Down goes the Dow

Good to know.

And my portfolio is within 2% of its ATH, after already reaching a 52-week high.

How's everyone else doing?

Well, Flagpole is not stupid at all. Flagpole knows what Flagpole is talking about. Flagpole is all for you buying some mutual funds from Vanguard. Vanguard and Fidelity are the only companies Flagpole recommends.

Flagpole says not to worry about what you've heard about a dip next year. Could happen. Could not happen. Others are declaring a bull market. Invest money that you don't need today so that you have income when you no longer are working. That's it.

I am a fraction of a percentage point below my all-time high. Looks like things are down today, so no new high for me today. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter...a new all-time high will happen soon enough...not that I even care.

“Between 2:00 and 4:00 PM ET today, the S&P 500 erased ~$600 billion of market cap.

To put this in perspective, the S&P 500 added ~$600 billion of market cap over the last week.

The index was up for 10 straight days but erased 5 of those daily gains in 2 hours.

The volatility index, $VIX, spiked ~10% in a matter of minutes.

This begs the same question we asked earlier this week:
Is anyone comfortably buying right ”

The market pulled back and Igy sat straight up in bed! Could this be it? The big one?

One more day like today and I will be positive on my leveraged shorts. :-)

LOL.

And tell us how your EMD lost 5 days of gains today.

Oh, wait! Only talk about that one when it's up and the others are down.

(Wink emoji: 😉)

So what you are saying is that within the 10 days you noted, the S&P 500 has gained 2.9%.

Not bad!

At that rate, on an annualized basis, it would yield - get this - 75% annually!

I dunno in those terms but I'm still well ahead of the benchmark for my account over three years. Which is the way I look at these things. Still a rough year tho - I didn't switch out of value (which helped me beat the benchmark in 2022) into tech until spring (late, but not too late), so I've lagged in 2023. Less than 100 bps so not a disaster.

Made a fortune in small caps in this rally.

What did Igy post 12/12/2023?

“Sold some EMD up 24% and FAX up 21% with proceeds to SOXS and TECS. If this run continues I will be wrong, but my substantially larger EM Bond CEFs would likely prosper as well. I believe interest rates will move higher, equity markets lower, on valuation and technicals.”

:-) = handmade emoji

I said nothing.

True. Your quote function was cut short.

My bad: Kobeissi Letter

Larry Summers is a terrible prognosticator, but he got this one right. Two years ago said there was a solid chance of a soft landing. And it looks like we got one.

Greg Ip
@greg_ip
I asked
@LHSummers
today at #WSJCEOCouncil what the odds were now. He sees 30% to 40% probability of recession starting in next 24 months. Soft landing (third option) now just 20% to 25%...(implicitly stagflation 35-50%)...

5:22 PM · Dec 7, 2021

Similarly good call in mid 2022 from GS on the lack of a recession.

James Pethokoukis ⏩⤴️
@JimPethokoukis
GOLDMAN SACHS: "Combining indicators into a single model implies the market is currently pricing recession probabilities broadly consistent with the shape of the curve—close to no chance of recession in the next 12 months, but a higher risk (38%) in the following year."
4:26 PM · Apr 2, 2022

GS again, with a good prediction.

James Pethokoukis ⏩⤴️
@JimPethokoukis
GOLDMAN SACHS: "Although we continue to expect that momentum in job gains will push the unemployment rate to a low of 3.4% in the next few months, we now expect that the unemployment rate will subsequently rise back to 3.5% at end-2022, and rise further to 3.7% at end-2023."
1:11 PM · May 15, 2022

We’re used to that.

Any "good call" is just luck, ESPECIALLY when they attach a reason to said call. There are SOOOO many factors, both long term and short term that go into how the market does that NO ONE gets it right in the short term. A "good call" has the same value as someone standing at the bottom of a highway hill saying, "the third car that comes over that hill will be red." Maybe. Pretty much random.