Tropical Storm Lala knocked out power to 180,000 people in Hawaii and damaged 100 homes before weakening like your portfolio during earnings season. The storm has since been downgraded. The homes have not.
Someone needs to explain to Hawaiian Electric why they charge monthly fees if the lights go out every time it gets windy. Actually don't bother. They'll just pass the explanation costs onto customers as a grid resilience surcharge.
100 homes damaged sounds bad until you remember what homes cost in Hawaii. That's roughly 8 billion dollars in property value, or enough to buy Nevada twice and still have money left over for premium grid infrastructure. But why invest in boring things like weatherproof power lines when you can just let nature handle your planned outage schedule.
The National Weather Service downgraded Lala from hurricane to tropical storm after it made landfall. Convenient timing. That's like your broker downgrading your margin call to a friendly suggestion after they've already liquidated your account.
180,000 people sitting in the dark right now. No lights. No air conditioning. No way to check their brokerage apps and panic sell at the bottom. Lala might be the best risk management tool the Hawaiian retail trader ever experienced.
The storm weakened. The power stayed off. Hawaiian Electric stock probably didn't move because nobody could log in to trade it.
Every disaster follows the same pattern. Infrastructure fails. Officials promise investigations. Regulators discover decades of deferred maintenance. Rate hikes get approved to fund improvements that won't happen. Then we all wait for the next storm to play the same game again.
At least the 180,000 people without power have an excuse for missing their stop losses.
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