When Will The Stock Market Pain End?

I am not a trader. I do not try to time the markets.

Still, I am human. I watch the stock market go through a couple of days of irrational rallies and a couple of days of irrational falls… Up, down, up, down, down, up, up, down… it’s like a Super Mario Nintendo secret code.

Like, what’s going on? Three months of down (April to July), two months of up (July to August), and three more months of down (August til now).

Not only am I not a trader in practice, but I also just have a pretty amateur knowledge of charting. I find it fascinating that you can draw these channels on the index (above). The index trades inside the channel for weeks or months… until it breaks out. If you bought the index or stock every time it broke out above the channel and sold it every time it broke below the channel, you could make money at that, right? It seems like you can.

Inflation is still pretty high, and I believe it will take more than a year from this point before it gets back into a comfortable range. UK inflation came in at a 10.1% annual rate this morning. US inflation is 8.2%. Canada is at 6.9%. That indicates that central banks will take a while before considering cutting interest rates. But when will they STOP raising them?

That, to me, seems to be the start of the next big rally in stocks. When the Fed (CBs around the world) start indicating a pause in raises to evaluate the data, and the data starts coming in better and better, stocks will rip. In advance of the world’s economy getting any better.

On a podcast recently, I heard someone say that you should be invested in the “lowest level” of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

So that means you invest in air, water, food, shelter, sleep, clothing, and reproduction.

I don’t know if I follow that advice strictly, but I have focused on food production, tangible assets like real estate, military defense, and commodities like steel in one of my accounts.

Those stocks are down like other stocks, but those areas are fundamental to human survival right now. I’m not even investing in oil as much, because energy is volatile. Remember $0 oil? But you’ll never see $0 land, $0 apartments, $0 fertilizer, or $0 fighter jets. Those things will always be in demand.

Still holding tight on 50% cash.