It's Gone Beyond Volatility – It's Chaos!

Chaos – and not just in the stock market. Sometimes taking care of a 2 year old makes stock swings look rational.

For example, this morning my son and I were playing, making faces at each other. I was holding him in my lap, with my hands keeping him from falling.

Out of the blue he jams his index fingers into both eyes and laughs. I can't grab his arms without letting him drop, so I have to try and convince him verbally (again) that it hurts to stick fingers in other peoples eyes.

As painful as that was, it's a little worse watching the stocks underlying my option picks gyrate wildly and with little regard for the direction I want them to go in. Again, kind of like my 2 year old son.

What's funny about this week is that the stocks I figured would go up, and the ones I figured would go down, went exactly the opposite direction within a couple of days of my placing the trades. I'm not too panicked about that as I'm comfortable that my underlying reasoning is still sound, but "irrational panic" that's driving the market now doesn't lend itself well to reasoning.

And for the record, I heard the statement "It's gone beyond volatility – it's chaos" line from someone on the radio this morning. Not sure who it was, or I would give credit. They were also talking about how most of the small and medium sized investors (except me, apparently) are sitting out of the market right now so institutional moves are really driving what happens.

It's seems the small guys working as a mob bring some stability to stock trades and overall markets.

Go figure.

So I can use that as an excuse to keep working on my portfolio. I'm doing my part to bring rationality and stability to the markets.