Friday the markets tanked on news of a South-African version of Covid-19. People, who have been waiting for the November to December seasonality in uranium, were not happy about this. No matter what people tell you about probabilities, the markets have always been full of factors that can not be controlled.
Maybe you do not believe me, but I did not check my account on Friday. I am not trading my positions, and without money available to take advantage of the situation I did other things. I went in and checked a snapshot of my positions on Saturday morning when the markets were closed to know where I am at.
To no one’s surprise it is down, and some of my positions I suspect to be down close to double digits.
Now I want you to imagine that your (and everyone else’s) house is in a market similar to the stock market where they can see daily price fluctuations. Do you think you would see anything similar to the stock market on Friday? I do. Even if the housing market and stock market are not the same, there is correlation between them. The key for me is that I do not obsess over the value of my home in the short term. I do not follow all the daily fluctuations of my investments either.
I am not going to do a big pep talk here about the investment thesis, but in short, -nuclear power is still needed. Where I live the temperatures are going down for the Winter season, and we still need to heat our homes and live our lives, lockdown or no lockdown. I have lost track of all the different strains of Covid, but there is now a new South-African one. It is interesting how the media, and the stock market is treating this. The stock market is now starting to price in a possibility of a new March 2020 lockdown.
I have talked to people who have sold down a bit already because they do not want to experience a similar situation to what we saw in the stock market last time. They might be correct, but I have instead just prepared more mentally to stomach another hard drop. Even if we are at a much higher level now than February 2020. (I also want to repeat that if we have a hard drop, nothing says it has to go up again afterwards like it did the last time).
What can happen on Monday?
I get told that I think too much and analyze past and present events too much by my immediate family. I do however look at this as one of my bigger edges when it comes to investing. I remember how different the stock market acted, or society was 10 years ago. If I can not use that part of history, and my interpretation of it, to set my personal and investment course I would just be like a leaf blowing in the wind.
I want you to remember back to where the world was in March 2020 and compare it to today. At the time we had a new virus spreading across the globe at a very rapid pace. No one knew how contagious or deadly it was, but what we saw from China was not promising. Some places like Italy were hit very hard, and because countries did not have enough information about the situation yet, most of them went into lockdown of some form or another. There were at the time several unknowns, and even the most level headed persons were paying attention. I remember when the government asked our country to go into voluntary lockdown, most of us were having more existential thoughts than usual. I dare to say we have answered several of the unknowns at the end of November 2021.
The only reason why I am writing about the virus is because of the effect it has on the markets. Are we going to close down as hard as in March 2020 for this new variant?
We most likely will not have an answer about this by Monday. I do however not expect a similar situation like we had in March 2020. If we do, I will try to deal with the situation better than what I did then. I will not sit at home glued to the computer screen refreshing the latest stock charts.
Gjermund, lots of traders out due to US Thanksgiving weekend, interesting to see what Monday brings, had a few stink bids filled.