(Disclosure: The following represents my opinions only. I am not receiving any compensation for writing this article, nor does Hydra Capital have any business relationship with companies mentioned in this post. I am long ATU.V, CRE.V, MAI.V, NLC.V, NRN.V, GILD, and TXP.TO)
If I’ve used this title before, then I used it too soon, because THIS is March Madness. Unless you’ve been in a cave harvesting bat guano for the last two weeks, you’ll know that volatility is off the charts and that the market is in coronavirus crisis mode. The U.S. indexes are down about 12-13% from their teflon-market-priced-for-perfection highs and all anyone can think about is coronavirus. When the market first really got wind of this virus, I was travelling in Mexico and I noticed that the market pretty much brushed it off in a couple/few days. At that point I wondered if the market was whistling past a graveyard and ended up getting stopped out of a lot of “non-core” positions soon after. Since then, things haven’t improved much unless you’ve been shorting things, aside from gold, which although volatile, has been expressing its crisis-weathering properties, closing at a new 52-week high on Friday. Gold stocks have been even more volatile as liquidity concerns sent people selling everything initially, only to return in full force soon after. I’m torn on gold stocks at the moment, but still have a modest collection of them, alongside some long-tail calls on the GLD. I’m probably at 50% cash given the uncertainty out there and am keeping a very close eye on gold and the gold stocks.