Something strange is happening in the market right now

In the past few days, the S&P 500 (SPX) has risen to all-time highs. I mean, that’s strange given our current economic back drop. But that’s not what I’m talking about.

What’s strange about the current state of the market?

While the SPX is at all-time highs, the volatility indices have been rising as well. These indices include VIX, VVIX, and VXX.

If you don’t know what these are, that’s okay. VIX is an index that tracks the implied volatility of the SPX based off how the options for that index are priced. It is what the one month expected move in the market is, in a sense. VVIX is an index that tracks the implied volatility of VIX based off how the options on VIX are priced. VXX is an index that tracks the volatility based off the weighted balance of the first two VX futures contracts which trade.

For now, let’s focus on VIX. On August 25^th, VIX closed at 22. As of today’s close on August 31^st, it is 26.4. In percentage terms, VIX was up today 15%. (Many people don’t like quoting VIX changes in percentage terms — I don’t care).

In 3 of the past 4 days, we have seen VIX close higher than where it opened. This has happened all while the SPX has hit all-time highs in each of the past four days.

VVIX — also known as the volatility of volatility — has shown a similar trend to VIX, rising in 3 of the past 4 days. VXX — which is based off the front two months of futures contracts on VIX futures — has also steadily risen and shown similar trends.

Realized volatility is far below implied volatility options are pricing in

The volatility that is implied by SPX options is much higher than the realized volatility we’ve seen in the past 30 days. According to my calculations, realized volatility for the past month has been under 10%. Meanwhile, VIX has held strong above 22, and has continued to climb in recent days as noted above.

Why is this strange to me?

In general, you tend to see VIX fall as SPX rises. In general, there is an inverse relationship between these two items.

Today, VIX rose by 15% while SPX fell by roughly 0.3%. According to my data, this has only happened 5 times going back to 1993.

Note: The above chart is in percentage terms.

I’m not the only one that has noticed

Mark Sebastian, from OptionPit.com and frequent guest on The Options Insider Radio noted the following:

What he is saying here is that there is a huge difference between the volatility being priced the NASDAQ 100 Volatility Index — VXN — and the S&P 500 Volatility Index — VIX. This is interesting to me because the NASDAQ 100 is composed of non-financial companies and is weighted heavily towards those tech stocks. The very tech stocks which have been going parabolic in recent weeks (some may even say months).

In addition, Matt Thompson noted the following:

The 5-day average contango, which is merely the difference in the implied volatility priced in by the front month futures contract and the second month futures contract is at 16.9%, which was at the 99^th percentile since 2004. Also he noted what I noted earlier, that the VIX is much higher than the realized volatility on SPX.

What does this all mean?

This could mean a number of things. Ultimately it means there is a lot of uncertainty in the market, and options are pricing in more volatility than the volatility that we’ve witnessed in the last month.

This could mean that big money is hedging their positions with put options on SPX or call options on VIX or buying VX futures, all of which could cause the premiums paid to rise.

In addition, the VX futures for October are pricing in extra volatility due to the upcoming election. The pricing of these October futures remains elevated when compared to the September and November VX futures prices.

Investors are nervous about what could come in the next month or two. And they have good reason to be.

There is still no agreement on extended economic stimulus that the American people desperately need. Republicans and Democrats have still not agreed to a deal. As of the last update I saw, Republicans proposed a $1.3 trillion stimulus, which was rejected by Democrats. The House, led by Democrats, passed a $3 trillion stimulus back in May. They said they would be willing to lower their demands to $2.2 trillion. No deal is in sight, and that could have investors spooked.

Fact is, we are in a bubble

The last time market closed at all-time highs with VIX this elevated was during the late 90s tech boom. That was a time period which also coincided with easy Federal Reserve monetary policy and high speculation in stocks.

We are seeing similar behavior in the tech stocks and work-from-home stocks today. Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Tesla, Nvidia, Zoom, and AMD are all examples of stocks which are booming right now.

But the pain for the American people is far from over. Continuing claims continue to remain above 14 million. The unemployment rate is over 10%. The economy is attempting to recover slowly. But stocks? They’ve ripped to all-time highs at a much more rapid rate. And the disconnect between those two has investors nervous right now.

