2020 yılının haziran ayında Hubble uzay teleskobu uzayın derinliklerinde bugüne kadar görülmüş en tuhaf fotoğraflardan birini çekti. Fotoğrafta arkadaki yıldızlar tuhaf bir şekilde eğrilmiş, uzatılmış ve devasa görünüyordu. Sorun teleskopta değildi sorun evrenin dokusunun kendisindeydi. MACS J0416 adı verilen devasa bir galaksi kümesi sahip olduğu muazzam kütleyle uzay zamanı kelimenin tam anlamıyla bükmüştü.
Arkasından gelen ışık bu bükülmüş uzaydan geçerken sanki dev bir kozmik mercekten geçiyormuş gibi eğriliyor. Buna astrofizikte kütleçekimsel mercekleme deniyor. Gördüğün şey gerçek ama algıladığın o devasa, parlak, kusursuz şekil tamamen bir illüzyon. Arkadaki o yıldız çok daha küçük, çok daha soluk ve bir yerde.
Ama kısım şu, insan beyni evrenin bu kütleçekim yasasını kendi içinde birebir kopyalıyor.
Geçmişte bıraktığın birini düşün. Onu hatırladığında kusursuz, devasa, hayatının merkezinde bir figür gibi görüyorsun. Ama zihninin yaptığı tek şey bir kütleçekimsel mercekleme illüzyonu yaratmak. O insanın gerçekliğinin önüne kendi devasa yalnızlığını, yoğun aşkını ya da çözülmemiş acılarını koydun. Duygularının kütlesi o kadar ağır ki o insanın gerçek görüntüsünü büküyor, onu olduğundan çok daha büyük çok daha parlak ve ulaşılmaz gösteriyor.
Birini delice sevdiğinde zihnin o kişinin hatalarını ve sıradanlığını tıpkı bükülen uzay zaman gibi eğip büküyor. Gördüğün o muazzam parlaklık ona ait değil, senin ona bakarken araya koyduğun kendi yoğun kütlenin yarattığı bir büyüteç etkisi. Biz çoğu zaman insanları oldukları gibi değil kendi duygusal ağırlığımızın onları büktüğü şekliyle seviyoruz. Bir anıyı atlatamamanın sebebi de bu, o anı o kadar büyük değil sadece senin ona bakarken kullandığın kendi içsel merceğin çok ağır.
Ve günün sonunda hepimiz kendi içsel evrenimizde şu paradoksla baş başa kalıyoruz. Biz o uzaktaki gerçeği mi özlüyoruz yoksa kendi kütlemizin büktüğü o kusursuz yalanı mı.
Look everyone... don't ever be concerned with my positions; be concerned with the risk you are taking.
I've been trading for 43 years and have had only a few single-digit drawdown years. All of my trades are made from very low-risk entry points and always with a hard stop loss in place.
I could turn out to be wrong and the market may have already made its low. If so, I'll get stopped out. That's the business.
I'm wrong just as often as I'm right. The difference is that my risk is always defined and controlled. What matters is not being right all the time; what matters is that the risk taken relative to the potential reward, adjusted for batting average, is managed in a way that produces a profitable outcome over a large sample of trades.
That's how I've approached the market throughout my entire career, and it's no different today. The distribution of gains and losses over time forms a profitable bell curve because risk always comes first, and risk is always managed in relation to reward.
Your current situation and circumstances do not define you, they reveal you. When you stop using them as excuses and start embracing them as valuable teachers, your life changes profoundly.
The way I achieved my success and my dreams was. I started with a vision and then spent my life moving a tiny bit in that direction without ever squandering one single day.
One of the most important things you can do as a stock trader is to be patient with yourself and allow yourself time to grow. Not all flowers bloom at the same time, and not every journey unfolds on the same schedule. It may take you longer than someone else to develop the skills, discipline, and understanding needed to succeed, but that doesn't mean you're any less capable.
Avoid measuring your progress against others. Everyone learns at a different pace and reaches important milestones at different points in life. Trading is a personal journey, and your timeline is your own.
