I KNOW WHY THE STOCK MARKET'S GOING HAYWIRE. DOOMTRADING.

Just looking at the stock market these days is enough to make you frown, bite your nails, and scream into the nearest pillow. There it is, violently juddering up and down, like a plane about to…

Meanwhile, have you noticed that everyone’s interested in it, too, your grandma, uncle, long lost friends? Suddenly, everyone wants to be Warren Buffett.

What’s happening looks like this. Here we are, the world wracked by so many multiple levels of crisis it’s almost comical if it weren’t catastrophic. The biggest energy crisis in modern history, the global order unravelling, an era of macroeconomic stagflation, I could go on.

And the stock market just keeps on trying to…hit record highs…just…desperately…cling on for dear life. It’s like a climber trying to keep on scaling a sheer cliff edge, while storms rage, rocks fall, and the snow howls. Because he knows that…watch out below…there’s nothing but gravity between him and the ground.

The market shouldn’t be so torridly trying to hit a new high, in the teeth of an age and a world like this. We all know it’s not just irrational, it’s dangerous. The climber should probably just…gently and slowly back down off the cliff.

So what’s really going on here? People are joining in manias and hysterias. They’re meme-stock bandwagoneering, manically buying every dip, jumping nervously from this position to that one, grabbing for pennies in front of the proverbial bulldozer.

They’re doomtrading.

You know what doomscrolling is. You sit there and sort of let the endless scroll numb you to bits, while your panic slowly builds. Doomtrading’s sort of like that. It’s done out of panic and fear and despair and horror and confusion and nihilism.

Bubbles are built of greed, but this feels different. It doesn’t feel so much like people are motivated by greed, but by its opposite, in financial terms, which is fear. The fear of all of it. What life’s become. How will I retire, take care of my kids, pay off the house, just…have a vaguely normal life? My income isn’t keeping up with expenses.. I’m afraid to admit that I’m getting a little terrified.

The world is going to hell. Nothing makes sense anymore. I worked hard and played by the rules, and meanwhile, complete bastards and morons took over everything and ruined what was left. The ladders became chutes, and one minor misstep turned into falling into the abyss.

What can I do about it all? I have to do something. I know.

I can…doomtrade.

In America, the stock market’s the last functional safety net. And I think that we’re seeing people do something paradoxical and a little perverse. Which is doomtrading out of fear and panic. But is it going to help?

I think we can all sense a crash is on the way. And I think what’s going on here is that people are trading frantically and desperately to try and gain whatever they can before this One Last Thing, the stock market’s decade long golden age, goes to hell too, just like everything else.

It’s not a great idea to doom…anything…scroll…trade…brood…dwell. A lot of people are going to end up burned this way. Investing wisely is about patience, calmness, and a solid thesis grounded in economic fundamentals. But I understand the impulse to doomtrade.

Still, I think it’s wise to grasp: these are the kinds of precise moments that bubbles tend to hit their peaks. When greed turns to fear. Things really are going to hell. They’re going to get much, much worse before they get better. What doomtrading says is what we fall feel: wealth is going to mean a great deal as the world around us unravels. It’s all that’s going to stand between us, and collapse. The sentiment’s correct. But lasting wealth isn’t built—or kept—this way alone.

Love,

Umair (and Snowy)