Happy First Trading Day of 2026, everyone. Most folks are still on holiday, except for your intrepid head of Slope who works 365 days a year, so it should be relatively quiet. The big top on the /NQ is mighty sloppy, but I think this spike higher we’re witnessing is little different than the nonsense we saw on December 31st. Just a gaggle of “everything’s going to be SO great in the new year!” optimism that abounds when people have to replace on calendar with another.
Metals are roaring higher, with silver in particular up about 5%. Don’t be fooled, however. The new trend is clear, and I think it’s going to be weeks before continued disappointments finally get folks to stop piling into metals now that they’re “cheap”.
It’s actually handy to gauge a person’s reaction to what’s going on with silver (or any asset, for that matter) and determine their IQ. By way of example:
- “This is nothing more than a dead-cat bounce“: 120+ IQ
- “We are SO back!”: 95 IQ
- “Let’s fucking GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!“: 50, plus or minus 7 points
The same thing is going on with gold. It’s up over forty bucks, but the mania has broken for now.
I’m shorter than Hervé Villechaize right now, so it’s going to be a rough opening for me, with one notable exception: my largest position by far is Progressive (PGR) which I’ve touted on my tastylive show as my favorite pattern. Well, it’s finally starting to cook.
Long-term, I think this has terrific potential to the downside, in spite of its seductively low P/E of about 15.
In any case, I’m going to take the unusual step of removing ALL my stop-loss orders and re-assessing them one by one to make sure I don’t get zapped out of any good positions. Again, this buying mania we’re witnessing this morning is based on the nearly universal delusion that a new year totally cleans the slate and makes things bright and shiny again. Me? I don’t play dat shit.
