Lekker's 2023 Year In Review
First half was a grind, nothing felt easy. Second half, and particular fourth quarter, was one of my best ever.
As I look forward to what 2024 holds for markets, I wanted to look back on 2023 and review notable wins, losses, mistakes and learnings. As part of the exercise, I assembled the ‘highlights’ section of my Twitter profile since its the place I typically express my most strongly held views. Sharing some of my findings below.
Wins:
Calling for 50% BTC dominance and short ETHBTC in January with a 0.05 target and then upping my BTC dominance call to 53-58% in April.
Bearish banks in Q1 while eventually expressing via short $KRE and crypto banks ($SI, $MCB). A portion of my short thesis was wrong (slowing economy) but we’ll take it.
$GBTC and $ETHE as my preferred long crypto exposure many times throughout the year (March, June)
Cautious view on crypto and stocks late summer (and here and here)
Long gold call spreads in early October around war in Israel
Equities bottom call in late October, capped off by a pico bottom tick on $COIN, much of which was expressed via call options
Reiterated extreme bullish view following Treasury funding and QRA release in early November (and here)
Long Bitcoin miners early November (and here) with a full rotation out of $GBTC and $ETHE and into $COIN and miners
Losses:
Being bearish on the economy in 1H 2023. This was just flat out wrong. Because of this view I missed out on the rally in risk assets from January until the banking crisis in March. Luckily during Q2 I was able to flip my bias to a more constructive view on risk assets which really helped me perform in 2H.
Went long ~20 hours too early in August right before the big crypto liquidation event. Luckily was in $ETHE and $GBTC which recovered much quicker than the broader market (within 1-2 weeks). Had I waited a day that would have been a pico bottom long call for the ages.
Missing key parts of the $SOL rally and trading around it stupidly.
Trust me, the three above aren’t my only losses for the year. I have a lengthy ‘reflections’ journal where I am much more critical of myself. I made plenty of stupid trades and had many stupid ideas.
A key theme I noticed while putting this together is that most of those bad trades occurred with low conviction and were often combined with the feeling that I must always have a position on. Conversely, the views I was patient with and let develop into attractive setups proved to be my best trades. I found that I’m often early to entering and exiting which is something else I remind myself of.
My Best Pieces of Writing:
Without question my strongest conviction play and best resulting trades occurred in Q4. I was able to nail the convergence of the macro and micro tailwinds benefiting crypto and wrote about them on three separate occasions.
Another strong period of performance was a cautious view from August through September which was ultimately informed by the macro setup.
Lastly, my third favorite piece of the year. This was an important exercise for me because it’s one of the key events that helped me flip to a bullish macro bias.
I wish everyone a relaxing and rejuvenating last week of the year. It’s time to get the ducks in a row to do it all again next year :)