I’m a commodity trader (mostly financial), so my experience is a little different, but I can say most common theme in my career to date is that when “wait for the dip to get long” narrative takes hold in a market, the dip never happens, the ship creeks from side to side, then rockets upwards violently.
Call sellers get confident. People short futures. Market breaks out and these folk get caught with their pants down and squeezed like hell, forced to buy, the “wait for the dip” capital piles on motivated by FOMO, and the algos pile on for momentum surges.
I’m not fully deployed here, but I’ve enough of my portfolio in markets currently regarded as overheated that if we do rip higher after a likely consolidation, I won’t have FOMO.
Posted by mad3105
3 Comments
My first years investing I used to pour money into value traps and avoid high growth stocks at all time highs and never understood why I got slaughtered. Now I do the opposite and avoid value “UNH, INTl” and dont care about dips and lump sum invest in all time growth “asts” while buying puts as insurance every now and then for physiological reasons and finally started making decent returns
There are different kinds of FOMO. If the market coughs back 40% you’re going to see a lot of people wishing they had cashed out and waited for the crash. Simply repeatedly hitting ATHs shouldn’t be enough to assume that a market crash is nigh. But when an administration seems dedicated to obliterating the longterm reputation of the US as a stable, predictable, and safe place to park your money–then be ready to see 30 trillion dollars of foreign investment start to slide away.
Why would you have FOMO? You miss out on giant gains every single day multiple times a day. The folly is thinking you have it figured out when you’re still worried about FOMO.