Dark pools are not buying this rally anymore either

In order to understand what’s happening, check out the Dark Pools. According to the Dark Pool Index over at Squeezemetrics.com, Dark Pools have printed under 45% for 17 days in a row. In general, a print over 45% is considered to be bullish, and there tends to be a slight lag between dark pool prints and stock market returns.

This is meaningful to me because Dark Pools bought the rally all through April well into July. But they aren’t buying anymore.

Perhaps we will begin to see a return of selling to the market in the coming days or weeks. I know I’m on high alert for that right now and will be ready to short this market when the opportunity presents itself.

Derive pleasure from following your trading rules, not from profits

One of the most difficult things in trading is associating pain or pleasure with following (or not following) your trading rules, and not from your day-to-day trading results.

Trading results are random. That is a fact.

For example, let’s say you have an edge that results in you being profitable 60% of the time. This means that you will still lose money on 40% of your trades. Beating yourself up for these losses has zero benefit to you as a trader.

We are battling ourselves

The human psyche is fragile. We are battling our egos.

Sometimes in trading we get more concerned about being “right” than making money. This is why we sit on losing positions, hoping they come back in our favor. This is why we don’t take small losses, allowing them to turn into big ones.

I was stuck in a rut, which I’m working towards getting out of. Today has been a step in the right direction for me. Today my focus is on following my trading rules, not make a profit per se. This is really hard to do. Besides, isn’t the goal to make profits after all?

Associate positive feelings with following your trading rules, not the end results

Accepting that a trade is going against you and cutting it should be associated with positive feelings because you cut those losers early.

No one wants to lose money, and that’s why it’s so hard to associate a positive feeling with taking a loss. Taking losses sucks, and we all wish they were avoidable.

It’s difficult to do this. Losing money hurts. But, it’s important to reframe losses as a cost of running your trading business.

I have to remind myself to be impatient with losing trades. I can’t fear cutting a loser too soon. If trade doesn’t feel right and isn’t going the way I expect it to, it’s okay to cut it.

I have to remind myself to not look back at trades that have been cut loose. This look back bias makes me kick myself for not holding a trade longer. This is detrimental to my future trading performance, because I end up holding losers longer that should’ve been cut the moment they no longer felt like good trades.

I have to remind myself that I can always re-enter a trade if an attractive setup presents itself once again.

Dealing with randomness

Establishing a set of trading rules, and sticking to those trading rules has proved to me to result in more profitable trades rather than focusing on profits alone.

If you have a legitimate edge in the market, a set of good trading rules to follow, then profits will follow as result of disciplined trading.

This week was rough for me

I got my ass kicked this week by the market.

It started early in the week, when I bought WORK and SPCE call options, just before the market reversed course on Monday and sold off in the final hours of the day. Because the SPCE options expired on Friday of the same week, I had no choice to cut this loser. Only to see it rip higher Thursday and Friday.

I started the week in a hole, down $1,100.

I spent the rest of the week trying to climb out of the hole, only to make the situation worse. End result, down $4,000 on the week.

How did this happen?

Getting in a hole sucks. Spending the rest of the time trying to climb out of the hole led me to making sloppy trades, overtrading, and putting on trades that I wouldn’t normally make on SPY and IWM that I told myself were “hedges” in case the market sold again.

I forgot what was working.

I forgot how I made $12,000 in a matter of weeks from May 27th to June 19th.

Nothing seemed to work.

Every trade went against me as soon as I entered it. Or so I thought.

Either way, it doesn’t matter what they did.

What did matter was my mindset sucked. I was in a bad mental state, and desperately tried to “undo” my bad trades from the early part of the week, only to have even more bad trades to “undo”.

I wasn’t doing what works for me.

I started trading options expiring this week. I started day trading more even though I very much prefer swing trading a position for 1-2 weeks.

I cut winners too soon (primarily due to short-dated options being traded).

I let losers run on too long.

I added to losing positions.

I put on positions that were not favorable from the get go.

I spent too much time this week hoping for my positions to go in my favor.

Now is a time for reflection

It’s the weekend. My trading week sucked. But I still live to trade another day.

Goal #1 and always: DON’T LOSE ALL YOUR MONEY. When the money is gone, the game is over.

I’m going to take this weekend to reflect on my trades. I will review past trades further and understand what happened and why it happened. I will try to understand what my mental state was when I entered into those trades.

Trading is hard. It’s hard to tell by all the so-called experts all over social media. They’d have you believe they make profits all day. You rarely see is the hard part of trading. The part where it beats the shit out of you and makes you question why you started in the first place.

