The ultimate payoff would be nice, but my efforts at picking the trigger over the last 18 months have been wrong. For example, in January this year I shorted things based on Grexit, which has not happened. And in 2014 there were many articles around the imminent collapse with the sell in May theme, however, that did not work out either.
With the first GFC I sold all of my stocks in late 2007, hence, while I had already given back a significant % of my paper profits, I did not suffer any capital loss. However, the ensuing property market crash did beat me up quite a bit.
Perhaps this time it is different as recently the Chinese government has been quite erratic with their approach to margin lending, shorting, and interest rates. In addition, many are expecting the QE in Europe to result in a replica of the bull run associated with the QE in the US, but in the back of my mind I suspect that the impact of the QE in Europe may be somewhat muted.
Earlier this year I reached the conclusion that I am not smart enough to take full advantage of the big one, being GFC2. I would probably become very short too early, and once in a profit scenario close out too early in an effort to protect profit ... but miss the big and/or sustained moves. Hence, as discussed on the Strategic Investments forum, I have moved the majority of my available capital into alternative style managed funds, Managed Futures in particular.
Just for interest, I have kept a relatively small % of capital in my CFD account for trading via stocks, ETFs, etc. but hopefully my ultimate payoff will be provided via the managed funds that I am presently in.
