NESSUNO

In March 1992, I walked into a trading room for the first time, at a stockbroker's office in Milan.

I was 24 years old. I made coffee, ran photocopies, sent faxes. My title was junior — an elegant way of saying I couldn't do anything. I could watch, but not touch.

After six months of apprenticeship, on September 1st I got my own desk and a first price sheet to pass orders. "These are quiet years, anyway," my supervisor told me.

Exactly fifteen days later, Soros and his associates launched the speculative attack on the lira and sterling that forced both currencies and their countries out of the EMS. It was Black Wednesday.

I remember that nobody slept in the office for 48 hours, and that I had the feeling of standing in an anthill someone had poured boiling oil over.

When things calmed down on Friday evening, I went home, threw myself on the bed, and promised myself I wouldn't go back on Monday.

I broke the promise.

Since then I have lived through, from the trading floor, the Italian crisis of 1994 and the Russian debt default that led to the LTCM collapse in August/September 1998.

I was in front of the screens on September 11, 2001, just as I was on September 16, 2008, when markets reopened after Lehman Brothers filed for Chapter 11.

I witnessed the peak of the PIIGS debt crisis in 2011, the Greek crisis, and in more recent years, the markets during Brexit and Covid.

A few times I found myself on the right side of the market — in 2008 and 2020, for instance — making a lot and learning little.

Other times, like 2011, I found myself between the hippopotamus and the river, paying the price heavily but learning something.

I worked for brokers, banks, and funds.

For years now I have chosen to trade only for my own account.

After more than 30 years in markets, I can say I have seen nearly all of my companions along the way die professionally.

Almost all of them were more talented than me, without false modesty.

Every one of them paid the price of presuming to know more than the market, of facing it as an equal.

It happened to me too. I was simply luckier.

What I have understood is that the market must be faced the way Ulysses faced Polyphemus — knowing that it is stronger, bigger and meaner. And we are Nobody. That is where this letter gets its name.

I divide my activity into two levels:

• Strategic → medium to long-term positions
• Tactical → volatility management through options

I started as a technical analyst, moving quickly to fundamental analysis.

In March 2004, almost by chance, I came across the figure of Nikolai Dmitrievich Kondratiev.

I was almost immediately fascinated by his cycle theory — above all by the fact that this Russian economist developed it nearly a century ago without any technological tools. He did it on the strength of his extraordinary genius alone.

Studying long-term data across different economies — prices, interest rates, production, trade — he noticed something remarkable: the capitalist economy does not move chaotically, but appears to oscillate in very long cycles, each lasting 40 to 60 years.

This is how the K-Wave was born. It divides into four waves, each lasting between 12 and 18 years:

In October 2022, in my view, the transition from Spring to Summer of the current cycle began — information technology, the internet, biotechnology, AI.

The subsequent behaviour of markets — equities and metals at highs, commodities accelerating, latent inflation, weak bonds — confirms, for me, the seasonal transition fairly clearly.

Since this is a theory and not an exact science, opinion is divided: the majority of Kondratiev scholars place the cycle in Spring.

I disagree. In my view we are in Summer. But then, I am not a scholar.

Alongside the cyclical reading I use several indicators I have developed personally:

• proprietary volume-scanning software
• two oscillators that signal overextension

In short: the waves tell me where I am. Overextension tells me when to be alert. Volume tells me when to act.

If gold — typically strong in the Summer phase — falls into oversold territory with exhausting volume, I buy. If the T-Bond — structurally weak in the same phase — falls, I do not buy, even if oversold.

Context comes before signal.

The tactical approach has a different objective: to generate a regular stream of returns.

I do this through options strategies on North American futures and commodities, built around a core idea: not predicting direction, but managing the behaviour of volatility.

I operate predominantly as a seller on monthly expirations, building structures that benefit from non-excessively directional markets with volatility progressively contracting.

The logic is not to maximise profit, but to maintain risk control and adapt the position to context.

Operational choices are updated and detailed in a separate weekly letter — more technical, and necessarily accompanied by charts.