Down goes the Dow

Didn’t do any buying today. Some things I want were down, but not enough for me to bite.

Thought about taking a flyer on tsla, but didn’t.

Still going well on the year. Effing trbcx going to get asss-raped again today. I don’t know how you guys do it!

DXY holding well, good stuff. Gold creeping up, is this the start of another leg up? Good to see gold rise while the dxy holds.

Been losing money for a year straight now.

Kind of sick of it.

Up $1 one day, down $2 the next and another $3 the next.

The surgeon had her intestines on a table as he freed scar tissue and rerouted the organ. Needless to say that trauma can cause the intestines to fall asleep (an ileus) and not digest food properly. She had some vomiting the last 24 hours. So last night they intubated her with a tube through her nose to drain her stomach. This morning they wheeled her downstairs to a surgical room to insert a special IV to get her heavier nutrition. The surgeon expected this, but it does get your attention. Interestingly they give her ice chips to eat as a means to coax the intestine along. On the positive side she is mobile, vitals and labs good, and alert. A few minutes ago she texted “the market dumped.” If we can get her to do the same we are home free. :-)

Once I do some vacuuming I am headed to the hospital to take her for a couple of walks and keep her company. 

igy

In absolute terms I'm having a terrible year obviously

but because I've been leaning hard into value and dividend stocks and have mostly short term bonds I'm beating my benchmark by a lot - around 200 bps. 

I figure in the long run if I can beat the benchmark I'll be doing fine. 

Rough sledding in a 60/40 portfolio when bonds lose at the same time as stonks tho. But at least my funds are buying bonds at 2% instead of 1%. Will pay off down the road but the loss of NAV is rough.  

year to date:

USA: -8.5%

USA Value: -2%

Developed markets ex-USA: -3%

Emerging: +2%

Alpha to be had, if we get the allocation right. 

I'm so sorry she has to go through this. Sending good thoughts toward you and your family. 

I will second those sentiments, Igy. Wishing you and your wife the best.

* Equity mutual funds, will complete each quarter with over 97% equities, often over 99% equities. Equity mutual funds do not buy & hold. Equity mutual funds may have intentionally decided to sit on more cash.

* If U.S. employees with 401-K or 403-B retirement plans have gotten scared, pulled equities out of retirement plans en masse, equity mutual funds are forced to sell to match the behavior of the masses, pulling out of equities if that is the case. If equity mutual funds go down, obviously equity indices go down too.

* THE WORST insider traders are U.S. Congresspersons and U.S. Senators. Some in U.S. House and U.S. Senate sit on committees with various insider knowledge. Some want this behavior regulated. Some want members of U.S. House and U.S. Senate to be banned from trading equities, spouses too. Some want members of Congress to only be allowed to purchase indices and/or mutual funds. If member of U.S. Congress trade at discount brokerage or full service firms, trading by members of U.S. Congress becomes quickly known. Every wonder how political science majors often with law degree get so rich if they are able to last over twenty years in office?

I am leaning toward my first bullet point.

Third! My friend who just had abdominal aortic aneurysm surgery just went through the same thing, he had his intestines out on an adjacent gurney. He’s doing ok now, and is seeing an osteopath to get/keep his guts aligned.

Here’s to modern surgical techniques👍. I’m sure she’ll be back to digesting soon. Hopefully you’re a decent cook!

Ah, but the year is yet young. Plus, who cares about YTD...do past 12 months and you will feel better, although the trend is now not good. 2021 was epic.

I am still very cash-heavy, although buying a lot. I am still tempted to just dump that trbcx and take the loss, it is the only thing in the red. Although I’m happy with what I’ve bought and for how much, I still look forward to the day when I can buy stuff, even US stuff, for really good deals.

I still think that day will come, at least for US stocks—but sort of like Igy, for me things will have to drop pretty damn low, otherwise I’m just not interested.

well here's a bit of great news. We have had a miserable drought of home building but the invisible hand seems to have stepped in and went to work while I was gnashing my teeth. Most homes under construction in 50 years. That should help bring housing prices down a bit and kick the economy when people buy and furnish them.

SHOP, anyone? Too bad I don't have any money to spend on stocks.

No, I prefer PLTR. I have no idea

what they do, but something to do with data. /s

I think SHOP will fall more. Not sure why they were that sky high to begin with. I have no idea why they are that special. I used to sell a service that I would try to target merchants utilizing Shopify platform. I would look up their biggest sites and it’s just landmine of crap. I know that many of the crap websites would sell a lot of stuff. However, I’m just not a believer of them compared to Walmart, Amazon, Target, Costco, etc.

another reason that I don’t like about Shopify is that merchants pay subscription fee for the platform. So, Shopify needs to continually sign up more and more merchants up. On another hand, Amazon takes a cut from each sale. I prefer the business model of Amazon much better.

But I could be dead wrong with this. I’m not in individual stocks anymore as I’ve made money making concentrated bets on individual stocks. In hindsight, I just got lucky and in broad market now.

Thanks gentlemen. Like Winnie the Poo she’s feeling some rumbling in the tummy. Keeping our fingers crossed.

Have you been there all night? I stayed overnight in my wife’s room at the Mayo.

Hopefully you guys can get out of there soon enough.

Make sure you get some sleep.

More head winds starting to blow in this morning's futures.

I'm still very heavy in cash, have been for 9-12 months now. Apart from a misguided, knee-jerk purchase of FB the day after dropping 20%, which I corrected later the same day (thanks gente for the sage advice), I've made no trades in many months and I'm standing pat until I can see the horizon more clearly. Storm clouds are getting closer and closer. I've never been as alarmed about global stability as I am now.

Seems kind of...late to the party? I assume these are all the typical suburban 1200 sqft per person vinyl-sided castles. Building costs aren't exactly going down lately and rates are going up so unless we get 40 year mortgages I have to wonder if these will actually be profitable builds.

I feel the same and am also mostly in cash, but I have felt the need to start buying overseas. There are decent deals to be had, looking at “fundamentals”, and I plan to hold these things for 20 years, with some rebalancing.

Militating against geopolitical uncertainty, for me, are currency uncertainty and inflation. I have really been spreading spending among developed economy currencies while the dxy looks ok.

The thing is, are you ready to act when the time comes? Inflation is killing your cash, mine too.

No. It is about a 20 minutes drive one way and I have been going over twice a day. We have two spoiled cats to take care of. I talked to the surgeon just a few minutes ago and he is optimistic she can go home by Monday. Too soon to pull the NGI tube, wants to see more gut progress.

True dat... but not as fast as the markets would these days. :-)