Quixotic Bears Tested In 2023 Stock Melt-Up
It's easy to confuse forced capitulation with a loss of conviction.
Think of Bill Ackman and Herbalife. Ackman didn't give up on the view that the business was fundamentally unscrupulous, he gave up on the trade because it wasn't worth it anymore. That's an oversimplification of a very long story, but you get the idea. It wasn't about who was right or wrong. It was about the cost of persisting in an increasingly quixotic fight.
The same is true of bearish equity calls and recession predictions
My portfolio is largely SPY with bookends of profitable tech at one end (avgo, appl, nvda, msft, googl and ui (that is another story)) and dividends at the other (spyd, vym).
I have held this through repeated ups and repeated downs and, based on my acknowledgment that I am terrible at predicting the stock market, have decided to use ups as an opportunity to trim the bookends and eventually get even more of my portfolio into spy.
I don’t want to bet against our economy- given the alternatives.
@Emptynester Not betting against the U.S. economy — the world’s largest and most dynamic — has worked for you and a guy named Buffett, and it will probably work for millennials, Gen Zers, and the younger Americans who follow in their footsteps. Nice to see a little bipartisanship in Washington. There’s nothing this country can’t accomplish if we all work together.
Don Quixote, creative.
Im betting on current levels being the top, but mostly in tbills rather than outright short in case I am wrong, as betting on a meaningful decline in US equities has historically been a losing bet, statistically.