Corrections

Tl;Dr: Markets don’t always go up, unpredictability they sometimes go down

I grew up with a father who was always watching the markets – we spent a lot of time hearing about how the Dow Jones went up or down in any given day. I feel like I have at least a moderately good grasp on the Stock market because of this. At least enough to know:

• Markets don’t always go up
• Corrections can be painful in the short run, and are usually hard to predict
• In the long run, things mostly even out

I’m betting pretty hard on that third thing right now. And I am a believer – through the power of self-interested actions and a large market, things will even out and head up and to the right.

What’s interesting about right now (which I am charitably considering a correction, perhaps I’m not using that term technically correct but whatever), is this seems to have been entirely predictable, avoidable and infact planned!

The US economy has been pretty incredible in the last 15 years or so. From a navie perspective, it seems unbelievable that it will just keep going up. If it were a wildlife population you’d expect some kind of crisis after a while.

And here it is: it’s named Donald J. Trump, and we as a nation picked this!

So I can only wonder: do the markets move in such mysterious ways that it convinces people not to vote (Trump was elected by in-action as much as any serious mandate)? Do they somehow inform belief systems so that nations decide to implode?

I wish I had some explanation for our current situation that involved rational thought – if it’s there I can’t see it. It looks to me like a natural phenomenon, masked as political will. I hope this is right, a little correction seems good for market health overall. From where I stand right now, it looks like we’ve applied a tourniquet for a head-wound, which is not the kind of correction one usually recovers from.