DRValue

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/IEF/options?p=IEF&data-ipsquote-timestamp=1579219200 Jan 2020 puts available and their quite cheap. Interesting historic chart too for relative pricing.

The Fed is now normalizing it's balance sheet, lowering demand for treasuries, which is lowering near term prices and raising yields. Inclined to think the yield curve is flattening because we're in an historically low rate environment where rates can only really go up and return to the mean, rather than due an overheating economy being the driver . At some point I'd expect 10 year yields to rise to compensate for the extra risk, so the curve should steepen. Who'd buy a 10 year for the same return as a 2 in a rising rate environment? Demand for 10 should fall raising the yield. But looking at historic data I can't see a huge spread between the 10 and 2. Lots of moving parts here with the Fed policy and one of the longest cycles without a recession, which is making this difficult. Leaning towards long a steepening curve but would want an asymmetric return for my gamble. Found this for exposure: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/STPP/options?p=STPP But no options available. Any idea how to leverage a steepening curve? Or thoughts on the above? I think I'm a bit late to the party for the thesis.

Chainlink official YouTube channel. Parts 1, 2 and 3 of Smart contracts: Are We Getting Rid of Lawyers? https://youtube.com/channel/UCnjkrlqaWEBSnKZQ71gdyFA

US yield curve The gap between 10-year and 2-year US Treasury yields. A 'flattening' curve is often considered a portent of slowing economic activity, an 'inverted' curve has been a reliable predictor of recession. The curve hit its flattest in a decade in January and has flattened further in recent days on demand for safe-haven, long-dated Treasuries. Any clever soul wish to put forward a thesis on how to play the flattening to inverting 2/10 yield curve? We'll figure out later how to leverage it. Not really a bond curve guy but anything that hasn't happened in 10 years deserves to be looked at for possibilities imo.

I'd say it's very relevant. This "investment" sometimes feels like the ultimate coin flip.

Ari David Paul believes Oracles will be the biggest thing in 2018: Who is Ari David Paul? The CIO of BlockTower Capital, a $140 million cryptocurrency hedgefund: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-04/cryptocurrency-fund-blocktower-is-said-to-raise-140-million

@Cherzeca I don't think whatever way this plays out will result in a dividend windfall, but I do recall plaintiffs arguing in a court hearing (Perry, I think) that junior pref and common should have been paid rateably alongside the senior pref, i guess getting at contractual rights. I guess that this would only apply should the NWS stand. I'm betting this plays out with the seniors being declared paid and retired, the GSE's pay a re-insurance fee to the Treasury while they rebuild capital and then go about raising capital in one way or another. I'd be interested in what that would do to the warrants though as I have read (somewhere...) that the original intent was that they would only be exercised if the Treasury was not be able to recover its investment in the seniors. I don't know how the common warrants would be worth anything if the treasury lost its investment in the seniors but that's for another day. I can't cite anything right now but if i can find the text regarding the intention of the warrants i'll link to it. I wonder if the text shows the intention for the warrants was as above, and the seniors are paid down, a case could be made to invalidate the warrants?

Pre-NWS shareholders shouldn't be worried at all. How exactly have post-NWS holders been screwed? Or more to the point, what reason does Kudlow have to believe that post-NWS holders have been screwed? the pre/post NWS debate is meaningless; pre-NWS holders sell their stock and claims to buyers who become post-NWS holders I've been thinking about how any compensation etc. payments would be made to past holders of stock. For example, if Junior prefs are found to be entitled to past missed dividend payments, would shareholders who had owned the shares at the time a dividend would've been declared and paid, be due any dividend if they have since sold their stock? I used to think they should be entitled to any award but now, thinking about how bankruptcy contract claims can be sold, I'm more inclined to think the reasoning would be that only current shareholders at the time of any court victory would receive any award. Is that the way to think of it Cherzeca? In other words, if I bought a junior pref today and the courts vacated the NWS and declared that junior prefs are owed all previous undeclared dividends, tomorrow, then they would all be paid to me because the previous holder sold their claim, in the form of a stock certificate, to me.

Googled it. Can't see anything. Anyone do this? I don't want to trade/spreadbet, instead buy the security.

Also they've competed a successful proof of concept with swift and 5 banks one being Barclays. The poc created a bond smart contract generating an interest rate from the average of the 5 banks, assigned the debt a rating from s&p, and made interest payments. They're still working with swift, who service 11,000 banks, to complete the work to allow the banks existing systems to integrate with the block chain. Swift is being pushed by members to use the block chain as it reduces costs as transactions clear in minutes not days.

