As a funny thought, I am starting to think conspiracy theory.
Dow Jones topped at 18288. In Chinese this number means "Once prosperous, it's easy to make lots of money" - meaning wealth creates wealth. Eerily this serves as a warning to those who were long and still remained long that wealth protection is just as important as wealth creation.
In a nutshell, there are those trading now who have not been trading before the GFC (2008). Some may even not been exposed to events like Black Monday 1987, AFC 1997, April 2000, September 2011 and Enron 2003.
So if you're sitting on miraculous gains from 2009 till now.....well done. Guts, perseverance, homework and sheer innocence (if you can call it that) of it all has served you in good stead.
Of course this could be another hiccup (I think not). Two things to point out -
1) Sell off led right after Chinese New Year and led by Hang Seng. It's hit the wall at 24908 a few times. Coincidentally, 24908 directly and loosely translates to "Easy death, enough money made."
2) You've had pretty much an uninterrupted bull run from 2009 till now. (5.5 years). That's enough for an entire NEW generation of traders to be born and successful enough to make millions over and not ever be concerned about a bear market. Meaning you could have started trading knowing NOTHING in 2009, bought calls and gone long high betas, and now have potentially made enough with the right leverage to retire.
These two points are important.
1) Anyone who knows me or have read my posts knows I am not a chartist, technician or spook. I'm certainly not a bull. Yet, I just realised these numbers and I recall even the wisest posters (Voltaire, Maxi, Red) always pay attention to numerology. Ley lines, geomancy, fate....whatever you wanna call it.
2) The entire money flow from a new generation of traders and wealth managers have no experience in a real bear market. Meaning the fall should be harder and faster each time as less and less experience is replacing the old hands. Situation check - on a trading floor in a big bank, in the last five years anyone with the experience of losing money in 2008 would have been retrenched, or quit. The new blood would have been fresh grads in 2009. Facing potentially their first 1000 point a night fall, how would they react?
Just my two cents worth. Now for the fundamentals. Martis style. (Imitation sincerest form of flattery)
= China drove markets from 2003 to 2008.
= China jitters started the oil collapse. Oil collapse started the rout.
= The rout took hold and stabilised and rebounded on China cutting rates.
= Now that they've cut rates. Reminbi goes down versus USD. More pain.
= Good econ data in US. Yellen to raise rates sooner? Oooops....China cuts rates, US raises rates.
= Carry trade? Spiralling negative for latecomers.
(20min delay)