Typhoon Dolphin hit China's east coast and triggered flood warnings. Over 1 million people got evacuated. Transport shut down across the region. Retail traders in Shanghai are now physically unable to reach their computers to panic sell their positions, which means they're finally practicing the discipline their brokers have been begging them to demonstrate for years.
The typhoon doesn't care about your technical analysis. It doesn't respect support levels. It won't bounce off the 50-day moving average. Dolphin just showed up and said f*ck your flood barriers, f*ck your infrastructure, and f*ck your commute. At least it's honest about its intentions, which is more than you can say for the Chinese property developers these same retail traders keep trying to catch on the way down.
Mass evacuations mean nobody's watching their portfolios. Transport disruptions mean nobody's getting to the office to execute their brilliant strategy of buying whatever dumped hardest that morning. The typhoon accidentally created the world's largest forced diamond hands experiment. A million people who can't sell even if they wanted to.
Eastern China is underwater. The news is running 24-hour coverage. Emergency services are stretched thin. And somewhere in that chaos, there's a guy with his phone at 2% battery trying to log into his trading app because he heard typhoons are bullish for construction stocks. He's wrong, obviously. He's been wrong about everything since he opened his first position. But you have to admire the commitment to losing money even when nature itself is telling him to take the day off.
Dolphin evacuated more Chinese citizens in one day than every risk management seminar combined.
Photo by on Unsplash
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