I share this for anyone else who had a bad day, week, month, or year. It’s not easy. It’s not supposed to be easy. I knew that. You know that. So take time to reflect, take care of yourself, and objectively review those trades and improve the process. It’s the only thing I know how to do.

Why you need to get better at taking losses

If you have any dreams of becoming a trader, one of the most important things you can do is take losses.

Taking losses is admitting defeat.

Taking losses is means you analysis was wrong.

Taking losses is unacceptable.

These are myths that we tell ourselves about taking losses.

The three most costly trading errors you can make

According to Mark Douglas, author of Trading in the Zone (book notes here) the three most costly trading mistakes you can make are:

Not predefining your risk
Not cutting your losses
Not systematically taking profits

Taking losses hurts. But why does it hurt so much?

On a psychological level, you don’t want to be wrong. Being wrong means losing money, and you don’t want to lose money. Losing money is painful.

Being wrong is a hit to your ego. It means your analysis failed.

Too often traders allow themselves to sit on a losing position, waiting for it to come around in their favor. I can speak from personal experience regarding this.

For about my first year of trading, it was so difficult for me to cut losing trades early on.

I didn’t know when to cut a trade. I thought to myself “if I just wait a little longer, the trade will come back my way. I just know I’m right.”

Frame losses differently: the cost of doing business

Losing trades are a business expense.

They are the cost of doing business as a trader. Don’t look at them as anything else. They are not a reflection on your analysis. They are not a reflection of you as a person.

Losses are merely the cost of doing business in an uncertain environment with uncertain outcomes.

Dave Portnoy is playing the media like a fiddle

For those of you who don’t know, Dave Portnoy is the CEO of Barstool Sports, and has taken on the persona of Davey Day Trader since sports were cancelled in March due to coronavirus.

Dave’s an avid sports fan and sports gambler, and trading stocks have given him and many others an outlet as the sports world is put on hold.

Now that Dave has gone on a winning streak, he’s called out the likes of those in the FinTwit community, including calling Ross Gerber a “SIMP” and Warren Buffett “washed up” and an “idiot”.

At first, financial media thought what Dave was doing was pretty cute. Fast Money would have him on their program and their panel of experts would give Dave advice on stocks.

But now they’re fed up with him. Interviewers appear to be defensive. Portnoy continues to remain brash as long as he continues to make money in the market.

What the media doesn’t realize is that they are being PLAYED by Portnoy for millions of dollars in free publicity.

And you know the sad thing?

This is the same playbook that Trump used to get free publicity through his 2016 campaign. The media believed there was no chance Trump could beat Hillary, so they built up Trump as the candidate so they could rag on him every time he said something stupid. Then he won the election and it wasn’t quite so funny.

This was the same playbook used by Lavar Ball to get free publicity when his son Lonzo Ball was at UCLA and getting drafted by the Lakers. Lavar was building up his own brand, Big Baller Brands, and leveraged media attention to try to monetize this idea.

He used his son’s hard work and accomplishments to push his own thing. It only ended once Lonzo Ball rolled his ankles multiple time in Ball Baller Brand shoes causing him to switch over to Nike, and suing a former brand partner.

The media gets played so hard. They fall for these electric, brash, loud personalities who say whatever is on their mind. Then they get defensive and attack when those loud people don’t do what they want them to do.

That’s what’s happening with Portnoy. As he continues to brag about his stock market gains, financial media and those in the financial space grow more and more resentful of the man.

Thing is, Dave doesn’t care about making money in the market. Once the world goes back to normal, and sports come back into our lives, Dave will go right on back to running Barstool sports. Except now the Barstool sports brand has been exposed to tens of millions of people who may not have otherwise heard of them.

So, financial media, you are being played. You fed the beast, the beast has become bigger. Now you are upset that Portnoy is making a joke out of the financial industry.

To the mainstream media in general: you get played so hard repeatedly, and you don’t even realize what is going on. While your attention is on Dave’s trades, he’s busying enjoying all this free publicity at the benefit his brand.

Don’t like it? Stop giving him attention. That’s it.

I’m sorry for anybody shorting this market

This is a difficult market to get a read on, that’s for sure.

Shorting the market right now is a fool’s errand. Whether you believe liquidity from the Fed is driving the market higher or not doesn’t matter.

