Rafael Acevedo

Where I’m from

Born in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. Business Administration at the Universidad Interamericana. I worked as a sales executive at T-Mobile Puerto Rico, then founded CryptoLabPR LLC. Today I live in Madrid, in Lavapiés, and I write the House View from here before the US market opens.

That is the whole CV. I have stood on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange — as a visitor, with a camera, like anyone else who books the tour. I never worked there. No fund. No economics doctorate. I say it plainly because you are going to read a lot of founder pages in this industry that let a photograph do the implying for them.

What the pandemic taught me — and what it didn’t

I started trading equities and crypto during the pandemic, and it went well.

It went well, and I know why. I bought into a market that had already fallen and I was there for the recovery. That is not skill. That is arriving at the right moment and being willing to press the button. A lot of people did the same thing in those months and came away convinced they were geniuses.

Then came the war in Ukraine. Then Terra Luna. Then FTX.

I lost a lot of money.

I could have stopped there. Most people did. Instead I went and learned the thing I had clearly been missing: how market cycles actually behave, what a black swan does to a portfolio that was never built for one, how capital rotates between assets — and how to either survive that rotation or trade it, once the trend starts signalling the turn.

I am still learning it. In public, with real positions, every day.

Why this desk shows you the losers

Everything I understand about markets, I learned from the positions that went against me. Not from the ones that worked. The winners taught me almost nothing.

So when I built CHESKO, publishing only the winners was never an option on the table. The desk shows the positions that lost, with the reasoning that got them wrong — because that is the part actually worth reading.

I refuse to sell this as a way to get rich easily. That is the loudest business on the internet right now, and it runs on a screenshot of somebody’s one good week. What happens here is slower and far less exciting: methodology, and defence. My horizon for this project is long enough that credibility is the one asset I cannot afford to spend.

What I actually do every day

Before the US open I write the House View — my read on the market. Not a summary of the news: a position, with a timeframe and the level that would prove me wrong.

Eleven agents read it. They research it, argue the bull case against the bear case, put it through risk, and some mornings they conclude that I am wrong. A portfolio manager makes the call. Then I sign it.

The desk would keep running if I skipped a morning. The difference is that nobody would have put their name on it.

What I will never do

• —I will never publish a return percentage I can’t survive being audited on.
• —I will never show you only the winners.
• —I will never sell you a signal group, or an easy way to get rich.
• —CHESKO trades a $10,000 paper book. The tracker says PAPER because it is paper — that label changes when the book goes live, and not one day before.
• —I’m not a licensed financial advisor, and nothing on this site is personal financial advice.

Don’t take my word for it

Everything above is checkable. Go and check it.

Write to me

hola@balladmarkets.com — there is no support department. You write, I answer.