I wouldn't beat yourself up. Today's action was perfectly designed to trap as many traders as possible, as spectacularly as possible. An AI couldn't have designed a better day for traps if it trained on all of history's market data and all the books on trader psychology ever published.

The one thing I have noticed is that they are taking advantage of the instinct for most people to think hot inflation and higher rates = lower markets. That's not the case but it's a widely held belief so those people have emotional reactions on hot print days and hit the sell button which the smart money takes advantage of knowing that inflation inflates.

This was crazy. Absolutely perfect design. 

It never made sense to be down on hot inflation numbers and weak but not too weak GDP data. It's basically mega cap market nirvana - not to mention Meta also had great earnings.  Are we in stagflation? Yeah, probably, but everyone is stuck buying the products and services of the mega caps. They have pricing power and will crush quarter after quarter (I don't count TSLA in the group anymore, even though I'm long). 

This is the kind of things that FA's have to offer and what that the new ETF's are trying to displace. Honestly, I don't think it will be that hard for the ETF's to win out. Look at how long the average lockup period is!  Buffer ETF's can be liquidated with a gain on day 2, if the market has gone up. Hard to compete with that with this old school approach. 

Plaza Accord 2.0? There were some meetings recently with Asian finance ministers in DC and the rumor is they are discussing a potential new Plaza Accord.  As much as I would hate that kind of theft from the purchasing power of middle and lower class Americans to boost fat cat American companies and Asian countries, I figured nothing would come of it until probably December.  Looking at the dollar today relative to the 10 year yield, I'm wondering if maybe they decided to act sooner rather than later? But Yen still weak...hard to say. 

This pic briefly describes the conditions that lead to the 1st Plaza Accord. Look familiar? 

We did flip green on SPX OANDA (the session started at 5 yesterday).  Still at -0.02% right now.

Market trying to figure out if it's worried more about inflation or growth. If it's inflation, market should go higher, not lower (peasants be damned). 

VIX - Looks like weak divergence, but I'm learning to trust the signals over the eyes (constant battle)

SPX - lost the YTD VWAP. Next  one down is the VWAP from the October bottom (currently at 4870)

CNBC clueless as usual. They can't figure out why some numbers look so strong but others signal a weak economy. They refuse to look at anything through the most logical filters because it's "political." I mean just state the obvious - the Gov is spending more than ever in history and our border is being flooded with low cost labor like never in history and then work from that baseline forward. A lot of the questions they're asking this morning suddenly have obvious answers. Sometimes you have to say things that make your party potentially look bad if you want to be a financial journalist. But they self censor instead - everyone in the finance world suffers if we can't talk about the actual causes when we have problems.  

The US has never and will never pay down any debt. It's not the way it works. They service the debt (mostly with printed currency). Dilute the currency which inflates assets prices which reduces the purchasing power of everyone. The wealth of the very wealthy asset holders increase while middle class savings is decimated because they don't have enough assets to keep up. Eventually the debt appears smaller after the inflation. Rinse repeat. We're just on Turbo now and the equation requires at least leveling off spending while waiting for inflation to do it's work.  

There are many saying that the US has no choice but to run inflation hot for 8 - 10 years (because reduced spending is not an option, but they don't say that). They're already a couple of years in and will gaslight the crap out of all of us the entire time it's happening by saying inflation is not that bad. 

Just hit the buy stop / short cover 2 days ago. We're in whipsaw territory.

If I would have taken both trades the minute they triggered, it would have been a break even trade. That doesn't suck, but the mean reversion systems clearly perform better at times like these. 

What does the Gov do if the economy gets squirrely now when they've already been spending like it's a great depression and world war combined? I'm scared to ask.  I'm afraid the answer is that we'll just be blown away by their ability to spend even more and inflate their way out of it, at least until mid November. 

   - FBL more like FML

If they are questioning META valuations with that report, MSFT bulls should be sweating bullets. META is valued much more reasonably.

META and IBM were trading at similar multiples going into the print today. Go figure. That tells me IBM has room to get DESTROYED.  But it's just one day and market is in a mood to make people who were beginning to believe they were geniuses look dumb (just look at TSLA today).  The script on META TSLA could easily flip tomorrow....or not. I don't see TSLA trading a lot higher and Meta trading a lot lower...but I could definitely see the reverse of that happening (in the medium term). Meta has valuation support compared to much of the other names in the MAG whatever it is now (4?)

Haha. Twitter was full of this stuff all day today in the lead up. 

META reported very strong demand from China based advertisers. Very interesting. They can't use facebook, but they advertise on the global version anyway.  I guess it makes sense I just didn't see it as a big revenue stream. 

Utilities - weird. What's the difference between NEE and NEP? I always buy NEE, but saw NEP at the top of the list with the same company name. Is it like GOOG and GOOGL?