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I started watching the Daily Briefing post Covid 19 around May 2020 and they really scared/convinced me with their daily "the sky is falling" negative data that the market would soon crash hard after the initial rebound. Everything was presented so impressively that they fooled me, a retired finance professional.
So I hedged my retirement portfolio to avoid a repeat of my 2000 and 2009 market crash experiences. As a result, I missed almost all of one of the biggest market rebounds in history.
The group totally underestimated or missed the impact of
* the Fed Put,
* foreign money chasing better US returns,
* the bored, furloughed sports betters deciding to try day trading and dumping their extra cash in the market
* etc.
These people have opinions, just like the other 7 billion people in the world. They may be more polished and impressive than most but have not shown any timely prescience under the current circumstances.
Trading: Primarily Energy but also a little Equities, Fixed Income, Metals and Crypto.
Frequency: Many times daily
Duration: Never
Posts: 5,049 since Dec 2013
Thanks Given: 4,386
Thanks Received: 10,206
I agree too much of the Daily Briefing is scare-journalism and I stopped watching them a long time ago. The whole Real Vision format has changed a lot in the last several months, primarily due to Covid. Lots of single shot 'virtual interviews' rather than the series interviews we were used to. While I do enjoy many of the new interviews, I do miss things like the "In discussion with Grant Williams" series and similar.
Regarding your timing, at the beginning of May the ES futures had already recouped 55% of their losses and by the end of May almost 70% of their losses. While I was fortunate to have been a net buyer on the selloff, I too never thought the market would recover anything like it had, and sold all of my additional length a long time ago. 2008-2009 taught me not touch my main investment portfolio, so that remains intact.
They and everybody else! I for one have been extremely surprised. Wall Street analysts don't look so bad for other reasons. They all predicted a quick rebound based upon earnings not being effected as much as people expected. In reality their hypothesis was wrong, but the end result was the same, so they look okay. It's all been driven by 5 stocks though. Saw a graphic earlier today (which I unfortunately am not allowed to reproduce here) which showed that since the beginning of the year SPX is up 3%, while FB AMZN AAPL MSFT GOOG are up 34.6% and the other 495 companies are down 4.5%. Who could have predicted that?
Sounds like you watched the interviews and made some investing decisions on your own based upon those interviews, which unfortunately did not work out. I do not blame you for that because I had many similar feelings, but I did not react in quite the same way. Real Vision do actually have a trade advisory product and both Raoul and Julian's portfolio's have both performed extremely well in the last 6 months and the last 18 months. I don't believe either ever shorted the stock market, in fact they generally advise not doing that because the stock market is to difficult to predict and there are "easier trades out there". Short Banks & High Yield Credit, Long Bonds, Eurodollars, Gold, Silver, Bitcoin have all been huge winners for them. Long USD has been a loser for Raoul, but short USD has been a winner for Julian.
TLDR/In summary: I agree that the Real Vision content has definitely painted a dark picture in the last several months, where there is a lot 'broken' out there. Their trade portfolio's though have focused on things other than equities and have actually performed very well.
I was a 'founding member' of RVTV way back when they launched, and jacked in my subscription a couple of years or so into it. This would have been around four years ago now I think, having grown tired of their constantly bearish narratives.
I actually took up the offer to get a month for $1 during the pandemic for entertainment reasons, there are still decent interviews to be found on there in my opinion - as long as you steer clear of their market views and instead focus on the longer-term stuff and some of the geopolitical things they have on there - although again you have to sorta ignore the scare-mongering aspect of it.
I could never advise anyone to sign up, the whole hype around Raoul Pal is massively over the top. Very typical of all these 'macro gurus' that will offer vague views and happily take credit when they are right. I don't want to sound too harsh, I really like Raoul and would happily listen to him for half hour, but taking any of his forecasts seriously? Not for me.
I also wonder what happened with Grant Williams (a massive gold bug, to the point of parody), some of his interviews were decent back in the day that I remember, but he seems to have left a few months ago as RVTV went in a different direction. It actually looks to me like they have gone for a 'grab as much cash as possible' approach that has involved up-selling the 'Macro insider' package that Raoul does with Julian Brigden (who I happen to think is actually pretty good in fairness) and charging huge amounts for it. I remember when they first launched they offered a set price for life for those of us that signed up, back then there was just one membership type - now it seems like there are several. I also note they have quite the presence on ZH, I often see stories on the few times I visit ZH each week.
They also had an association with Hugh Henry who had been on there a few times a few years ago, he was entertaining and a good watch if somewhat pretentious. He now seems to be having some sort of mid-life crisis and can be found on YouTube and Instagram posting videos of himself discussing the old times at his fund, which again is entertaining but another of those 'macro-gurus' that has since retired having had to close his fund.
It is the same with all these things though, one's best bet is to understand how to analyse markets via their own approach and ignore the noise and nonsense out there that often just acts as a distraction.
Trading: Primarily Energy but also a little Equities, Fixed Income, Metals and Crypto.
Frequency: Many times daily
Duration: Never
Posts: 5,049 since Dec 2013
Thanks Given: 4,386
Thanks Received: 10,206
The current Macro Insiders Portfolio updated 9/1...
Open Positions
Julian, 7 winners average +37%, 2 losers one -1% the other an option almost worthless
Raoul, 7 winners average +47%, 7 losers average -7%.
Closed Positions
Julian 11 winners average +26%, 5 losers average -5%
Raoul 8 winners, 3 losers
Raouls returns difficult to calculate as 5 of the 11 trades were options so either lost everything or +200% and one was a Eurodollar trade reported in bps not % return.
I know I'm beginning to sound a little like a shill but are those really results that look bad?
Grant was a co-founder and as you say not been seen since they went in the new direction. I think his "In Conversation series" was the best material they have produced. Grant has his now doing "TTMYGH - Things that make you go hmmm" newsletter and podcast series. https://ttmygh.com/
Those results look good, but as with everything else in this game one would have to determine likely entry/exit based on the recommendations given at the time and targets etc. As I said I like Raoul and think Julian is pretty good, I just cannot recommend RVTV - it is basically a video version of ZeroHedge.
Grant has been doing the ttmygh newsletters for years I believe, originally available for nothing (Raoul also has his own newsletter service) before RVTV launched and then became a paid service some time after. I note he has also produced the podcast/video interviews with the same individuals generally speaking as he used to interview on RVTV. The guy is/was obsessed with gold, as I said to the point of parody - a big fan of short-sellers too, which is all linked to the same bearish thesis we see churned out for clips and views.
