Ya know, after the past six months, I wouldn’t expect anything less than this greeting me on this, the last trading day of Q2 2023:
Yep, it’s a feast for the bulls. Just like yesterday. And the day before. And the past month. And the past six months. Not a downtick in sight. In spite of all meaningful evidence to the contrary, the market seems dedicated to one things and one thing only: going up every day like it’s the year 2021 all over again.
Last week’s little post-Juneteenth dip was clearly an anomaly. On the weekly chart, you can see the S&P 500 Futures hasn’t had a meaningful drop since early March, four long, long months ago.
The tech stocks, of course, put the plain old S&P 500 to shame. Just a handful of negative punctuation marks in a landscape otherwises dotted by the letters, B, U, L, and L.
The real capper is that Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), the same company that was teetering on going out of business in the late 1990s, is, for the first time in United States history, cross this valuation:
With all this, I raise a hearty, hyperextended middle finger to both the quarter and the entire first half of the year as a whole. It could be worse, I realize. Perhaps I could be missing both of my legs, or maybe a tongue could be mysteriously growing out of the top of my head, yet neither of these things is happening. So, hat tip to heavenly father for not cursing me with those maladies. All the same, big guy, it would be nice to see a selloff sometime in our natural lives that lasts more than twelve minutes.
As I limp into Q3, I have 15 long positions on put options whose expiration is a full 203 days away (January 19, 2024). C’mon, fellas. I’m counting on every one of you!