The Federal Reserve raised rates by a quarter point. Stocks went down. Then stocks went up the next day. Financial journalists wrote articles about what might happen next as if any of them have ever correctly predicted a single f*cking thing.
Thursday's "comeback" erased Wednesday's losses. This means exactly nothing. The S&P moved 1.2% in one direction, then 1.3% in the other direction, and CNBC acted like they witnessed the Normandy invasion. Retail traders checked their Robinhood accounts four hundred times. They saw green numbers. They felt smart. They are not smart.
The Fed suggested another hike is ahead. Markets knew this Wednesday. Markets hated it. Markets forgot about it by Thursday morning. Markets have the memory of a goldfish getting waterboarded. This is what passes for price discovery in 2024.
Technical analysts looked at their charts Thursday afternoon. They drew lines connecting random price points. They called these lines "support levels" and "resistance zones." They might as well have read chicken entrails. The charts would have been exactly as useful, and the chickens would have died for a better reason.
Now everyone wants to know what happens Friday. The answer is the same as every Friday. Some stocks will go up. Some will go down. Jim Cramer will scream about both groups. Retail traders will panic-sell the ones that go down and FOMO into the ones that go up, guaranteeing they lose money in both directions.
The market doesn't care about your article previewing Friday's session. The market doesn't care about the Fed's forward guidance. The market is a drunk driver swerving between lanes while everyone in the backseat pretends he's following GPS directions.
By Monday, none of this will matter. There will be new headlines. New reasons stocks moved. New explanations for why Thursday's comeback was actually a warning sign, or Friday's selloff was actually bullish, or whatever brain-dead narrative gets the most clicks. The only constant is that your portfolio will still be underwater and financial journalists will still be pretending they saw it coming.
Photo by Maxim Hopman on Unsplash
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