The market wants to go higher. That’s where the path of least resistance continues to be at the moment.

Selloffs are very few and far between. You have to be tactical and quick with any shorts in this market. They can payoff, as they did for me on Thursday and part of Friday. But they stop working very quickly.

We are all waiting for the next big selloff. It may come. It may not. For that reason you have to be careful until we get there.

I learned my lesson last year

I got burned time after time shorting the market for the larger part of 2019.

I was focused on fundamentals, trade war headlines, and a seemingly deteriorating market.

So I shorted consistently all of last year. I came very close to blowing up actually. I was down 80% at one point.

It wasn’t until March of this year that my short positions paid of very handsomely and actually got me back to even despite the horrible 2019 year.

In recent weeks my trading has improved

I’m more focused on what VVIX and VIX are telling me in terms of volatility. If I believe these are trending higher, then I’m going to be biased to mix in long and short trades to capitalize on a move in either direction.

However, if VVIX and VIX are trending lower, them I’m biased to hold a majority of my positions long in the market, depending on what is moving on that given day. In recent weeks, I’ve been able to make good plays on the likes of XLF, GS, JPM, BA, UAL, RCL, CCL, F, TSLA, XOM, AMD, NVDA, VIAC just to name a few.

Take profits and cut losers

I like to play options that are 2-4 weeks away from their expiration date. Weekly options (5 or less days to expiration) are too risky for my style right now. I like to give my options a little breathing room.

I watch my positions like a hawk. When I begin getting down 20% I seriously have to consider cutting this position and taking a loss. Once I’m down 40% I cut it no questions asked.

I also try to take profits on 50% of the position around a 10% gain (or more if it’s there). Then I take off another 25% around a 20% gain (or more). The I leave the final 25% of my position to run to see how far it can go.

Last week I had a SPY put option that I let run, that went from $90 to $630 in a matter of days. In the past, I would have never let it go that far because I would’ve booked all of my profits too soon. But because I had already closed out 80% of the position at a gain, that last contract I was holding was essentially risk-free and I had no problems holding it for a little longer.

If you want to learn more about trading psychology, I highly recommend you check out my notes on Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas.

Been playing lotto calls on big movers…

This market is insane. For that reason, I’ve been playing short-term call options on those names getting bid the most recently.

Banks, airlines, cruise lines, oil, casinos, retailers, are all industries I’ve dipped into and out of recently. I’ve traded it on short-term call options about 3-7 weeks out.

My main focus is to take of 1/4 of a position at 10% profits, another 2/4 position at 20-30% profits, and then let the remainder of the position run. Taking profits is critical to setting up risk-free trades.

That’s the way it has to be played right now.

It’s very very very easy to adopt a bearish mindset right now.

The market is going insane.

But I’m thinking about it like the tech bubble.

My main focus is to keep my holdings short. I never held any of my lotto positions past 2 days unless it was the 1/4 winning position remaining.

It’s much much easier to let winners run when you booked 3/4 of your position at a profit. Those runners have ended up making up my big home runs in recent days.

My best trade was UAL last Friday, which I booked at 361% profit. F also netted me 192% profit.

I cut losers at around 20-40% drawdown on these positions without any regrets. It’s worked out well so far. But that can change very quickly.

I was wrong

A few weeks back I was dumb enough to think selling would return to this ridiculous stock market.

I want to catch the next downturn. I think we all do.

Downturns provide opportunities for large profits.

Volatility events have been some of my most profitable times. The hardest part with shorting any market is being patient and strategic.

My gauge to short flashed

I have a few different metrics I monitor to gauge when are better times to short than others.

They began flashing on May 11 and 12, and sirens were going off on the 13th and 14th.

On the morning of the 14th, the market miraculously recovered. I felt like OPEX and VIX expiration would loosen up this market. Alast I was wrong. But, I ended up minimizing my losses from this due to position management.

Position sizing and profit taking

This is why position sizing and profit taking are key to succeeding in overcoming your emotions in the face of an uncertain future.

On May 12, I put on 100 SPY July 17 puts at the $110 strike for $0.03 per contract, totaling $300 (small bet).

On May 13, I took off 20 contracts at $0.06, for a total of $120. That was a 100% profit from the previous days price. Now, my cost minus proceeds received from this sale is $180 ($300-$120).

