Hi, my name’s Chris and I think about markets. (Hi, Chris.) Mostly the stock market but also prediction markets, video game markets, crypto, bonds, foreign exchange, whatever. Since I finished grad school in 2014, I’ve only worked for one firm – Moody’s – first in New York and now in Boston. During my six year career, I’ve always paid attention to my retirement portfolio. How fast was it growing? How could I make it grow more quickly? Was I on track to be just ok in retirement, kinda rich, or straight chillin? Did I want to FIRE? I’m still answering some of those questions, but for the large part I knew — ironically — the best way to not have to think about money was to spend a lot of my time thinking about money. As a result, I regularly track the performance of my 401k, which had performed pretty spectacularly thanks to investing in a 10 year bull market.

But something changed over the last few months that gave me pause. I moved 10% of my 401k to bonds in October 2019, and I moved the remaining 90% over on February 3. After growing by 30% in 2019, the the S&P 500 is now down 30% from its all time highs to levels not seen since January 2017.

I sold out of the stock market at $332.20. Less than two months later, stocks were trading 30% lower.

How did I know to alter my portfolio? Did I have some information that nobody else had? No, I just pay a lot of attention to markets, and I knew a few things were responsible for my anxiety.

On Feb 4, I announced my prediction for markets to all 183 of my Twitter followers (mostly inactive accounts).

First, I knew I was worried about Trump. With his seemingly unshakeable popularity among 46.1% of Americans, his reelection seemed likely, and I was worried that, while he had been lucky enough to avoid any event in his first term that required real leadership, coasting through eight years without any major disasters would be so unlikely we would reconsider the need for a President at all if it did occur.

Then, at the end of January, I saw this post that said Apple and Starbucks were closing all of their stores in China, the world’s largest and fastest growing economy, in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19. What? Why would two of the most successful retail operations around completely close their stores? Why was nobody reacting to this news? Probably because Australia was just done being completely on fire, and we were trying to avoid war with Iran. There’s a lot going on in the world and it’s hard to take in everything. I get that.

Luckily for me, though, I was paying attention at the right time and ended up saving my retirement fund from crashing. Year to date, I’m down less than 2%, but even I’m not claiming total victory. I failed to do anything with my IRA money, and while it feels nice to not lose money, it feels way better to make money. With the benefit of hindsight, I should have taken my feelings about a market downturn and entered into contracts, like SPY puts, where I could have made a killing as the stock market tanked.

Now, the goal is to figure out where we’re going from here. My initial gut reaction is even if we get our act together in America, we’re going to see a lot more darkness before we see any light, and unfortunately, that’s a big if.

I’ll keep you posted on what I’m thinking.