Wow.

re the clearing houses you have to trust them to execute and they are a single point of failure. There is a case alleging their failure to deliver on stocks for example. One other real world example is flight insurance being trialled now by fizzy, a part of axa. You buy flight insurance and the fizzy Oracle retrieves flight data. If your flight is late the insurance contract pays out immediately. This is currently with a centralised Oracle service, oraclize, which is not desirable as it is a single point of failure. Decentralised oracles are required for fully trustless execution and higher value contracts. I personally haven't not competed any. But I haven't had the option. I've had to trust them to deliver. Re high cost, take a look at the cap gemini report. This will save billions of dollars in costs and raise billions in revenue.

https://www.capgemini.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/30/2016/10/Smart_Contracts.pdf That's the capgemini report highlighting the businesses case. I don't see block chain being a store of value as much as I do it having enormous utility value. In that report chainlink is the Oracle. Basically if you want a smart contract to execute in an automated way when an event occurs in the real world you need an Oracle. The Oracle pulls data from the real world (through an api) and if smartcontact triggering events are met the contract is executed and money is paid. Think smart contract derivative bets paying out when apple stock reaches a particular value or bonds being sold if the debt is downgraded. It allows contracts to execute definitely when events occur without either party having to trust that the other will perform. Essentially the whole reason block chain was created was for smart contracts and without oracles real world use cases are impossible. If this doesn't exist ethereum is worth nothing.

https://schedule.sxsw.com/2018/events/PP80326 Founder of smartcontract.com speaking on a panel with the founder of docusign and the chamber of digital commerce. Rumour is that docusign will partner/adopt chainlink to allow smart contract users to digitally sign digital agreements through an api.

In the vein of "where did the money go" does anyone know whether the mbs reps ahs warranties lawsuit money went to the gse's or fhfa?

@jhcap Svxy had such a run if I could've got low price 2 year puts I would've taken a risk I think. You may have been able to roll them over each year if you were lucky and vol stayed low. Saying that I'm more of an intrinsic value option guy so I'm not sure I would've been able to determine the best strike price to go for. Basically my argument was that the status quo wasn't sustainable and at some point something had to give.

@jmp8822 Good luck with your bet. I checked last night and the last time Cushing had this level of inventory wti was at $90. Couple that with the aramco ipo incentive for high oil prices and I think there is a case for higher oil prices especially with driving season round the corner. Oil market is tricky though. I've read that past investments that are offline can add millions of barrels capacity and because of that, immediate new large investment isn't needed. Looking at the wti chart again oil at $90 would finally give us that "U" shaped recovery.

Thanks for that. Gave it a listen. Sounded like the plaintiffs had good arguments then as always the defendants speak and I feel like almost immediately the judges side with defendants. The way this is going it seems like the answer always is "yes plaintiffs we here what you're saying but it doesn't matter cos the fhfa can do whatever it wants cos of the statute" regardless of the implications.

Yeah, I'm mainly focused on leaps as I know they're available to retail investors I think I'd struggle for access to anything more exotic. They're obviously some special people with the amount of research they can do and the ideas they have which will be difficult to emulate. How'd they get to thinking of shipping volumes! Could north Korean won appreciate under a disarm scenario? I'd love to know what they read and get my hands on it. Grants interest rate observer only so far but I'm not convinced to subscribe

With very few exceptions the media deserve the bullet Figuratively, of course.

Going long you can buy them on an exchange or through some trading accounts. No idea personally on leaps but a quick Google brought this up www.coindesk.com/first-long-term-ledgerx-bitcoin-option-pegs-price-10000-one-year/amp/

@theozmancometh You're not wrong! The amount of "opportunities" I see that turn out to not be opportunities is frustrating. I think i would be lucky to find even one investment a year with the certainty and risk return profile I'm looking for. The research would be immense too. Maybe a group of dedicated individuals could pick an area each to look at and report back. Who knows?

:) Nerd mode is on when talking money. Best and only way! Did Costco work out ok? If you do have some ideas please share and I'll be sure to do the same. Any ideas about where we can go to find these gems in terms of research or other money manager ideas?

Cheers. All thanks owed to "The Big Short" and Cornwall Capital. The strategy makes absolute sense to me. Personally I don't see the point in risking any money on stocks or any instrument unless you're potentially doubling it or more. There is just so much that can go wrong, even if you're right the market may not think so. So if I can potentially risk a small amount of capital for 30x returns on a binary, time constrained event then I'd be willing to do it. Trouble is, legitimate opportunities are few and far between. Also, if you'e LEAPS are far out enough you could be wrong and still recoup some of your losses if you can sell your options with some residual value. Are you familiar with Capital One and Cornwall Capital? I've assusmed the board would be.

I've searched the Cryptocurrency thread for Chainlink. I have posted on there to try and get a discussion going. I can't see anything on the board about it. Its difficult to value, most cryptos are pointless and scams, this one is very interesting. If you 're familiar let me know, if you're not and interested then ask. Info: https://www.smartcontract.com/ https://create.smartcontract.com/sibos17 I'm assuming most here are involved in financial services / analysis. The financial Services sector and most any industry will be all over this eventually (if all goes to plan). If you have any info from where / who you work with about Chainlink that you would like to share that'd be cool.