I know this firsthand because I was a very slow starter. It took me six years before I even became profitable. There were many times when I could have concluded that I simply didn't have what it takes. But persistence, patience, and a commitment to continual improvement made all the difference. Most of all, I knew that those who succeeded were just men like me, and if they did it, then so could I.
So give yourself space and grace. Give yourself time. Stay committed to the process and focus on getting a little better each day.
Above all, be patient with yourself—the big rewards come to those who refuse to quit before their time arrives. If I could do it, so can you.
https://t.co/JXzFFTmMtn
A meaningful number of setups have emerged from constructive bases, yet recent breakouts have been accompanied by an elevated rate of pivot sloppiness—an indication that follow-through remains inconsistent.
The sharp rise in oil prices underscores a lack of progress on the geopolitical front with Iran, adding another layer of uncertainty.
While the market’s resilience has been impressive and history is on the side of the bull when dealing with military conflicts, leadership has yet to deliver the kind of broad traction needed to warrant aggressive exposure. As such, I continue to approach this environment with measured caution.
There are certainly stocks I find compelling—names like $AEHR, $ARM, $AMD, $SPHR $MU, and $BE (some of which I currently own)—but many are extended beyond optimal entry points.
As always, patience and discipline are key, guided by my two core rules: No forced trades, no large losses.
https://t.co/JXzFFTmMtn
And stop listening to those who say stock trading is difficult and complex. No, it's not! What's difficult are people who refuse to move past their ego. Uncoachable, close-minded, delusional people are difficult. Trading is straight forward risk/reward management that virtually anyone can learn.
The Jensen Huang episode.
0:00:00 – Is Nvidia’s biggest moat its grip on scarce supply chains?
0:16:25 – Will TPUs break Nvidia’s hold on AI compute?
0:41:06 – Why doesn’t Nvidia become a hyperscaler?
0:57:36 – Should we be selling AI chips to China?
1:35:06 – Why doesn’t Nvidia make multiple different chip architectures?
Look up Dwarkesh Podcast on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc. Enjoy!
A man who commits a mistake and doesn’t correct it once he becomes aware of it is making a greater mistake. A man who fails to learn from his mistakes is committing a sin.
—Mark Minervini
I see myself as a cup that constantly leaks knowledge—so I keep refilling it through continuous learning. The key to enlightenment, is to never feel completely enlightened.
Everything you need to know is currently known by someone who is willing to teach it to you. Put down your ego and open your mind. Then, your life can change profoundly.
Some people have commented on my oil short last and maybe forget that I said I would not carry overnight risk unless I was at a good size profit and oil had a bad close. The trade already paid for the risk as I captured a profit intraday. I am no longer short oil, but will look for another opportunity. If you want to make big money trading, the first thing you need to do is get off being right or wrong and focus on risk versus reward. I'm wrong just as often as I am right. So pointing out that I may have made a mistake on one of my trades is meaningless, and just reveals you're an amateur.
Back to the market. Oil is surging, volatility is expanding, and sentiment is quickly turning bearish—that’s your first clue. When fear spreads wildly, you have to start thinking contrary. But let’s be clear: Powell has signaled he’s on hold until there’s clarity out of the Middle East. That means uncertainty remains the dominant force—for now.
After last week’s meeting, Fed Chair Jerome Powell emphasized that further evidence of easing inflation is required before additional policy easing is considered: “If we don’t see that progress, then you won’t see the rate cut.”
Market expectations have shifted. In just a week, bond traders moved from anticipating rate cuts to pricing in roughly a 50.0 percent probability of a rate hike by October. In Europe, markets are now pricing in as many as three ECB rate hikes by year-end.
Recession risk is rising as the Iran conflict prolongs and oil prices are elevated. A slowing U.S. economy could hurt corporate profits and also exacerbate emerging stresses in the private credit market.
At some point, we’re going to get a sharp snapback rally. That’s inevitable. But don’t confuse a reflex rally with a new uptrend. Some of the most powerful rallies happen inside bear markets and major corrections—they trap the impatient and reward them with whipsaw action.
