayscale’s ETF proposal to convert its Bitcoin Trust into a spot bitcoin ETF.

Apparently the court found the SEC’s decision “arbitrary and capricious” (polite legalese for bullpucky) given that the agency already approved two bitcoin futures ETFs in the past but failed to explain why Grayscale’s similar offering was denied.

Supposedly this legal victory once again reopens the possibility of the first spot bitcoin ETF in the U.S., a move seen as significantly lowering the barrier for general public investment in bitcoin. Bla bla blaa…

My take on this latest rollercoaster?

Gag me with a spoon!

(sorry I spent way too much time in the S.F. Valley chasing hot blondes in the 1990s)

I mean, seriously – nobody ever saw this one coming?

Of course there will be a Bitcoin ETF. Too many deep pocket players at this point are heavily invested in (and crypto or the blockchain in general) and they want to see a bloody return.

Whoever stands in the way is going to get stomped.

To me this latest rug pull down to $25k was painfully obvious. Technically speaking BTC had been ripe for a final dip lower to shake off some of the last weak hands.

As Paul Newman put it in ‘The Sting’: “If you’re playing a poker game and you look around the table and and can’t tell who the sucker is, it’s you.”

Anyway, in case you’ve been wondering what I’ve been up to over the past few weeks. NO, I didn’t go on summer vacation – well then again, in a sort of way I did.

For me vacation means taking time off the market and the flaming dumpster fire of social media or current events, and instead spend my brain power heads down coding and building something useful for myself and the trading community as a whole.

Because that happens to be one of the few things I’m really really good at. And over the past year or so I’ve barely been able to do any of that. Which sucks!

Ergo I decided to take most of August off to work on a cool idea for trading stocks (and options if you will) based on my stock statistics tool, which you may already be familiar with.

I don’t really want to give away too much too early but the seasonal statistics I was able to leverage in context of my own options trading has been largely responsible for producing this P&L curve over the past two years:

A few weeks ago i was chatting with my associate Luke and it occurred to me that parsing hundreds of issues in the market and producing statistical reports on key metrics every week would offer people a massive edge in the market.

Why? Simple because over the long term seasonal statistic are a FACT.

I’m not saying that because I’m in love with a new idea. Rather I’ve been trading this very concept for many years – quite successfully if you would agree.

And what I’m working on opens the door for you to do the same. Again, i don’t want to put the cart before the horse as I’m still putting the finishing touches on what I’ve been buidling.

What I can say at this point however is that we’re heading into a very busy trading season. It’s going to be fun and very hands-on.

Moving forward I am going to de-emphasize market analysis in favor of reporting on hard research data and the trades we are actually engaged in.

If you guys want to trade along – the door is always open. The more the merrier.

Alright, that’s all for now – I’ve got to go back to work.

See you soon.

Michael

  • Mike
  • 8 months ago

About the Author

Hey there, I am one of the founding members of Red Pill Quants. I used to work as a systems engineer in Silicon Valley until I left the industry in 2008 to become a full time quant trader. It's been fun ever since.