How odd to wake up to a relatively normal market (and I emphasize relatively). Years ago, I used to stare in wonder and amazement at the charts from the gold market in 1979 and 1980, wondering how people coped with “limit up” and “limit down” days. Now it seems that the “flat-liners” we keep seeing on ES and NQ screen are becoming commonplace.
As you might guess, Slope popularity continues to surge. Over the weekend, we doubled our capacity, and on Monday, we made some important changes to make the site more robust. I’m hoping you’ll have a much steadier experience henceforth (and I’ll thank my lucky stars that, unlike beleaguered broken broker Robinhood, those downtimes don’t mean catastrophic financial results). Here’s how traffic has been like on Slope over the past month:
I’ve mentioned many times, both here and in my private life, how much of a homebody I am, and how I’d have no problem if, for whatever reason, I was confined to my house. Well, be careful what you wish for, I guess. As you may have heard, the entire Bay Area has been “ordered” (whatever that means) to shelter in place. So my habits of visiting Philz for my chai, or getting a beer at the Old Pro while my car charges, or even sitting at the East Palo Alto McDonald’s while I compose a post, are all behind me. We’re all minimum security prisoners now.
On top of that, the Knight family used to be a vital part of the travel industry. As a serious fencing family, we regularly spending tens of thousands of dollars year in and year out on airfare, hotels, eating out, and other incidentals of international travel. Here’s just a snippet of our past trips. Believe me, this travel log goes on for pages and pages and pages:
At this point, everything is cancelled. We’ve nuked all our hotel reservations, all our airplane tickets, and all our plans. It’s kind of a drag, but obviously necessary.
At this point, the market is psychologically scarred and understandably scared. Attempts at a rally will be halting, timid, and fragile. But they’ll eventually take hold. As I wrote at length to my premium members, it’s going to take an extraordinary restoration of confidence to push the market back to the point where it’s safe to short again. The literally trillions and trillions of dollars in handouts already approved seem to be laying the basic foundation.
