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John Neil Conkle's avatar

just getting to this, enjoying it

minor nit, a covered call would reduce returns if you’re bullish. what you’re describing (buy more tech than index which already had a lot) is more like Texas hedging. the most bullish options trade of this sort you could do is a risk reversal - sell a put (bullish) and buy a call (also bullish)

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John Neil Conkle's avatar

btw @profplum99 Michael Green (who has a substack also and is a strategist at a new entrant ETF sponsor that works closely with PIMCO) is very famous for a similar and much more extensive passive thesis

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John Neil Conkle's avatar

covered calls could get your stock called away if it does well, where a sold out would be “free money” as it expires worthless

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Venkatesh Rao's avatar

Yes I think I was thinking of a case where I’m betting it does well enough to attract calls but not well enough to trigger, resulting in free money. It sounds like threading a needle but I think it’s often a robust strategy. There’s a lot of irrational exuberance around but not enough to move markets unless you’re talking meme stocks. But fair enough. Imperfect analogy.

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John Neil Conkle's avatar

yeah i'm just saying Texas hedging is almost the perfect term here because you're increasing the risk in an opinionated way

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Venkatesh Rao's avatar

I think that may be beyond the literacy level I’m willing to acquire just to make a metaphoric comparison 😂

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Ross McCannell's avatar

Great title.

Is there a political dimension of this as well where we had the End of History Fund and could afford to be quite passive in our political commitments so long as we were invested in one of its growing number of liberal democracies, but now it appears we became so lazy that full-retard populism and autocrat fetishism build up to levels that may crash the historically strong returns, and require a return to effortful, creative political engagement? Or will these flare-ups only cement the election of Mark Carney style neoliberals and entrench the fund's returns for many more years of laziness?

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Venkatesh Rao's avatar

Lol EoH fund. I think we’re going to see quiescent state liberal democracy with periodic neopatrimonialost flare-ups. The world is too complex to actually run with any OS besides liberal democracy. Modulo China.

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Shreeda Segan's avatar

btw came to scroll aggressively thru your substack posts for takes on india pakistan situation lol

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Venkatesh Rao's avatar

Not a topic I’d post about publicly

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maier's avatar

read this story? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Black_Bag

most of the world is passive here, but cyril found a solution...

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