The president moves this market like you wouldn't believe and what he giveth by a few tweets on Monday he taketh away with a few quotes on Tuesday.
The difference?
People love up markets and they credit themselves for stock prowess and people hate down markets and they blame others, not the president, for hurting them.
This is such a hot-button moment in every aspect of America that you are reluctant to say that the President must have read his clippings and found out that people were mad at him for giving in to the Chinese -- not sure he did that but that's what lots of people said -- so he had to throw a gratuitous roundhouse at them.
That's all it took to make the market feel a lot more like Toll Brothers (TOL) and Kohl's (KSS) than Micron (MU) and TJX (TJX) .
I will say this about today: you see the bear and the bull market coinciding and you are constantly trying to figure out whether a new group will join them. Will defense really be re-rated downward? Are the semis really okay to own? Is housing just plain finished for the interest rate cycle? Did weather play havoc with retail or is retail back to hating brick and mortar.
Here's what I have learned. No matter what you answer, right now it is wrong today and right tomorrow or vice versa.
So stick with individual stocks. Do not be afraid to cut your losses and recognize that when the charts break, there's no rallying until the sellers stop selling and the buy cycle begins anew.
