McConnell fell. Doctors say he's not ready to work. His office released a statement about missing a Kentucky picnic. That's the news.
Somewhere right now a retail trader is staring at this headline wondering if it affects his position in leveraged semiconductor ETFs. It does not. It never did. The senator could miss every picnic for the rest of his life and your calls would still expire worthless Friday.
The statement included a physician's assessment. Not cleared for work. Cannot attend annual event. Standard recovery protocol. Exactly zero trading desks altered their positions based on this information because exactly zero trading desks were holding positions based on whether an 84-year-old man could make it to a f*cking picnic.
But you checked the headline. You clicked it. Part of your brain thought maybe this mattered. Maybe this was the catalyst. Maybe Kentucky picnic attendance correlates with small-cap momentum. It doesn't.
McConnell apologized in writing. Very polite. Very formal. The kind of apology you issue when you're genuinely sorry about something that genuinely does not matter to financial markets. Which is most things. Almost everything, actually.
The physician assessed him. Wrote it down. Someone at his office formatted it properly and sent it out. A perfect little chain of professional communication about a medical situation. And then some trader in Ohio read it and thought about buying puts on healthcare stocks.
He didn't buy them. He just thought about it. Which somehow makes it worse.
The picnic will happen without him. Kentucky will survive. The markets opened, closed, and will open again Monday with total indifference to this entire situation. Your portfolio performed exactly how it was going to perform regardless of whether you read this headline or spent that time learning what implied volatility actually means.
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
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