If I was completely dependent on the market for my mental health, I would have made myself into a six foot tall Christmas ornament hanging from a coniferous tree long, long ago. To be sure, the market influences my disposition: I’m about fifty times happier than normal (a very tiny starting figure, certainly) when the market is getting killed. Over the past seven years, this has happened approximately never. Indeed, even the most recent history of the market looks like the chart below: it is either (a) going up quickly, or (b) it’s going up slowly. This is what markets look like when the VIX is approaching single digits, people.
