Bear markets / deep corrections can be brutal and can be the ultimate drainer of both your financial + mental capital. Take this period of time to quiet the mind, refine your edge, and for skilled short-sellers: a fun challenge to take advantage of a market down cycle. The past two weeks was not only great being able to meet many successful individuals, but also very healing as it brought about perspective into where I stand re: how the year has gone for myself. June - September was probably the roughest trading stretch I've ever had since turning things around in 2024/25. And in those few months I've been very harsh with myself with the 'should've, could've, and would'ves'. That ate away at me mentally, which very obviously spilled into performance for those months. 'Should is shame' and I realized it was my ego shaming myself - I've since learnt to let it go and really focus on process. Heck, I've had a fantastic 2026 all things considered, I need to learn to be more grateful 🤣. On the point of process, the past few months have made me re-evaluate my digital footprint on social media as well. Being on a platform where everyone is always a 'winner' has truly added a lot of noise into my own headspace, which to a certain extent deviated me from my own process/judgement. This realization became very apparent when I've traded in isolation on holiday the last two weeks - my performance turned around dramatically. I don't need to learn another technique; what I need to learn is to master the mental game of trading. So to those struggling out there, have some grace towards yourself. Absolutely make sure to take care of yourself and learn to step away sometimes if you feel like things are too much to handle. The better times are ahead! (Also means that I will post more memes going forward sporadically because what's the point of doing this trading thing if you're not having fun! 🤡)

Leaders are now leading to the downside. It's that simple.

Big bounce day. However, I give it a "C" grade, mostly for "good effort" and not for actual accomplishments. Many broken charts remain, especially in the leaders. $DELL, $HPE, $P for example, Perhaps because they were the last to break. Then there is memory, which was relatively strong today. But only $MU made a red to green move. $SNDK could not close the gap. $SKHY was strong from the very start, which was good to see, but still it could not close the gap. Two honorable mentions: $COIN and $CRCL with engulfing candles. $IBIT also not too shabby today. All bounces coming all of a puke low are messy and this was no different. But've seen better.

Every day $DRAM resembles the $ARKK '21 top and $CSCO 2000 top more and more. These were all leaders in the previous cycle that eventually spilled out to the rest of the market. While in CSCO's case, the $QQQ was already in a bear market. In the 2021 case though, the QQQ made a new high on the backs of the FAANG stocks hiding money while remaining "strong." I think it's fair to equate FAANG in '21 to MAG7 today. We can see the circled Oct '21 QQQ chart as pic #4. From there, we went on to make new highs in the next month before the real bear market kicked off. What kept the indices so strong back then, was the crowding into FAANG names before the market unwind. Similar to the fact the $MAGS stocks are trading near highs today. In Martin Pring's Technical Analysis Explained, he speaks on rising interest rates coming for the smaller more leveraged companies first because their borrowing costs and balance sheets suffer most. Investors respond by moving into large, financially strong blue chips. The averages are heavily weighted towards those names, hold up while the majority of stocks are already in bear markets. Pring argues "quality" leadership masks weakness. The market looks healthy at the index level but is weak underneath the surface. We can all attest this is the behavior we have been experiencing for months. The biggest indicator of this is new highs contracting, while the index rises or "seems healthy near highs." Currently just ~45% of all S&P stocks are trading above their 200 day. For context, the historical average is roughly 73% when the index is hitting new highs. In December '21, the S&P set a record after record while only 42% of its stocks were above their 200 days. Bear market of '22 officially kicked off at the top of the year, Jan 4th, 2022. There was nothing but disbelief about the underlying environment changing at the end of '21 even though the leaders had already been dramatically shot, as we're seeing today. The mistake I made then was to not adjust to the environment quick enough which led to a brutal start to '22. How I'm personally handling this is to go complete day trader mode and look for 1-3 opportunities a week to look to extract some coin in this market. There is complete lack of consistency in this tape on the day to day. Buying oversold bounces and selling them into strength worked well for me this week. Weak names retesting support-turned-resistance levels on bounces are shorts in my eyes in the future. Tough to be positive with what we're seeing out there this week! Either you will recognize the shifting environment and make the proper adjustments .... or you wont and will continue to complain about how hard the market is to social media. 🤷‍♂️ Control what you can control. 🫡