Over the last few weeks, some strange things have happened in the stock market.
Google was down more than 30% from its highs after dropping 12% in a single day. Intel was down 54%. Netflix lost more than half its value. Coinbase and Oracle were down around 60%. Nike was down 79% from its all-time high. Chipotle was down 55%. Some semiconductor stocks expected to power the AI revolution fell 30% to 50%.
If all you saw were these headlines, you would assume the stock market is falling apart.
And Yet
The S&P 500 is up almost 12% this year.
Two-thirds of the stocks in the index are up. Nearly half are up 10% or more. The average stock has risen about 15%.
It’s hard to believe all these things can be true at the same time. But they are.
A genuine bloodbath can happen in one area, while the market as a whole has a perfectly good year.
None of this means the broad market cannot fall from here. It can, and someday it will. But these numbers remind us that companies and markets can yield very different results, and diversification is important, even though it means you will inevitably own some things you wish you hadn’t.
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Personal Notes:
Last weekend was Halloween, and there was no unifying theme this year. My daughter was a pink ghost, one of my sons was some type of basketball enthusiast, and the other was a scary inflatable clown.
The days of my family wearing matching costumes seem to be over.
It's good to hear that the market "overall" is doing well after seeing what happened yesterday.
Now that the mid-trrms are over when will the market stabilize is what scares me.