After all, days like Friday and Monday come along, oh, just about never. We have, in almost no time., seen bullish hubris hit with a flamethrower (perhaps even supplied by Mr. Musk). We have seen our smug bull friends have their accounts decimated (quite literally). And as for the White House, not only has it stopped tweeting about market highs, it issued some lame-ass little statement about how the fundamental economy was still strong and everything was going to be just peachy. Don’t you worry your fuzzy little heads.
All the same, I feel kind of lousy. it comes from three places, I suppose.
One is physical; my health is in about the same state as the market is right now, and it has been for more than a week. So i feel pretty rotten. Yet I write my posts, because Slopers come first.
Two is not being even more crazily-short than I already am. I sincerely thought we’d get our bounce today, and early on, it was doing just that. I thus sold my Industrial Select Sector SPDR (NYSE:XLI) and iShares US Real Estate (NYSE:IYR) puts, patted myself on the back for profiting from both, and then watched them skyrocket in price. Never a good feeling. It was one of those days where I could have stayed in bed (which would have felt GREAT) and ended the day with much more money.
Third, and more important than this personal whining, is what Spock so wisely said: “Wanting is better than having. It is not logical, but it is often true.” So shorting a stock market with the VIX at 8 and the President making a buffoon of himself about how high equities are, and having Billionaire Bozo Ray Dalio chastise us peons, warning that we would feel “pretty stupid” not piling into stocks………..I really, really like shorting into that, because I can hardly believe people are letting me short stuff at the prices I am getting. I like being the only one who thinks things are about to turn. Feeling lonely feels nice.
And yet when prices finally fall – – especially with such force – – the thrill is gone. The secret is out. And my emotions turn from anticipation to dread. Because at any moment, our bankrupt government (both morally and fiscally) will do something to reverse things. And it’ll be more than some insipid press release like we got today.
So it seems to me plausible that we’ll get our bounce Tuesday, and perhaps beyond. I would point out, however, that trendlines were made to be broken. I did a post earlier on Monday about how many Direxion Daily Energy Bull 3X Shares (NYSE:ERX) was going to bounce. It didn’t. It cut through that trendline like a hot, chopped-off McAfee dick through butter. (UPDATE: I am typing this literally like ten minutes after I did the post; for reasons I haven’t found yet, the markets just went into another free-fall again………..wow!)
The only thing that cheers me up is this: I genuinely think this is Chapter One. At this point, I am cheering for the bulls, wanting them to bid prices up, and get that VIX back down into the low teens. It’s kind of miserable to suffer through a bounce, but it’s required. And – as PLUS members know – there’s something way, way more important than equities which I intend to make the greatest trade of my life.