The Dow closed above 53,000 for the first time Monday. Nasdaq went up too because chip stocks decided to stop bleeding for one session. This is what passes for news when you need to fill Tuesday's preview column.
Here's what moves markets: nothing you read about on Monday night. The Dow crossing an arbitrary round number means exactly as much as your car's odometer hitting 100,000 miles. Congratulations. The machine continued operating.
Chip stocks staged a comeback. That's the phrase they used. Staged. Like semiconductors gathered in a dressing room, applied stage makeup, and rehearsed their lines before the curtain rose. NVDA went up 2%. That's not a comeback. That's a rounding error having a good day.
Technical analysts will now draw lines connecting Monday's close to some pivot point from three weeks ago and pretend they predicted this. They didn't. Nobody did. The market went up because more people bought than sold, which is the only honest analysis anyone can offer, but honesty doesn't get you booked on CNBC.
What's likely to move the market in the next trading session? The same thing that moves it every session. Buy orders and sell orders. Volume and volatility. The endless churning of capital between people who know they're guessing and people who think they're not.
Retail traders will see that 53,000 number and assume it means something. They'll buy because the line went up. They'll tell themselves they're investing in America's future. They're not. They're donating to theta decay and wondering why their calls expire worthless every Friday.
The Dow added another thousand points to a number that already meant nothing. Chip stocks recovered a fraction of what they lost last week. Tuesday's session will be exactly as predictable as Monday's was, which is to say not at all, but at least you clicked the headline.
Photo by Nick Chong on Unsplash
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