That Didn't Take Long

Yesterday's little post-market post was reposted by Seeking Alpha very quickly and it was remarkable how quickly the comments filled up with a lot of emotion. Someone called me a moron, there was one about the wealth gap, several about politics; really too many comments focusing on the world's problems as opposed to just focusing on their own portfolios except for the one guy who bought puts before this happened.

The market is only down about 10% from the recent high and people are already freaking out. The market was down 55% not too long ago and even before the last few days it was still down 15% or so from the 2007 high water mark.

Yes there are wrongs in the world, injustices and same old same old on Wall Street but devoting time to that will not help you with growing your portfolio when appropriate or protecting your portfolio when that is appropriate.

All that should reasonably be worried about are things in our control. I've stuck to the plan we've laid out long in advance. If the market keeps tanking then I should have sold more, if the market now has that big rally that quite a few people are calling for I should not have sold anything. As the outcome is not knowable, not in our control, the only thing that can be done is to stay disciplined to a strategy that you have a reasonable basis for believing will work. Even it working during this event is beyond our control, all we can do (repeated for emphasis) is stay disciplined.