On May 14, I took off 20 more contracts at $0.10, for a total of $200. That was a 233% profit from the previous days price. Now, if I take the $180 above, and take off the $200 here, my cost minus proceeds now equals -$20 ($300-$120-$200). This means my remaining position is risk-free.

Risk-free? No way…

Yes way. I had 60 contracts left that could literally expire worthless, and I would have still made a profit on the entire trade. This is why it’s important to take profits along the way on any position you’re playing

Turned out I was wrong. But I played my signals, managed around the situation, and came out with a small profit (which actually turned into a small loss because I later added to it…).

But…I ended up with a smaller loss because I managed around an unknown future. At times in the past, I would’ve ridden the entire trade from top to bottom and loss damn near my full investment.

The return of selling in the stock market

I believe we are about to see heavy selling in the market once again.

We have seen the return of some selling, with the S&P 500 down 4.7% this week as of my writing on May 14th.

Why do I believe this?

Coming into this week, I expected a calm week with usual options expiration (OPEX) week behavior. From my observations, market makers can usually move markets and control price action more strongly some weeks than other.

Market makers can influence markets especially in times when volume is low and volatility is low. This week, the market has seen more selling than usual during OPEX week from my experience.

Not only that, but we haven’t seen the drastic moves in the S&P futures contracts overnight. Last week, it felt like every day we were seeing moves higher after a day of selling off during regular trading hours. See tweet below:

on moves 5-14-20

The last time I remember feeling like this during an OPEX week was for the trading week ended February 21, 2020 and we all remember what followed over the next month.

What are gamma levels saying?

On May 11, 2020 I noted that $2.2 bn in positive gamma was coming off books this opex Friday.

tweet 5-14-20

Now these options could have been rolled out or closed altogether. We never really know. But I expected much of this gamma exposure to be moved in a manner that would bring us closer to zero gamma.

With all the selling this week, gamma levels have now turned negative across the board according to spotgamma. This is not good if you are bullish equities right now.

spotgamme 5-14-20

While component gamma is still positive, per Squeezemetrics, and DIX signals that Dark Pools continue their buying binge, I can’t ignore headwinds that we are going to face in the next week or two.

squeeze 5-14-20

What headwinds are we faced with?

Will we see a second wave of infections?

What businesses are going to go out of business for good?

How many of the now 36 million lost jobs will actually be recovered?

What will be the recovery time of those lost jobs?

What kind of demand shocks are we in store for over the next year or two?

How far is the Fed willing to go with their monetary policies?

Will the Fed buy equities?

With all of these questions unanswered, it’s very difficult to be bullish right now.

WHY is the US facing deflationary pressures in the face of unlimited Fed interventions?

The US consumer price inflation report showed prices fell 0.8% month on month in April, dragging the annual rate of inflation down to just 0.3% as gasoline prices plunged more than 10%. However, the bigger news is that core inflation (excluding food and energy) has recorded consecutive MoM declines for only the second time in the series’ 63-year history – the last time was 1982.

Source

Why are we facing deflationary pressures in our economy? Especially when the US Federal Government has injected trillions of dollars into the economy in recent months?

Shouldn’t fiscal stimulus be inflationary? You are adding money to the system after all.

To answer these questions, let’s start with the concepts of inflation and deflation.

What is inflation?

You are probably already familiar with the concept of inflation. Real quick, inflation is a sustained increase in the price of goods and services through time.

Inflation occurs as a country creates more of their currency over time. This money printing means that each additional unit of currency becomes less valuable. As a result, you have to use more units of that currency to purchase some good or service.

During inflationary times, you don’t want to hold cash. Holding cash during inflation is like holding a depreciating asset which loses value every day.

Instead, you want to invest that cash in some asset that will appreciate in value during inflationary times, such as gold.

Now on to deflation…

Deflation occurs when there is a high demand for cash. Contrast this with inflation, in which there is a low demand for cash.

Some economists may disagree with this. But you have understand that deflationary pressures were at their worst coming out of the 2008 recession and now during this current recession we are in. These deflationary issues emerged as a result of the emergence of central bank interventions and the rise of the carry trade. More on that in a second.

Why is there a spike in demand for cash?

Volatility (or the price of money)

Volatility (which can be generalized to the VIX, due to the liquidity and vast usage of SPX as a proxy for all market volatility) can be understood as the price of money. How exactly?

