2-7-25 Market Moment
By Randy Williams Gurian on February 7, 2025
Don’t Panic
The United States’ financial markets can be volatile, and I have lived through some bad ones. On the flipside, I have also experienced some incredible market recoveries and stunning rallies, especially during bull-market cycles. My tip is not to panic during good or bad markets. Sounds easy, but it is a lot harder to put into practice. We have our old friend, Mr. Market, to thank for adding to the difficulty. Recall, he tries to convince you to sell when the market goes down and prevent you from buying when stocks are going up, telling you not to overpay or it is too late to buy now.
You can avoid being overcome by darkness if you see possibilities during the darkest times. A light at the end of the tunnel, for instance. The DeepSeek news had a bit of darkness to it, and earnings’ season can have a bit of darkness too. Let’s focus on the DeepSeek news for a moment. If you reacted to the news the day it came out, or better yet watched the S&P futures market Sunday night, you were amped up and ready to dump your AI-related stocks at the open on Monday. Alternatively, if you reflected on the news and didn’t panic (didn’t sell), you would still own all your AI-related stocks and would have experienced the market’s recovery.
Earnings’ season can cause investors to make mistakes too. If you find yourself tempted to sell your stocks because they missed their recent quarter, you might want to take a deep breath, read the quarterly report we recently sent out, and think through all the possibilities of the latest news. Usually, one bad quarter doesn’t mean you should dump your shares. What it might mean is you should buy more because the stock is on sale—stealing one from my old friend, Mr. Buffett.
Spring Training is three weeks away, and pitchers and catchers report in a week. If any of our players live around here during the offseason, I bet they’re excited to get out of the deep freeze and head to Arizona. I really wish I was more excited about what the M’s did, or didn’t do, while on hiatus, but I am not the only fan dismayed by their lack of offseason moves. A baseball writer rated the M’s offseason as an F. That’s rather dire, but I couldn’t agree more. Essentially the M’s are without a proven major-league talent at all three of the infield positions: namely first, second, and third bases. How is that possible? Let’s hope the ownership group realizes they need to spend money to field a competitive ball club. Keeping my fingers crossed that a couple of our farm-system players make a big splash this year and we are able to watch their greatness for many years to come.
Super Bowl. Chiefs or Eagles? Or are you in the camp of “I really don’t care”? I am picking the Chiefs because I think they have the better quarterback. Chiefs 31, Eagles 21. But don’t hold me to it come Monday morning.