Stop!

I should preface this by saying I don’t own a crystal ball. And my time machine has been in the shop for weeks. My ability to predict the future is lousy. Which by the way makes it equal to everybody who will be appearing on CNBC today.

There is a lot of dark red on my screen this morning. S&P futures are down more than 3% as I type. Nasdaq 5%. Japan cratered. Friday was a lousy day and Uncle Warren didn’t do bulls any favor over the weekend with his (seemingly… really tough to read into so be careful) flight to cash.

The open looks like it is going to be ugly. Really ugly. CNBC is going to have lots of logos on the screen.

I don’t want to sugarcoat things… This could be the opening days of the next Great Depression. The Fed and central banks all over the world have been f**king around for years now, and perhaps today is when they find out. Keeping rates artificially low definitely did encourage a rush towards debt that can be viewed as bubbly. Perhaps the air is about to come out of the balloon.

That said, this could be done by the afternoon. Looking at volatility (VIX for the cool kids), there is clearly an algo-driven trade rapidly unwinding. There is a stampede towards the exit, and the proverbial door is too small for an orderly procession. That work, that unwind, will likely be done today. Probably by midday even. VIX will ease at that point. At that point it is possible there will be a bounce upward. It isn’t completely out of the question we close green today.

More likely, this could be one million points in between. Even after the algos are done midday everyone else is in such a frenzy they continue the selloff into the close and perhaps for days or weeks to come. It isn’t the 1930s again, but it is ugly for an extended period.

It will probably be none of those three things exactly and could be something my little mind hasn’t even considered. I don’t know. We don’t know. Nobody knows.

What I do know for sure is that I believe in this chart:

Obviously, I could go back further. But you know the narrative. There is a lot of ugly there. The dot com crash is there. 2008 is there. COVID is there. And for those who just kept their cool through all of it, there is a lot of wealth created in there. The Great Recession is now so long ago it hardly bends the line on the 120-year Dow chart.

You should have no money in the markets you need for the next few years. If you do, get it out ASAP (perhaps not at the open, but ASAP). Today could end up being a generational buying opportunity. It could end up being the last chance to sell. Or it could be just another trading day you hardly remember two months from now.

You can’t control the direction of the market. You can’t control the market’s reaction to the direction of the market. All you can control is yourself.

Today would be a great day to see a movie. To drive to the mountains for a long hike. To start a 1,000-piece puzzle. Definitely do something.

But when it comes to investments, my plan for today is to do nothing. It is ok to just sit on the sidelines.

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