Volatility in the market during a carry regime causes deflationary forces to take hold. The reason for this is as follows:

When volatility is high, seemingly safe investments appear (or even become) less safe investments. This effect decreases the moneyness of those assets (or how safe those assets are viewed with respect to cash). As a result, cash becomes king.

Cash becomes king due to margin calls or other risk-based rebalancing factors, which can lead to hard selloffs in assets of all varieties as the rush to cash becomes more common.

Rapid deflation is the result

Rapid deflation occurs as a result of this spike in demand for cash. Cash becomes more valuable to market participants during this time. This is due in part to uncertainty about future asset prices and other factors which exert downward pressures on those assets.

Without central bank interventions, you can end up in a situation of runaway deflation. Too many market participants chasings cash at the same time is going to push asset prices down. There is no way around this.

This is why in volatile markets, asset correlations tend to converge. All assets lose value due to margin calls and other factors mentioned above.

Just like a run on the bank, except with no bank

One way you can think of this scenario is just like a run on the bank, except there is no physical bank per se.

The limiting factor is how much cash is currently available in the system, how much central banks will allow the value of other assets to drop, and subsequently how much liquidity (cash) central banks will be willing to inject into this system.

Want proof? – Check out various markets in early March when selling was high

spx deflation 5-12-20

Remember the selloff in equities that took place near the end of February and beginning of March. A situation was created where there was a sudden dash for cash.

gold deflation 5-12-20

Gold prices exploded higher, then plummeted. Why else would gold prices collapse in the face of economic uncertainty in conjunction with insane printing by Central Banks?

tlt deflation 5-12-20

Treasuries also sold off after hitting historic highs in price (lows in yields).

btc deflation 5-12-20

Even Bitcoin lost 50% of its value during early March.

Why? Because many different market participants began dashing for cash. This created an environment where there were fire sales going on across assets.

Why deflation though?

As our M2 money supply increased in recent decades, there has been an associated decrease in the velocity of that money.

m2 5-13-20

The above chart shows the M2 money stock in red, which has increased significantly since 1990. The chart also shows the velocity of the M2 money stock, shown in blue.

Both of these values are indexed to January 1, 1990 as the starting point. While the M2 money supply has increased significantly, the velocity of that money has actually decreased steadily through time.

m22 5-13-20

If you look at these values with both being indexed to June 1, 2015 you can see a drastic difference in the direction of the M2 money supply and the velocity of that M2 money.

This chart doesn’t even include the velocity of the M2 money supply recently injected into the financial system in March and April 2020. You could expect that this figure has declined significantly.

What is the velocity of money?

The velocity of money measures the rate at which money is exchanged through the economy.

It is usually measured as a ratio of GDP to M2 money supply (in our case here).

High money velocity is a sign of a strong, healthy, expanding economy. Low money velocity is associated with recessions and contractions in the economy.

Low velocity of money means that for every new dollar being created, it’s not making its way into the real economy.

This is pushing on a string as Ray Dalio has called it, and is a signal that additional stimulus actions by the Federal Reserve have become less effective at stimulating the economy.

How is the carry regime responsible for this?

The carry regime is associated with underlying pressure towards deflation.

In the book, Rise of Carry (affiliate link*), the carry regime is associated with the following traits emerging in the economy:

High debt burdens
Limited economic growth
Low prospective returns to real investment (low- to zero-interest rate policies)

Debt burdens rise during this regime. This is due to the continuing decrease in long-term interest rates. It makes to so debt is cheap today, so why not borrow against tomorrow?

Credit demand collapses. There is only so much productive demand that need to be met. More credit becomes excessive and less beneficial to society as a result.

In a carry regime, inflation rates can be at a comfortable level then suddenly crash to deflationary measures. This is exactly what we have witnessed in the most recent CPI number that came out.

However, the carry regime doesn’t necessarily have to end.

If central banks can continue to increase money supply and accommodate the demand for cash while also increasing the sense that risks and debt are socialized, then the carry regime can carry on.

I believe we are nearing a time where central banks (1) understand the long-term ramifications of their actions or (2) keep pushing forward with easing policies until the ROI of those policies has diminished to nothing.

So, what’s the choice?

* Affiliate links help to support this blog. Amazon gives a small cut of each sale to me if you purchase through this link. Don’t click the link if you don’t want Amazon to pay me a referral fee.