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‘Black Swan’ Event and How To Prepare For It?

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 Samir Halim, President, Systematic Asset Management

 Friday, September 23, 2016

With all the recent talk about the possibility of a ‘Black Swan’ event and several prominent HF managers cashing out of the market or taking large short positions, I would like to discuss other investors’ thoughts about this issue and what they are doing to prepare for it, if any. Here are my thoughts and views, in general: 1) By definition a ’Black Swan” event is nearly impossible to predict. 2) Whether such discussion is applicable to the market would largely depend on whether one is a buy-and-hold or an active-management investor. 3) An active-management investor would most likely have multiple indicators on multiple time-frames that would produce adequate warning of an impending down-fall. See charts attached. 4) By applying Momentum and Money Flow Oscillators on an SPY daily chart, we can see that: a. In 2007/09, the market established a top in Oct ’07 that was followed by a sustained price down- movement through Mar ’09, producing a -64% drop in 17 months b. In 2015/16, an initial top in May ’15 was followed by two -12% and -14% drop, followed by an impressive reversal to a new high. 5) The current very narrow side-way movement makes it difficult to say whether we should expect a strong up or down-movement. Therefore, to prepare for a significant down-side movement, I suggest the following: a. Diversify among different asset classes, individual holdings and hedges. b. Scale Positions as the market unfolds c. Follow multiple set of indicators on multiple time-frames d. Build cash position to take advantage of a significant down-side position. Obviously, each bear-market follows a different scenario, but almost always progressively signals the potential direction. I currently follow several orthogonal indicators on multiple time-frames and will be glad to hear your views and discuss further.


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