RVM retweeted
I’m convinced that 99% of success is just the ability to stay in the game. The best things in life are a result of compounding. But you can’t compound if you let yourself get taken out of the game. Whatever storm life throws your way. Adapt. Survive. Advance. Stay in the game.
RVM retweeted
Jesse Livermore made and lost fortunes multiple times.
Stan Druckenmiller shorted $200M worth of internet stocks in 1999 and lost $600M within weeks. Every one of those companies eventually went bankrupt. He was right about the businesses but was wrong on timing.
Kristjan Kullamägi grew his account to $105M, then gave back nearly $60M in about eight months.
Dan Zanger turned a five-figure account into $42M, then reportedly suffered a 75% drawdown.
Paul Tudor Jones lost 60 to 70% of the equity he was managing on a single cotton trade. He nearly quit trading.
These are some of the greatest traders to ever do it. People who understood markets better than most ever will. None of that made them immune to devastating losses.
I was doing my usual re-listen of “Best Loser Wins” by Tom Hougaard, and two stories really stayed with me.
One was about Adam, a brilliant trader with extraordinary patience and discipline. He had built great wealth through his trading. Then one heavily leveraged trade went wrong and wiped out nearly half of it.
But that loss alone wasn’t what destroyed him. It was his inability to accept it and move on. He abandoned the discipline that made him successful in the first place, started doubling down, and desperately tried to make it all back fast.
He went on to lose everything. His money, his home, his family. He ended up homeless.
Then Hougaard talks about another friend who had been trading full-time for 15 years.
He never made “f**k you” money. He earned what someone in a well-paid corporate job would. He paid his bills, took his family on vacations, bought a nice car, and was home when his kids got back from school.
We spend so much time admiring huge returns and huge accounts. And rightfully so. They’re worth admiring, even aspiring to. But we rarely talk about what it takes to keep what we’ve made, or what we’re willing to give up chasing more and more.
Very very few end up as Market Wizards. Then there is the guy who is home when his kids get back from school.
RVM retweeted
"Not everyone who chased the zebra caught it, but he who caught it chased it."
*- African Proverb
RVM retweeted
From our FOMC react this week:
“Based on the totality of information from this meeting, we see roughly 50-50 odds of a December rate hike — not 85% as markets are currently pricing. We expect credit conditions to tighten further heading into the December meeting, doing some of the Fed’s work for it. Our base case is that the FOMC will hold rates steady for the rest of the year.”
One reason why we kept our call for no hike in December is that all this AI wobble and tightening in credit conditions is entirely expected if one incorporate the term premium increase in the last 7 months into a GE model (ie FRBUS) - esp if one suppress the monetary policy offset in the model.
In fact, the model would expect a bigger equity selloff.
RVM retweeted
binance hack tldr: ~$3.5B drained on eth, ~$5B counting btc and tron. started with an EIP-7702 delegation, but Binance 16 signed with its own key, so their signing is compromised. tether + circle froze ~$2.3B, exploiter still borrowed 20k WETH on aave first. withdrawals paused
RVM retweeted
ok safe to say binance is pwned
The biggest assets were approximately:
• 1.615B USDT
• 62.6M RLUSD
• 29,934 wBETH
• 11,372 XAUt
• 6.19M UNI
• 198.4M ENA
• 7.175T PEPE
• 27.8M USD1
• 2.26M LINK
• 127,853 AAVE
about $2.5B at the explorer’s prices.
1. The attacker deployed a delegate contract, 0x63e842b0...73e9c6fAe, from the relayer at 15:59 UTC.
2. About four hours later, the relayer submitted an EIP-7702 authorization transaction
That installed the malicious 7702 delegate code on Binance 14.
3. The relayer then made a call to Binance 14, executing the delegate code, and transferring Binance 14’s ETH and token balances.
4. The calldata is labeled sweep(address, address[]). The second argument is a list of recognizable token-contract addresses plus the zero-address (eth).
5. The same relayer later used the same delegate to move 780M USDC from Binance Hot Wallet 34 into the same pool
• The relayer 0x7C... was funded by three Tornado Cash 0.1 ETH withdrawals over the prior two days.
• The same pool also received 28,005.6 ETH from Binance 16 24 seconds after the main sweep.
