Here in Palo Alto, the weather is very, very dull. You could named virtually any date in the future (“May 15, 2093“) and I could tell you with remarkable accuracy what the high temperature, low temperature, and precipitation would be on that day. Honestly. It could be hundreds of years out, and I’d be right.
Pick just about anywhere else in the country – – for this post, I randomly chose Minneapolis – – and it actually changes from day to day, and sometimes wildly. (Keep in mind, this is April, the most moderate month of the year). If the high temperature was thirty degrees different from one day to the next, it would be front page news around here.
I am reminded of this because of the market. I woke up this morning at 3 a.m. purely out of guilt, because equities were so godawful dull yesterday I had nothing to write about. Imagine my delight when I woke up this morning to the same ol’ crap. As I am typing this, the ES, NQ, and RTY are all up more or less about one tenth of a single percentage point. Jesus.
I was speaking yesterday afternoon to a good friend of mine, who is as VERY aggressive and active futures (options, futures, stocks) and he said to me, “Tim, I’ve never worked so hard at trading in my life, and so far this year, I’m up 3%.” I totally understood what he was talking about (and I bet a lot of you do, too). This idiotic market is trapped between the persistent control of the Fed, which is trying to keep it propped up, and the reality that the world is completely going to shit, and equities keep whipsawing all of us to death. Thus, even to those who are busting their humps, they are making passbook savings accounts returns. (Alternately, you could be a passive investor and be down 20% or more; Cathie Wood would be happy to help).
The only tiny fleck of hope this morning is gold which, in spite of its ability to persistent disappoint us gold fans, is ever-so-slowly crawling its way higher in recent weeks.
Let’s see if the market can do something today to stop me from bitching anymore.
UPDATE: True to form, gold can’t hold a rally together to save its life.
