Who We Are
Digital Assets (Crypto) Trading Ideas. Written by a Quant Trader and Global Macro Discretionary Manager. Click here to read about us.
What is a Foot Gun?
We named our newsletter Foot Guns after a software term. Here’s the definition: a feature of a specific technology that makes it easy to shoot (one's self) in the foot.
Why did we choose a term from computer terminology? The answer is because no matter how many crypto explainers, no matter how many times your buddy who got lucky with Dogecoin, no matter how many times Elon Musk tweets about it, cryptocurrencies are made of computer code running on computers. This fact means that if you are getting your understanding of cryptocurrency from anyone who does not have a working understanding of the code that makes up cryptocurrencies, then you are doing it wrong. Fundamental analysis is possible in cryptocurrency but either you have to have a coding level understanding yourself or you need someone like us to break it down to something that is not only understandable, but actionable.
At the same time, these are tradable assets that often obey the laws of trading (including technical analysis) and anyone trading them is better served by also hearing from an experienced trader who has demonstrated a track record in something like global macro trading that involves currencies, commodities, and stock index futures.
The Voices Behind Foot Guns
Foot Guns actually began 12 years ago. It started with a friendship between two guys who were trading radically different strategies. The guy who voices “Boomer” on the podcast and co-writes the newsletter was managing a multi-strat fund that made private equity investments and traded global macro discretionary. At the same time, the person who voices “Hal” had just left a promising career as a data scientist in theoretical astrophysics to be a quant trader.
In 2019, Boomer had achieved enough success to turn the fund into a family office (which means you send the outside money back and trade for the partners’ own account). The two had had lengthy discussions about cryptocurrency and Boomer started to take real notice. IRL Boomer knew “Litquidity” and learned that Lit was looking to add a crypto platform to his burgeoning financial media empire. So Boomer got in touch with Hal and said, “hey, we’re having all this fun with crypto, why don’t we help Lit out”. And after extensive beta, here we are.
Hal
The main voice of Foot Guns is a person we’ll call Hal (@haal69k). Hal is someone with many previous lives. He wrote code for particle accelerators, dark matter simulations, quant trader, but then read the Bitcoin white paper then the code and went full crypto. The place where Hal was basically designing all of their vanguard strategies and winning was pretty out there. So when cryptocurrency came along, Hal was in a unique position to understand and profit from it. He’s survived two crypto bear markets and has a lot of lessons to share.
Boomer
Our second main voice is a guy we call Boomer, who was a manager of a multi-strategy fund that traded global macro discretionary and made private equity investments. What is global macro discretionary? It’s a mandate to trade pretty much anything under the sun, but that focuses mostly on stock index futures, commodities, and currencies. His fund made a lot of money and so they converted to a family office where he still trades for their own account.
Villy
Lastly, we have a member of the retail community in the voice of Villy. He’s new to crypto and new to trading. A ‘Gen Z’er who keeps us out of the clouds and reminds us about things like how annoying Coinbase fees are.
We Filter the Noise
You can find an infinite number of Youtubers, podcasters, and Twitter personalities who claim to have some kind of ~secret sauce~ that they are just dying to share with you.
Our mission is different. Whether or not you want to trade crypto is up to you.
We just show you how to avoid shooting yourself in the foot by providing content that is actionable and abiding by the first rule of investing which it seems like some people may have forgotten:
the first rule of investing is to avoid as much as it is possible: losing money!!! (very loose paraphrasing)
“But wait”, you say. “That’s not spicy enough. I want to make money.”
Our response is Wall Street Bets and Bitcoin hype beasts are everywhere, have at it.
But we stick to the first goal of investing. Things don’t go up forever. Or down forever. Also, you probably think, say, the fact that China has banned Bitcoin would be big news and a reason to stay away from Bitcoin. Or even worse… you might short it.
China has ‘officially banned’ Bitcoin 6 times since Bitcoin went from next to nothing all the way to $65,000.
We’ll give you our first Foot Gun for FREE. Trading the “news” is not only a bad way to approach Bitcoin, it is a dangerous proposition across the entire asset class.
There are a number of topics we cover in depth that we think do matter. Like how a coin we like, called SUSHI (we know, funny name), has superior functionality to the more mainstream coin UNI.
This is what also differentiates us from other offerings. We take a value investing approach to cryptocurrency.
This means applying some of the same fundamental analysis undertaken by some of the best stock pickers and applying it to crypto.
Did you know Sushiswap generates revenue for its investors?
Did you know it generates more revenue per market cap than Uni does?
What does an individual coin actually do? Is it doing what it says doing?
What are the recognizable Foot Guns?
That’s why we’re here—to tell you that stuff. We won’t get it right all the time and we’ll admit it quickly and be upfront about it.
Anyone promising guarantees in investing is a fraud.
Technical Analysis
Another thing we look at is what’s called technical analysis.
Some people don’t believe in technical analysis. We recently heard from an experienced, knowledgeable investment banker who said “well I don’t pay attention to technical analysis because I’m not a day trader.” It struck us as funny, because technical analysis is probably the least useful for intraday trading but its application to longer term investing is incredibly compelling. Consider the power of technical analysis to potentially avoid the worst days, and capture the best days in a long term Buy & Hold strategy.