• The pool then forwarded 195,460 ETH to a fresh, unlabeled EOA
• That EOA has only one transaction and currently holds the 195,460 ETH.
What's a bit unclear is why the relayer was needed in the first place. If they had the private keys to the Binance wallets, they could have just sent the assets out in an atomic bundle without needing a relayer at all.
So it seems likely that they didn't have the private keys and instead just had the 7702 auth signatures, which must have been phished somehow.
I think we can go ahead and assume DPRK.
RVM retweeted
I am excited to be an investor in trade(xyz) as they partner with ICE to bring 24/7 perpetual futures on Hyperliquid to the United States. As a market participant, I am looking forward to to using their innovative product to enhance my investment process.
RVM retweeted
“Now is the time to get serious about living your ideals. How long can you afford to put off who you really want to be? Your nobler self cannot wait any longer. Put your principles into practice —now.”
— Epictetus
ALT Heracles by Guercino
RVM retweeted
The Fed is expected to hold rates steady Wednesday, but it is a closer call on the data than the market-implied probabilities suggest.
The case for hiking:
1) The hot September CPI and PPI underscore a second straight lost year for getting inflation down
2) With a Dec hike widely expected, hawks will argue that there's less to gain from waiting six weeks given the cost of falling further behind
3) Hawks will also argue that policy isn't restrictive and needs to be
The case for holding:
1) If officials still think this is a 2-3 hike recalibration, spacing out remaining moves costs little. "Being six weeks late is a manageable risk," says Rob Kaplan
2) Back-to-back moves could signal a faster cycle than officials intend
3) After several officials signaled no rush, and Warsh’s silence let odds of a hold build, a surprise hike days before the midterms would be a jolt. The Fed has raised rates right before elections, but not as a surprise
wsj.com/economy/central-bank…
After finding support early in the week, $BTC rallied to $84.8k, giving buyers a chance to deliver the follow through we'd been looking for: keep pressure on shorts and draw in investors still on the sidelines.
Instead, aggressive selling erased the rally and sent price back to the lows as renewed tensions over Iran and weakness across equities added pressure.
Bitcoin broke below $80k over this weekend and is now trying to hold near $80.4k. Persistent selling is testing how much demand remains around the lower end of the range.
$BTC has recovered some of the drop to $79.7k following Thursday's PPI release, and after a volatile weekend, buyers still can't hold above $82.5k. We're not comfortable seeing price settle below it.
Around $81k, repeated attempts to push lower are still finding buyers. That gives the bulls a case and could put shorts under pressure if the recovery builds. But holding support alone isn't enough; buyers need to follow through.
Both sides have a case. We lean moderately bearish as buyers continue to struggle at $82.5k, but conviction isn't strong enough to take a position. We're flat for now.
The interest around $80k is understandable. Buyers have defended this area for over a month, and September showed how quickly a pullback can turn into a strong advance. But throughout October, rallies have met selling that buyers haven't been able to absorb for long.
We're still on the sidelines. We'd been looking for sustained buying above $82.5k, and the latest breakout failed to hold. Repeated bids at support aren't enough when each recovery gives sellers another opportunity to exit.
A flush into the mid-$70k would be more interesting to us. That's where buyers stepped in decisively in September, and a return could bring both short covering and fresh demand from investors unwilling to pay within the current range.
That wouldn't make it an automatic buy. Holders exiting losing positions could add further supply, and we'd want to see how buyers respond before committing. For now, we'd rather assess that trade at lower prices than anticipate demand that hasn't shown enough staying power here.
If $80k holds and risk appetite improves, buyers still have considerable work to do. Reclaiming $82.5k remains the first step, but the structure has weakened since we first highlighted that level.
The bullish case is that substantial selling over the past month has yet to produce a sustained break below $80k.
If that supply is being exhausted, renewed demand and short covering could drive a sharper recovery than the recent price action suggests. That case depends on $80k holding.
Any recovery could still meet selling from those who bought at support and want to take profits, as well as holders looking to exit positions entered higher up. With lower lows on the daily chart, we'd need to see buyers absorb that supply and sustain the advance.
So far, the pattern is consistent with distribution.
We're not long here. A bounce is possible, but we need more evidence before treating it as a lasting recovery. A sustained break below $80k would weaken the bullish case further and leave us looking for demand at lower levels.