The market movements this October have left some persisting effects. Many investors, now turned gamblers, are surely scratching their heads asking themselves related questions. How could a healthy and efficient market be down nearly 3% one day and then up almost 2% the next? Did the reasoning for selling suddenly vanish? What happened that would cause a sudden change in sentiment?
Now fast forward to December. Christmas Eve the markets see a 2+ standard deviation drop. The day after Christmas a 5% pop. Hopefully Santa brought you some motion sickness meds. Oversold bounce? sure. Violent rally indicative of bear market conditions? Plausible. Pension fund driven EOY/EOQ rebalancing? makes sense. Plunge protection team operations? Let us hope not. Algorithmically driven predatory price discovery targeting protections put on by the retiree turned gambler? You better believe it.
If you find yourself asking any of these questions, then I have some shocking news for you. The markets in their current state have surpassed any conceivable level of irrationality and successfully achieved, as I like to call it, a state of 'predatory irrationality'.