This afternoon, after the market closed, I wanted as absolutely little stimulus as possible. I had an appointment at the vet for one of my dogs, and I drove in complete silence. I passed by the headquarters of Robinhood Trading on the way, expecting there to be people with torches outside, but it was completely vacant.
Once I was done with the vet, my nerves had calmed down enough, and I clicked on the radio. They were talking about the crash today, of course, and the NPR commentator stated that we were down 19%, “not quite a bear market yet, but you can hear the bears rustling.”
I gritted my teeth. I knew what he was referring to: the magical 20% threshold. Why in the name of God is there some magic about 20%? So what he’s saying is that it is not a bear market now, but if it was just a tiny bit lower, it would be. Crazy.
Then I saw this headline on ZH:
OK, so they’re sort of cheating, since they took into account some after hours trading that finally slipped things passed the magical 20% level (I will note, as I’m typing this, the market strengthened, so I guess the bear market officially lasted about 12 minutes or so).
This is all just silly. I realize that there has to be SOME level that the media “allows” themselves to call something a bear market, but come on. As I recall, the phrase they permit themselves for a 10% drop is “correction“, which implies there was something incorrect about the market in the first place (which, I confess, is true).
What I have found exhilarating about this market is the chart-friendliness of it. I know I’ve been using that term a lot, but honestly, I can hardly believe my eyes. I didn’t want to tempt the market gods, but last Wednesday, I was literally thinking, “There is NO WAY they’re going to make it this easy.”
I pointed this out in my I’ll Level With Ya post. The 4th of March was the absolute perfect “second chance” to get aggressively short.
Today was a record day for me. Best day ever. I’ve dialed the shorts back tremendously and am focused on my bearish bonds and bearish gold miners positions. Gold and Diamond members know all of my positions, including the smattering of puts and shorts I still possess.
I’ve been charting for a very long time. Usually I’m good at it. Occasionally I’m all thumbs. But, false modesty aside, I have been absolutely on fire lately. I’m terrified of it ending. But……..on………fire.
