I Was Wrong

As you know I listen very closely when non-financial professionals offer me advice about the markets, especially when it’s about an asset that has melted up. I also listen when folks chirp me about a forecast or content I have shared. Right before I was on camera with Charles Payne yesterday, the guest before me chirped about my losing position in Viking (VKTX). I laughed since she has never, ever offered any picks in her history on TV, let alone single stock picks. And she scoffed when I said, “M’am, I am wrong about something every single day. It’s okay to be wrong. It’s just not okay to stay wrong.” End of conversation. I went on and she left.

It’s important to always reiterate that I get things wrong, all the time. That’s part of the business. Learn and move on. A gentleman called my office this morning and said, “In my 40 years watching financial TV, you’re the only person who says they’re wrong. Thank you!” I didn’t think much of it when I hung up. Now I am. Is financial TV so bad that people can’t admit when they’re on the wrong side of a trade?

I post all of our trades on my blog and on Twitter. I don’t post position sizes nor prices. Anyone with half a brain can scroll back and see our activity. Do a little digging and you can see roughly how we’re doing. I haven’t been in the industry for 38 years because I am habitually wrong. My business isn’t where it is because we blow up client portfolios all the time. Things are where they are because we make mistakes and learn from them. God gave us two ears and one mouth. I hope people say that we are good at listening first.

I continue to write that we gather data. We model data. We analyze data. We execute on data. That’s not only market and economic data. It’s also data about our clients. And we continue to gather data from clients throughout each and every year. Just like market data, client data change as well.

Anyway, this wasn’t my planned topic today, but here we are. The stock in question that caused this is below. We sold it last week at a loss. It was less than a 1/2 size position because it was volatile and I did not have high conviction in it. I was clearly wrong for a while, but held out for a turnaround. That was wrong. Then, I needed a source of funds to add to positions I had high conviction in that recently went down, some big. And I wanted to harvest some tax losses to bank for later this year. End of story.

What I did want to write about, the major stock market indices all at or close to new highs will have to wait until Friday. Investors seem cranky. Yet, most of the indices are at all-time highs or super close. Me thinks folks are overloaded with a handful of AI names that aren’t behaving so well.

Delayed January jobs report just hit. And it is strong. But revisions are weak. I have no idea how the day plays out yet.

On Tuesday we bought SSO.