lystn

Hey everyone, Kirk here again and welcome back to the daily call. Today, I want to talk about stock market forecast and just really try to find out if they’re legit or bogus. I think that especially as we get started with 2018 and we’re just even still in the first couple of weeks here, a lot of articles that have been coming across my desk, whether people are tweeting at me or sending me messages or all these expectations of where the market is going to go and it’s ironic and funny and I see this on my end more so than maybe you guys see this on your end. But I get everyone's opinions and that's good for me because I realize everybody has different opinions. I don't see any consistency in everyone's opinions, meaning I get articles that are sent to me or news stories, whatever that the market is going to blow up another 20% and go up another 20% this year and then I get literally the same five minutes… I think the two emails that I’m looking at right now, one’s a message, one’s a tweet that somebody sent me. But literally within five minutes, I have one article where the market is going to go up 20% and one where the market is going to crash. I mean, this is the dynamic that I get on my end which is good for me to see. This is why I continue to do this because I see these different patterns or these different thought processes evolve over time. But look. I think when it comes to a stock market forecast, I think it's insanely hard to predict where the market is going to go and moreover, I believe that we get what we least expect. Like for sure, last year in 2017, I don’t think anybody expected the market to be as strong as it was and for whatever reason, it doesn’t matter because it’s all over now. The market was very, very strong and I’m talking about the broad stock market. Heading into that year, I don’t think anybody expected the market to be that strong. I don’t think I expected the market to be that strong. And so, we get what we least expect and I believe that people continue to expect the market to be very strong as a whole. And so, for that reason, I've always thought that we are going to get either a very hard at some point or a very tough correction or basically, many years of flat growth. When I talk to a lot of people about the market, everyone assumes the market is always going to go up. It's like we totally forgot what happened in 2007 and 2008. It's like that never happened before and in fact, some people have just started trading options and are just starting to develop their mindset and framework and have never ever lived through any market correction, crash, etcetera. And so, if you haven’t gone through that before, you don't know what to expect. I mean, it’s very much like parenting. If you’ve never changed a diaper before, you don't know what to expect when you open up those tabs. And so, until you actually do that, then you know like – “Hey. This could be bad.” Especially in diapers. I think the same thing happens in markets. I think stock market forecast are not necessarily bogus, but I don’t think you should put a lot of weight into them. Everyone’s got a forecast, everyone has an expectation, but ultimately, we have no idea where the market is going and that in and of itself is insanely powerful if you think about it. As options traders, we have the insane luxury of being able to generate money on a 30, 45 day timeframe and for that reason, the long-term prospects of the market I could frankly care less about. I've told people this all the time. I don’t ever care at this stage in my life where the market goes because wherever it goes, I know I can generate money trading options around that market price. If the SaP was 50% lower or 50% higher, it frankly doesn't matter to me. It frankly doesn’t matter to me because I know that that is going to take time to get to. Even the market “crash” that we had in 2007, 2008 took time to evolve. I mean, it didn’t happen overnight. Yes, there were days that the market was down 5%, there were weeks that the market was down I think 7% or 8% and had wide ranges, but it wasn't like a 50% correction happened in one week. Not even close. It took many, many months for that to evolve. And so, as an options trader, we have the insane luxury and you guys don't realize how much of a luxury this is until you go through an event like this which we haven't been through in over 10 years now. You don’t realize how much of a luxury it is to be able to consistently and very easily adjust your portfolio down with the market or up with the market if we continue to rally and generate money around a given range. And because most people, as investors, they basically make their investment and it's one time or a couple of times a year, it’s one line in the sand and then they’ve got all of these prospects for the next 20 years. They don’t do anything to adjust. It’s kind of like they try to set it and forget it and that’s a really bad way to go about it and I think eventually, that is going to be something that we look back on as maybe this indexing phenomenon that people have and this concept of just “Put the money in the market and let it go forever.” That I think scares me that too many people have gravitated towards that mentality of just “Set it and forget it. Never monitor. Never adjust. Never do anything. Just constantly buy, buy, buy, buy, buy.” That type of mentality I think is something that concerns me and I think that people get what they least expect. Right now, I think expect the market to always go up and have a “Set it and forget it” mentality. That's not where I think we’re headed. I think whether we do it this year or next year or whatever the case is, I know I’ll be proven right in the sense that we have years of volatility still left, probably many years of volatility and markets never go straight up and straight down. Take it with a grain of salt. Take it however you will this week. I guess use options trading as a good vehicle to not have to worry about any of that stuff honestly. Hopefully you guys enjoyed this. As always, let me know if you guys have any comments or questions. Until next time, happy trading!