Hurricane Trudy strengthened to Category 2 and headed toward Mexico's coast. The center was expected to approach Saturday and pass near it into Sunday. Meteorologists issued warnings. People prepared. A hurricane did what hurricanes do.
Retail traders immediately checked if they could trade Mexican peso futures on Robinhood. They could not. They settled for panic-selling their Carnival Cruise shares at a loss instead. One trader posted a seventy-three slide TikTok explaining how this validated his Elliott Wave analysis of corn futures. The views suggest at least four hundred people watched the entire thing.
The absurdist part is not that a hurricane formed during hurricane season in a region where hurricanes form. The absurdist part is that somewhere right now a day trader is building a spreadsheet correlating Category 2 hurricanes with SPY movement and convincing himself he found alpha. He will name the strategy. He will backtest it using three data points. He will lose money by Tuesday.
Trudy moved northwest at a speed meteorologists measured and reported. Wind speeds increased to levels that justified the Category 2 classification. Rain fell. Waves grew. The ocean continued its long tradition of not caring about your portfolio.
Someone will write a thread explaining how this impacts semiconductor supply chains. Someone else will explain why this confirms their thesis on climate tech stocks. Both people will be underwater on positions they entered based on the last weather event they read about. Neither will connect these facts.
The hurricane will make landfall or it will not. Damage will occur or it will be minimal. Mexico will recover either way because Mexico has recovered from every previous hurricane. Your technical analysis of Home Depot stock based on reconstruction demand will somehow lose money anyway.
Photo by Osni Shelby on Unsplash
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