{"id":41924,"date":"2018-12-23T08:21:18","date_gmt":"2018-12-23T13:21:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=41924"},"modified":"2018-12-23T08:21:18","modified_gmt":"2018-12-23T13:21:18","slug":"nothing-goes-to-hell-in-a-straight-line-not-even-stocks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=41924","title":{"rendered":"Nothing Goes to Hell in a Straight Line, Not Even Stocks"},"content":{"rendered":"<header>\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/2018\/12\/22\/fangman-stocks-nasdaq-sell-off-tax-loss-harvesting\/\">Nothing Goes to Hell in a Straight Line, Not Even Stocks<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p><strong>But a whole generation of investors has never been through a Nasdaq-bubble unwind, and they\u2019re shocked.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I just dug out my \u201cDow 20,000\u201d hat, but I might not need it for a while because nothing goes to hell in a straight line. And I still have my \u201cDow 10,000\u201d hat somewhere just in case, though I doubt I\u2019ll need to go look for it anytime soon for the reasons I\u2019ll explain in a moment.<\/p>\n<p>I have to admit, this was a beauty of a Santa rally. We were promised a Santa rally by the buy-buy-buy hype organs on Wall Street, so here we go with our Santa rally:<\/p>\n<p>The Dow dropped 6.9% this week, to 22,445, and is down 9.2% for the year. It\u2019s down 16.3% from its all-time peak in September. It\u2019s only about 11% away from my \u201cDow 20,000\u201d hat. The last time we saw 20,000 on the way up was in January 2017. But rolling back 21 months of gains in the stock market \u2014 from September 2018 back to January 2017 \u2014 is nothing. The <u>big deal<\/u> is how much the Dow has surged over those 21 months from 20,000 to the peak in September: 35%.<\/p>\n<p>Over the same period, the economy grew maybe 5%. So going back to 20,000 will just surgically remove the very tippy top off the bubble.<\/p>\n<p>The S&amp;P 500 Index dropped 7.1% this week and is down 9.6% year to date, down 17.5% from the peak in September, and back where it had first been on June 1, 2017.<\/p>\n<p>The chart is not exactly pretty, with that nearly straight red line south, but let me assure you again: Nothing goes to hell in a straight line, and in a moment, I\u2019ll get to why this one won\u2019t either.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-47072\" src=\"https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/US-SP500-index-2017_2018-12-21.png\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 493px) 100vw, 493px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/US-SP500-index-2017_2018-12-21.png 493w, https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/US-SP500-index-2017_2018-12-21-260x238.png 260w, https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/US-SP500-index-2017_2018-12-21-160x146.png 160w\" alt=\"\" width=\"493\" height=\"451\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nothing Goes to Hell in a Straight Line, Not Even Stocks But a whole generation of investors has never been through a Nasdaq-bubble unwind, and they\u2019re shocked. I just dug out my \u201cDow 20,000\u201d hat, but I might not need it for a while because nothing goes to hell in a straight line. And I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1806,3920,1849,4254,4255],"class_list":["post-41924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-bubble","tag-financial-bubble","tag-financial-markets","tag-wolf-richter","tag-wolfstreet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41924"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41925,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41924\/revisions\/41925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}