WASHINGTON – In a recent article, we imagined we’d be taking this holiday-shortened trading week off. That’s because so many traders and investors are taking off for the Thanksgiving holidays and taking off a few days from trading as well. As a result, markets tend to get a little crazy and erratic on low trading volume. That makes investment decisions prone to serious errors due to overreaction. And today’s holiday shortened Friday action certainly proved that point. Fear of Covid came out of nowhere, hitting stocks hard in thin trading that concluded at 1 p.m. ET. Yes, for what seems like the millionth time, Covid crashed Wall Street again.
Yes, folks, as we’ve predicted many times, the latest “Son of Delta Variant” may now be upon us. Just in time for joyful holiday lockdowns? We’ll need to see about that.
Covid panic: Rinse, repeat.
Red State’s Nick Arama summed up today’s Covid panic market move, updating investors still trying to enjoy their holiday week.
“Welcome to the song that never ends.
“There’s now a new COVID-19 variant that the World Health Organization (WHO) is meeting over today.
“It was recognized in South Africa, and the concern is that appears the most “heavily mutated variant” so far.
“What does that mean?
“The variant has more than 30 mutations on its spike protein – the key used by the virus to unlock our body’s cells – more than double the number carried by Delta. Such a dramatic change has raised concerns that the antibodies from previous infections or vaccination may no longer be well matched. Purely based on knowing the list of mutations, scientists anticipate that the virus will be more likely to infect – or reinfect – people who have immunity to earlier variants.
“Oh, joy.”
You can say that again, Nick. And he sort of does, via posting the following tweet.
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Selling Tsunami, incoming…
The media began to trumpet this latest story about a new Covid variant over the past weekend. The resulting major panic in trading futures prior to Friday’s opening bell signaled that trading action might not prove very pleasant.
As the NYSE trading bell clanged Friday morning, those investors and institutions still (trigger alert) manning their computers today immediately instigated a mass dump-a-thon. Any stock conceivably affected by the latest anticipated Covid “wave” followed Wile E. Coyote off his ubiquitous cliff. Retail? Dead. Obviously, starting right now, no one will go Christmas shopping. Travel? Dead. No cruises, no passenger trans, no airline flights, poof! Over.
And with them all, fossil fuel sales are sure to tumble. No more gasoline, no more nat-gas, no more propane or fuel oil. No one will need to keep warm, because we’ll all be dead. And, of course, because of this, none of the deceased will need to travel to grocery stores or restaurants, because the dead don’t need to eat, right? Game over! Game over!
Craziness? Are we serious? Maybe. Or at least today’s panicked investors traded that way from the outset, creating the worst trading day of the year in the process. Even though Wall Street stayed open for just 3 ½ hours Friday.
This remains the primary reason why we don’t do much trading ourselves during Thanksgiving Week. But we did make a move or two today, described a bit further down.
How Covid crashed Wall Street. Back to the Friday play-by-play
Meanwhile, let’s return to Nick Arama’s Covid panic play-by-play report.
“It also seems ‘highly contagious among young people .’ Of course, so it picks up where the original left off and just in time for the vaccine push for kids….
“Israel already has one case, and Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said they’re close to declaring a state of emergency. Two cases have also been detected in Hong Kong.
“This news is causing markets to crash this morning, as this hits people.”
Nick’s report quotes market averages as they gesticulated wildly before the market’s 1 p.m. ET close. The actual closing numbers via CNBC actually turned out somewhat worse than originally reported
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) free fell by 904.04 points (-2.53%), as Covid crashed Wall Street big time. The broader based S&P 500 and the tech heavy NASDAQ Composite ended up only slightly less shell-shocked, plummeting 2.27% and 2.23% to end the day.
One logical conclusion. And more…
Nick’s report ends with a logical political conclusion, considering all but the most oblivious US citizen must see what’s going on here by now.
“So if you thought that we were close to being done with this because the cases once again were decreasing, it sounds like you might have to think again. It looks like they’re gearing up again for the next variant. Even though they just announced it, they’re already suggesting that immunity and the vaccines that we have may not be sufficient to deal with it. Expect governments — once again — to use it as a reason to freak out and re-impose more restrictions on people around the world.”
Yep, that’s it. But while Covid crashed Wall Street stocks today, this story is not really about Covid anymore. It’s about the implementation of behaviorism by increasingly fascist Western governments. It’s about mandates, and masking, and forced vaccinations (which obviously aren’t living up to their initial CDC billing. Thanks, “Dr.” Fauci.) It’s politics and political control, pure and simple. It’s destroying small businesses, domestic industrial employment. And wiping out middle class lives. “Covid” seems as if it’s turning out to be the most sophisticated application ever of Cloward-Piven, the “progressive” academic theory focused on creating more government dependency, leading to a one-party state.
Why traders and investors seem willing to go along with this bizarre but workable Marxist coercion by selling into the panic and by going woke to go broke is beyond this writer. But it’s days like this when traders destroy the market, if only for a day, that make yours truly wonder what ever happened to good, old-fashioned common sense.
Buy the dip?
At any rate, we usually do some buying when blood is running on Wall Street. Like today, it proved another day when Covid crashed Wall Street. Again.
But since we have no clue as to whether this latest Covid / Wall Street selling panic and its ensuing losses will continue Monday. So we took it easy with the buying. We mainly bought tiny amounts of shares in companies we think could bounce back quickly.
Names? In the area of allegedly obsolete fossil fuels, we picked up a few more shares of refiner Phillips 66 (NYSE: PSX), which got clobbered today. We tried to grab some shares of fellow refiner Valero (NYSE: VLO) as well. But we took a pass when we couldn’t pin down the right price. (We already owned some shares in each.)
Tech? We picked up a bit of Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Netherlands-based NXP Semiconductors NV (NASDAQ: NXPI). And we couldn’t resist buying a couple expensive shares of Wall Street’s most polished and professional investment banking thieves professionals Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) when they took a roughly 10-point nosedive.
When Materials companies we favor – namely Cleveland-Cliffs (NYSE: CLF) and Freeport-McMoRan (NYSE: FCX) – took a header, we scooped up more shares.
We tried to nab a few more positions in tiny bites. But the bid-ask spreads were so wide that we couldn’t coax them our way, so we sat out the rest of the day.
Next Monday remains a mystery…
Again, no clue as to what happens Monday when everyone presumably returns to their damaged portfolios. But we do have the feeling that any potential for more lockdowns, particularly close to the year-end holidays, will only exacerbate the growing citizen revolt against increasingly fascistic and power mad government officials who seem to favor citizen “obedience” over provable medical science at every turn.
This gradual slide into real fascism could prove the real undoing of markets as voters and investors alike finally act to end creeping fascism to restore free markets and personal freedoms. Don’t miss the next thrilling episode.
See you Monday at some point in an attempt to explain whatever happens next.
