u/Only-Researcher-5242

Could be about products, technology, cities, lifestyle, manufacturing, people, food, or anything else.

Curious what misconceptions people still have today

Disclaimer
This is not financial advice. Have no exp in professional finance. But hey, ai is getting so powerful Im not sure if that really matters anymore. 

https://preview.redd.it/0pf40aovlyzg1.png?width=2048&format=png&auto=webp&s=9f35fc0315d6d4295028af31aa46476d533e4a10

https://preview.redd.it/sa3d6e9xlyzg1.png?width=2048&format=png&auto=webp&s=ef45b14e4e5b53856b1bb429562f662d0d8bc1ba

Weekly alert setup through Xynth and python. Emails me weekly if there are any setups.

Background
So every Friday, the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) publishes something called the Commitment of Traders report. It breaks down what every major futures trader is doing. The interesting bucket is the "commercials" - these are the actual companies that produce the stuff. Oil drillers, gold miners, farmers, silver refiners. 

Now most commercial companies hedge their work. It takes months to pull gold, silver, or oil out of the ground and process it, and in that time the price can swing in any direction. To lock in their profit, they sell futures on the commodity, basically saying "Hey, give me X months and I'll deliver you gold at today's price, no matter what gold is actually worth by then."

But sometimes these companies flip. Instead of locking in today's price, they actually go long, betting the price is gonna be HIGHER by the time their product is ready. These are the guys who pull the stuff out of the ground. They know their market better than anyone. If they're willing to skip the guaranteed paycheck and just sit on their inventory, that's a huge tell.

And this is what this strategy exploits.

So I pulled 15 years of data across gold, silver, oil, S&P, treasuries, and nat gas. 

After a bunch of messing around, here's the exact setup that produced the cleanest results: 

• Commercial guys (miners, drillers, etc.) go unusually long,  meaning their long position is bigger than it's been at any point in the last 12 months (roughly) 
• The market itself is already in an uptrend (price is above its 50-day average, and the 50-day is above the 200-day, nothing fancy, just "stuff is going up, not crashing") 
• When both are true → buy the 2x leveraged ETF for that commodity, hold 4 weeks, move on

Actual trading
I paper traded January to make sure I wasn't fooling myself. 13 trades, 9 winners, finished up about 18%. Not life-changing but the logic held up live, so I committed $10k real money Feb 1st. Here's every trade since (real money):

#	Entry	Market	ETF	Return	Portfolio
1	Feb 24	Crude Oil	UCO	+60.4%	$11,511
2	Feb 25	Crude Oil	UCO	+60.7%	$13,258
3	Feb 26	Crude Oil	UCO	+67.2%	$15,486
4	Feb 27	Crude Oil	UCO	+64.7%	$17,991
5	Mar 02	Crude Oil	UCO	+54.3%	$20,434
6	Mar 03	Crude Oil	UCO	+37.0%	$22,323
7	Mar 03	10Y Treasury	UST	-4.0%	$22,100
8	Mar 04	10Y Treasury	UST	-3.7%	$23,411
9	Mar 04	Crude Oil	UCO	+27.7%	$23,628
10	Mar 05	Crude Oil	UCO	+29.2%	$25,122
11	Mar 05	10Y Treasury	UST	-2.7%	$24,955
12	Mar 06	Crude Oil	UCO	+22.2%	$26,343
13	Mar 06	10Y Treasury	UST	-3.1%	$26,137
14	Mar 09	10Y Treasury	UST	-3.2%	$25,929
15	Mar 09	Crude Oil	UCO	+25.6%	$27,589
16	Mar 10	Crude Oil	UCO	+16.3%	$28,710
17	Mar 11	Crude Oil	UCO	+10.5%	$29,461
18	Mar 12	Crude Oil	UCO	+0.5%	$29,496
19	Mar 13	Crude Oil	UCO	+4.6%	$29,837
20	Mar 16	Crude Oil	UCO	+4.2%	$30,148
21	Mar 17	Crude Oil	UCO	+0.7%	$30,200
22	Mar 18	Crude Oil	UCO	-2.9%	$29,979
23	Mar 19	Crude Oil	UCO	-10.4%	$29,200
24	Mar 20	Crude Oil	UCO	-8.4%	$28,587
25	Mar 23	Crude Oil	UCO	+9.6%	$29,271
26	Mar 24	Crude Oil	UCO	+4.3%	$29,584
27	Mar 25	Crude Oil	UCO	+11.3%	$30,416
28	Mar 26	Crude Oil	UCO	+4.9%	$30,790
29	Mar 27	Crude Oil	UCO	+4.7%	$31,150
30	Mar 30	Crude Oil	UCO	+5.5%	$31,576
31	Mar 31	Crude Oil	UCO	+21.9%	$33,304
32	Apr 01	Crude Oil	UCO	+28.4%	$35,669
33	Apr 02	Crude Oil	UCO	+17.9%	$37,266
34	Apr 06	Crude Oil	UCO	+22.9%	$39,404
35	Apr 07	Crude Oil	UCO	+19.6%	$41,330
36	Apr 08	Crude Oil	UCO	+8.6%	$42,222
37	Apr 08	S&P 500	SSO	+17.3%	$44,047

Yes, it's disproportionately oil. That's not a coincidence. My first live trade was Feb 24th, buying UCO (the 2x oil ETF). Commercial oil producers had just flipped unusually long on the CFTC report from the prior Friday. 

At the time I had no idea WHY they were doing it. I just followed the signal. A week later Iran and the US were trading strikes. Three weeks later the Strait of Hormuz was effectively closed. Brent oil put up its biggest monthly gain since 1988 in March. Gas hit $4/gal. 

And the signal kept re-firing every Friday as producers stayed loaded long, so I kept buying every week. That's the whole idea. 

Oil drillers don't see the news before you do, but they see their own order books, their customers, their supply chain. Something was spooking them in mid-February and they quietly started betting their own capital on higher prices. The CFTC report showed it. The news caught up three weeks later.

Going forward
Iran war is cooling off. Oil will probably mean revert from here, and yeah that's a risk. But the signal doesn't care about oil specifically. It just reads what the producers across every major commodity are doing every Friday. Right now commercials are quietly loading up on silver (3rd week in a row) and gold is still holding its bullish structure. So the next wave won't be oil. But there will be a next wave. There always is. These guys are always hedging something.

The thing I like about this setup is that I don't need to predict anything. I don't need to read the news. I don't need a macro thesis. The people who actually dig the stuff out of the ground tell me what they think every Friday for free, and I just copy them.

Would love some feedback and potential changes to the strategy if you see any holes. Currently struggling a bit with the exit logic, 4 week fixed hold works but feels arbitrary, some of these trades were up 60%+ at week 2 and I left gains on the table. Open to ideas.

Curious to hear this from everyone.

What’s the most you’ve spent on one piece of clothing?

• Was it worth it?
• Do you still wear it regularly?
• Or do you regret it now?

Interested to see how people justify big purchases vs value.