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Just give us a reason

This is it
 
   
     
   
 
SEPTEMBER 17, 2024
   

Hey y’all,

I’ve got a song stuck in my head this morning.

“Give me one reason to stay here, and I’ll turn right back around…” 

You probably know it, it’s by Tracy Chapman. If you DO know it, it will probably be stuck in your head all day now that I’ve mentioned it. Sorry, not sorry.

Why is that mid-90s banger stuck in my head this morning of all mornings?

Because I continue to feel, as I’ve thought for a while now, that most folks are looking for “just one reason” when it comes to the stock market.

But in this case, the lyrics would go something like “give me one reason to panic, and I’ll sell and sell and sell.” 

The market hasn’t felt this uneasy to me for a long time. And tomorrow’s rate cut has become the Sword of Damocles hanging over the head of Chairman Jerome Powell.
 
 

In the space of a few weeks, investors have undergone mass hypnosis, from hoping that a rate cut might even be possible a month or so ago, to now being so convinced of a rate cut that they’ll be disappointed by anything LESS than a 0.50 basis point cut! 

And it’s not just me saying this…

This headline is what initially got Tracy stuck in my head this morning…
 
 
It’s almost like they are goading Powell and his crew to pull the trigger on bigger rate cuts.

But the rate cuts themselves have become “soma” to distract minds from the underlying and much more complex reality. 

If it’s a 0.50 cut, everything must be good! Traders can ignore the slowing job markets and still-high inflation and focus on the positives.

If it’s 0.25 points, or, God forbid, 0 points, then everything must be a disaster, even if retail sales are higher and there are other good signs about the economy.
 

We’re allowing this one moment to serve as a stand-in for the much wider and more difficult to solve question: is the economy in good shape?

And we’re letting the Fed — the same people who, in theory, caused the malady — prescribe the remedy.

It all seems, to borrow a term from Sophocles, “absolutely cuckoo-bananas.”

But here’s what you have to remember: big rate cut, small rate cut, no rate cut, YOU can’t control that.

So what you need to do is focus on the things that you can control. Your accounts. Your trades. Your strategies.

You can sit out this week and ignore the rate cuts completely and wait for things to settle.

Or you can trade carefully, knowing that volatility will be a huge factor in the coming days.

But either way, you’re at the wheel of your own accounts.

So why waste time worrying about the things you can’t control when there’s so much that you CAN control right at your fingertips?

To quote another Tracy Chapman banger: “We gotta make a decision, leave tonight, or live and die this way…” 

Okay, that might be a little dramatic, but you get the point: your future is in your hands! Don’t let Jerome Powell or the markets’ irrational reactions change that.

To your prosperity,

Stephen Ground
Editor-in-Chief, ProsperityPub
 
   
 
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