The market is news driven. If this conflict resolves quickly and favorably, we could see a classic V-shaped recovery. If not, the market is going to likely need time to repair to establish a durable bottom.
Oil will eventually present a good shorting opportunity. Equities will bottom. But timing is everything—and for the low-risk trader, volatility is the enemy.
That's why I’m never concerned with buying at the lowest price—I want the right price. I want alpha, and I want it fast and efficient.
Grinding for pennies in chaotic conditions is for gamblers and action jumkies. Those are hard-penny environments—and that’s where amateurs get chopped up.
Professionals have what I call sit-out power—the discipline to wait for easy-dollar conditions, when the odds are clearly in your favor. How long do they wait? As long as it takes. That's where the discipline comes in.
https://t.co/JXzFFTmMtn
Today’s market strength was textbook. This is exactly what markets do during corrections when they get stretched to oversold levels. As I said just recently, "some of the biggest rallies occur during bear markets and corrections." Today was a perfect example.
Traders rushed in after headlines hit that Iran’s president signaled a willingness to end the conflict with the U.S. The Dow exploded higher by 1,125 points. But let’s not confuse cause and effect. The news may have been the trigger, but the market was already set up for a rally. It was oversold and primed. Now comes the part where discipline matters.
We ignore the first few days of a rally attempt. That’s potential noise. What matters is whether the market can follow through and whether leadership begins to emerge and proper setups develop.
Technically, this is a classic snapback: Indexes that broke below the 200-day are rallying back toward it, while Indexes that held the 200-day are bouncing off it. That’s typical countertrend behavior until proven otherwise.
Expect volatility to remain elevated. That’s not where low-risk money is made, but it's certainly where the risk is. Your job during corrections is simple: identify the stocks showing the best relative strength and the tightest price action. Those are your future leaders when the market finally turns.
On the macro side, nothing has been resolved. Higher crude prices are still a problem. Yesterday’s rally did nothing to materially bring down oil. The bigger issue is still in play and the jury still out. Oil at these levels feeds inflation, pressures growth, and gives the Fed a reason to stay on hold longer. Yields stay elevated in that environment.
To cut through all the noise, I look to the market itself, which has a much better track record of telling us the truth than the politicians, the analysts, the news, and the gurus.
The four steps of the bottoming process are:
1. Oversold – The difference between an ordinary pullback and an oversold condition starts with price, but it does not end there. Poor breadth and and a lack of volume confirmed follow through describe a one-sided market, and one not to trust.
2. Rally – Inevitably, the market bounces from its oversold condition. A high-quality rally is broad-based. A low-quality rally is defined by short covering and driven primarily by the stocks that have declined the most. Again, the character of the rally is important to distinguish. So far, we simply don't have enough data to make a confident determination, so patience is the watch word while we wait.
3. Retest – After the rally, there is almost always a retest. The popular averages approach, and in some cases breach, their oversold lows. The key to a successful retest is less selling pressure, such as fewer stocks below their moving averages, fewer stocks, sectors, and markets making new lows, less total volume, and less downside volume. If the retest fails, the process reverts and we generally start looking for divergences during lower lows. In the event of unexpected news, it is possible for the market to recover in a "V" fashion with no retest. In that case, we look at breadth confirmation and participation.
4. Breadth thrusts – In the final phase, not only do benchmark indices rally sharply with few pullbacks, but they do so with an extremely high percentage of stocks, sectors, and markets participating, or what technical analysts call breadth thrusts. In rare cases, the market has skipped step 3. With strong enough breadth, retests are not necessary. The Covid bottom is an example of a pretty powerful V-shaped recovery.
Bottom line:
This was an oversold rally, sparked by headlines—but not defined by them, and certainly not confirmation of a reliable bottom.
Now we watch:
--Quality of follow-through
--Emergence of leadership
--Market internals and model health
If the rally lacks quality, if economic pressure builds, or if leading stocks begin to deteriorate, then this remains what it likely is—a rally within a correction.
Stay objective. Let the market prove itself. If you are going to trade, do so incrementally.
https://t.co/JXzFFTmMtn