Saturday, October 11, 2025

Weather, laptops and the stock market

 

We had a killing-frost a couple of nights ago, so we are officially into Indian Summer.

The new laptop is here!!!

I think I need to set a clock to ensure that I am getting enough exercise outside. I experience a weird form of Seasonal Affective Disorder. I struggle to keep my momentum going as the days rapidly get shorter. That means October is a month that I need to actively take care of my health. This year I think I will log the number of hours I spend outside and (maybe) the amount of exercise I get.

The stock market


Some statisticians separate variation into "Common-cause" and "Special-cause".
 
Variation driven by common-cause is Brownian motion and drastic changes in your process (or asset allocation) only adds noise. It is my opinion that the primary benefit of professional investment advisors is that they help new investors stay-the-course and NOT make changes in response to common-cause variation in the markets.
 
The variation driven by special-causes does warrant changes to your process or asset allocation. The difficulty in using charts is that there is not much value in identifying a special-cause after the fact.
 
Much ado is being made of the recent market "melt-down". It is helpful to put it in a frame of reference. To date, the market slid back to the valuations last seen about a month ago. That is, it has only given up one month's worth of gains.
 
Looking back farther in time, a great deal of "emotional support" for the S&P at the $5500-to-$5800 range and when the S&P was hovering in the $3500-to-$4000 range. Those are "floors" where I would expect equity prices to pause when the AI bubble pops. Hold onto your whitey-tighties if the prices punch down below $3500 level. We are likely in for a long, ugly ride if that happens.

6 comments:

  1. As just a few AI stocks seem to be the market right now when NOT IF their bubble pops it is going to be an exciting ride.

    I notice you picked 3500 for the S&P as exciting. That's a roll back to middle of 2022. That would be a fall of about 53%.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973%E2%80%931974_stock_market_crash

    The 70's was an "interesting time". and that was when respect for law and personal property was quite a lot higher than today.

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  2. My wife and I each have one of those UV-light cheer-you-up lamps for the short days. (And our short days are shorter than yours and, all too often, grey days too). They seem to be usefully effective.

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  3. Our other winter cheer-you-up policy used to be to take a week's holiday in early January and fly to the sunny mid-Atlantic island of Madeira. It's a blessed spot. It worked every time. Politically it's part of Portugal so the people are pleasant to be among.

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  4. When living in Northern Europe we put full spectrum bulbs in every light. Made a world of difference.

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  5. A Winter lack of sunlight is something we are learning to adapt to in New Home 2.0. The Ravishing Mrs. TB is definitely more impacted than I am.

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