The investment juggernaut Putnam Investments has crunched the numbers around sitting out the best days and avoiding the worst days in the market. Here’s what they found:
Missing the best days – Analysts at Putnam Investments examined the period from 2000 through 2014 and asked what would happen if an investor were to be out of the market completely for its 10 best days. A $10,000 investment at the outset would be worth $22,118 if left untouched in an index fund through that period of two bull and two bear markets. But just missing the 10 best days—three-tenths of a percent of the period—would reduce that gain by half. Missing the 20 best days would cut the gain by two-thirds to $7,297.
Missing the 10 worst days – Invesco Calculated that the cumulative returns of the S&P 500 and its predecessor index from 1928 through 2014 would have grown $10,000 into $1.166 million. Missing the 10 worst days left the investment at $3.65 million at the end of 2014.
TL;DR: In summary, if you skipped the 10 worst days and missed the 10 best days your long term investments underperformed by 90%.
Technical analysis should never be the only reason to trade something which is something we highlight in our trading rules, which, as a subscriber to Foot Guns, you will have access to. Technical analysis provides potential juicy set ups, but its real power is saying “hey, be cautious”. “Maybe sit this one out”. “Take some chips off the table for a little bit”.
I mean it’s not like you’re getting paid to go into an office every day and trade. That’s something we explore in our podcast titled, “Damn it’s good to be retail”.
Knowledge is Rewarding
Even if you are not actively into crypto, one of the most compelling reasons you subscribe to Foot Guns is that you will have a greater understanding of crypto than many, if not most, people.
Consider that when Uniswap, which is one of the top tokens associated with automatic swaps using smart contracts—a topic we cover extensively—had a governance vote, the Harvard Law School Uniswap group showed $210mm of size. That’s right, people who are borrowing $300k to get a graduate degree are holding onto $210mm worth of Uniswap tokens!
So even if you are not an active trader and not even in finance, you can impress a lot of people around the office with your superior knowledge of crypto that we provide. Your annoying buddy who screenshots his dogecoin trade on Robinhood—yeah you can flex on him by asking him whether he thinks a DAO can be sued as a matter of law the way a corporation can. If you are in an office full of boomers or Gen X-ers, and you understand blockchain technology, you will look like a genius.
Details of Foot Guns Subscription
The Foot Guns newsletter is delivered to your inbox daily.
At the top of the page is a cheat sheet which is easy to print out and follow along, even while you are “working”. It has our views on what the top currencies we think will do over three different time frames—daily, weekly, and monthly. Anyone even trying to guess what the price might do in crypto past a month from now is an idiot. We provide the relevant levels for you so you can easily look on a chart and decide where the optimized point is to enter a trade, exit a trade, or just sit on your hands and watch.
Then we report each day what a chart of Bitcoin looks like with some commentary that includes a few links from around the web.
We are not a news aggregator so we try to curate only the most essential reading. if you are a news junkie, we do provide recommendations as to the best places for that. We provide links to general descriptions of what we’re seeing in the charts and what they might mean.
We have other sections that appear intermittently through the week. We take one frozen take from the MSM and tear it apart for fun (and to educate, of course).
We have a section called, “Congratulations you bought it. Here’s what you bought actually does.” where we explain the difference between Ethereum and Ethereum Classic for example, which are both offered as tradable on Coinbase, but have very different back stories.
Each Thursday is “Twitter Thursday” where we round up the hottest takes from around the web and put a little color around them as to why we think they are hot takes.
On Saturday we have “The Big Read”, which is original content that focuses on something we think is under covered, underreported, or in some cases we break news. An example is one we did where we talked about what it might mean if the people of Argentina (who have literally 8% of the world’s physical dollars stored in their mattresses because the Argentine peso is always disappointing) used Bitcoin to store their dollars instead.
Sunday is further reading links—other long reads we didn’t write but we think are worth a look, and while we think our podcasts are the best, which you will have access to as subscriber, we also recommend others.
So that’s what Foot Guns is and that’s why you should subscribe.
For the cost of one chipotle burrito per month, we think that’s a hellova a value. A discounted version for an annual subscription is less than your Coinbase withdrawal fee.
Why We Are a Paid Subscription & Why We Are Anonymous
Simple. Unless it’s actual charity work, we have never worked for free and are not going to start now.
Anonymity allows for a more dedicated audience. We want to avoid public controversies, drama, ad hominem attacks, etc. The twitter fights and such that some people seem to relish being in, while fun to read, are annoying af.
We’re used to operating in a pretty opaque ecosystem (hedge funds), and see no reason to depart from the way we became successful. Every minute we spend on social media trying to defend a position is a minute that doesn’t make us money in our own trading.
Also, we have seen how Lit does it and think we too will grab some scoops others wouldn’t get through anonymity.
You already subscribe to So-and-So’s Newsletter so why also subscribe to Foot Guns?
We are truly unique in that we are solely focused on actionable trading strategies and education. We have a lot of respect for many well known bitcoin maximalists.
However, they tend to primarily provide reasons for why bitcoin is going up. Which it clearly does not always do.
We are traders and not venture capital. If we become involved in any DeFi-projects, we will disclose that immediately.
We are Hype Free.
Still Have Questions?
Yes we are doing this in part to make money, but we’ve been successful in our lives and don’t want to sell you on anything that is not useful to you. If you’ve read this far, taken a look at the preview, listened to some of the podcasts, and still have questions, email us at footgunzpod@gmail.com.