"You are not Listening!"
“YOU ARE NOT LISTENING!!!”… is something that married men hear their wives tell them all the time. Luckily, I never do. Maybe Mrs Shrub also says it but I don’t listen. “Selective hearing” may be a defence mechanism developed to ensure a long, happy marriage!
Market Participants also seem to have selective hearing when it comes to listening to the Market and its Game Masters, in this case, Trump and Bessent. Maybe Market Participants, in order to stay invested and ensure a long and prosperous investing life, have developed a defence mechanism of “selective hearing”. After all, “Stonks always go up”, innit!
But I’m a shorter-term trader, so listening to the Market (as well as my wife) ensures my long-term survival!
So when Bessent says “there is no Trump Put” and that “there’s going to be a detox period” and when JD Vance tells off Zelenskyy for not giving thanks…
…then I listen!
If they change their tone down the line, I will also be listening!
Meanwhile, we are barely 8% off the All-Time-Highs and it feels like half the Twitter monkeys already blew up and the Pod Monkeys fared even worse.
If you are wondering why, I blame it on “Bag7-itis”™️! Such a terrible disease, bad for your mental and financial health: While International Markets were humming along just fine, most market participants were suffering from Bag7itis, whereby their only focus had been to call the bottom in the Bag7 and getting their hands bloodied trying to catch the falling Bag7 knives…
indeed, one of the symptoms of “Bag7-itis” seems to be the loss of hearing!
If you or any of your loved ones have been infected by this terrible disease, please take a dose of Shrubstack and call me in the morning!
The BBBB-Barbell Portfolio ™️has outperformed the S&P by a mile in Q1, but more importantly I lost no sleep. For me, that counts as proper Alpha!
Meanwhile, I’ve been reminiscing of other instances where Market Participants just “weren’t listening”…