Play the Players

Starting today, Play the Players will have a different look and purpose.

Before, the blog was intended to explain why our philosophy and approach was what it is. We sought to inform, educate, and provide big-picture perspective. We will continue to do that in a separate blog channel set apart for that purpose. It will see periodic entries.

But now our primary blog activity will focus on items of more immediate impact, where timely attention may help you fatten up the P side of your P&L. There may be more than one a week, possibly even more than one in a day particularly well endowed with opportunity.

We will continue to have a particular focus on how professional investors and their organizations utilize Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) to manage their risk exposures.

That will often involve looking closely at the evolving activities in ETFs that are built to go up when the prices of their holdings go down (inverse, or short ETFs) and the use of ETFs that have the price movement accentuation of leverage as a part of their internal architecture.

On top of all that, our everyday updates of the price range prospects for actively-traded ETFs will continue to provide opportunity for comment as changes occur. And the market thermometers showing the coming-weeks’ price range potentials for the four major market indexes will be present each day.

If you want to be a player, instead of finding yourself played with, check in here regularly.

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Every game has three stages.

First you learn the game. What are the rules, how do you score, what are the penalties, what does it take to be a player, what makes a winner, what puts you out of the game? Everyone goes through this.

Then you play the game. Practice, practice, practice. You continue to learn how to do it better, score more often, be a winner more consistently, build your skills, develop good techniques, identify and avoid bad ones, have fun and satisfaction in playing. Most players, year after year, never go beyond this.

But a few go on to play the players. Like chess masters, duplicate bridge tournament players, match play golfers, and professional poker champions. They recognize that the real challenges come not from the game, but from the way the most skillful competitors play it.

Since you are involved in the stock market, man’s second most serious game – after war – you might want to think about who wins the bets you lose, why it happens, and what might be done about it. There probably are players out there playing you. Is it time for you to start playing them?

That’s what this blog will be about.

I’ve spent 50 years in the stock market game, from a variety of professional vantage points. The last 30 years have involved playing the players, instead of just playing the game. It’s a very different perspective, but one that you can gain. I hope to help.

We’ll look at who the key players are, what they do, and why they do it that way.

We’ll explore how the game has changed recently, what has changed it, and what may be coming.

We’ll try to answer your questions, but won’t make buy and sell recommendations on this blog. You’ll need to subscribe to the site for those.

We’ll urge you, and try to help you think about what you are doing, and how it fits into what other players do and want you to do.

Pleased to have you play along, and help you make more money in the process.

PFW,CFA

Our Approach etf investment, institutional insights, investment strategy, peter way, stock market theory