First off, everyone settle down. One night out of the year I go to bed at midnight, so naturally I didn’t spring out of bed at 5 a.m. like usual. Instead, I woke up at – – gasp — 7 a.m., while it’s still dark outside, and I’m greeted by all kinds of messages wondering what happened to me and why there’s no new post. I live in a world of financial websites that do maybe 2 or 3 posts a week, instead of 100 like mine, and people freak out if they are not spoon-fed sugar every hour or so. Sheesh!
Anyway: nothing characterizes this market better than the giant “V” from the /RTY over the course of about ten months:
That is to say, a wonderful plunge followed by an inexplicable and utterly undeserved rally which undoes all the damage. Thus, the same /NQ that was getting deeper and deeper into the red last night managed to be bright green (of course) based upon, in all likelihood, something nice say about Xi instead of something mean. It’s like the global financial system is dictated by playground taunts and make-ups.
The /RTY, which I’m actually short by way of IWM, at least still had a feeble loss at my wake-up point.
The only really cool activity right now happening is with precious metals, which at LONG LONG LAST are actually peeling off some of their insane mega-rally. Silver, for instance, is getting face-punched with a nearly 5% loss so far.
Whereas palladium, which I’ve been screeching at myself about mercilessly ever since I sold it, has swan-dived over 7%.
Of course, I had been terrorized into not DARING to short miners, with day after day of lifetime highs, but that’s fallen out of bed too.
I will say, however, I managed to strap on a pair sufficiently to short XME, which is a watered-down way of defying the metals rally, and that’s down 3%. DUST is up 12%, which is what Krazy Tim really wanted to buy, but I kept my wits about me.
Thus, with the endless “Awwww, Chairman Xi is one helluva guy and we’re gonna meet and things are gonna be fine, so stop worrying your sweet little head” placations continue to work, as fear has once again fled the building, with the VIX losing about one-third of its value in a matter of hours.
I see that the /ES and /NQ are still green, but most of my shorts are down, so that’s not so bad. Still, it would be pretty cool if one day, before we’re all dead, for the market’s sell-off to be measured in years, like the old days, as opposed to minutes. I’m sick to death of it.
