谋定后动

Last Thursday, the S&P 500 fell 4.35%, its worst day since the tariff war began in April 2025; the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index dropped 12%, marking its worst performance since March 2020, while the Nasdaq entered a correction phase. Friday saw a one-day rebound, but for the full week, the S&P 500 fell 2.7%, the Nasdaq 100 dropped 4.9%, and the SOX plunged 13%. My own account took a 16.53% hit on Thursday, the largest single-day loss since the pandemic. After such a crash, what should you do? First, let's discuss why you shouldn't make decisions on the night of a plunge, and then, if you must act, which leg to move first. Let's reconcile last week's ledger: I wrote five signals for admitting mistakes last week, and two appeared...

Last Friday, the Nasdaq fell 2.86%, its worst day since June; October saw a full-month decline of 5.2%, marking the weakest month since March 2025. From its peak on Oct 6, the Nasdaq 100 has already seen an intraday drawdown of over 10%, the third 10%-level correction this year; the S&P 500 only pulled back 3.1%. Intel plunged 28.6% in a single day, its steepest drop since 1974. Chart 1: Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500's three corrections this year, same scale (closing price, % from previous high). Let's first crunch one number. Based on closing prices...

Last week, the Nasdaq 100 fell 0.8%, marking its second consecutive weekly decline. SpaceX surged 7.8% on Wednesday before dropping 9.1% on Thursday; Tesla's earnings beat estimates, yet it still fell 3.1% on Thursday. The daily ups and downs of these two companies this week were not dictated by their own fundamentals. Chart 1: Over the past five trading days, both stocks were driven by the same news headline (closing price on Oct 16 = 100). What determined their moves was a single response during SpaceX's earnings call on October 20. When asked about a potential merger, Musk stated that the boards of both companies had formed special committees; as a conflicted party, he would not participate in the discussions...

Last week, the Nasdaq 100 fell 5.5%, marking its worst week since the April 2025 tariff storm; the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index dropped for eight consecutive days, its longest streak since 2008; the VIX closed at 20.1 on Friday, standing above 20 for the first time since July 29. The knife started with a single bond. On Monday, it hit optical modules; Tuesday, memory chips; Wednesday, companies borrowing to build data centers; and Friday, software and cybersecurity firms. By close, every layer of the AI supply chain had been slashed. Yet among those getting cut, some hadn't borrowed a dime. In four days, from one bond to an entire industry chain: Monday, Oct 12...

Last Tuesday, the S&P 500 closed at 7,818.93, marking its first closing record high since August 13, with a weekly gain of 1.2%. On Wednesday, the 10-year U.S. Treasury auction cleared at 5.30%, a 24-year high. On Thursday, the Congressional Budget Office released its fiscal year 2026 ledger: revenue of $5.40 trillion, spending of $7.40 trillion, and a deficit of $1.99 trillion; net interest of $1.14 trillion, which is $227 billion more than defense spending. The deficit stands at 6.2% of GDP, unemployment is at 4.2%, with no wars on home soil and no recession...

Last Wednesday, Trump rejected Iran's ceasefire proposal. The Strait of Hormuz remains closed, and the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield surged to 5.34%, its highest since 2002. Friday's non-farm payrolls a...

Last week, the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield rose by about 20 bps to around 5.2%, its highest level since 2007. In the same week, the Nasdaq 100 ETF gained 3.2%. The bond market is sounding the alarm while the stock market is crunching the numbers: specifically, the two figures in the headline—a 5% sovereign yield and 30% earnings growth. Rising rates and equities together isn't a new phenomenon; let's put your mind at ease. Historically, it's not uncommon for both U.S. rates and stocks to surge. During the 2013 'Taper Tantrum,' the 10-year yield jumped from 1.6% to 3%, while the S&P 500 rallied nearly 30% for the full year. In the second half of 2016...

This week, three things are simultaneously getting more expensive. First is money. On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 25 basis points to 3.75%-4.00%, passing unanimously 12-0, marking the first rate hike since July 2023. Second is memory. According to DigiTimes, Apple has agreed to purchase DRAM at nearly $2 per GB and NAND at $0.33 per GB starting from Q1 next year, a 30%-40% increase compared to Q3 this year. This is the buyer with the strongest bargaining power in the world. Third is storage stocks. SanDisk surged 11% on Friday alone...

Setting aside grand theories, let's look at a past event. The week of December 17, 2018, saw the Fed raise rates on Wednesday and Quadruple Witching Day on Thursday—a schedule identical to next week's. That hike was also fully priced in, with pre-meeting market odds exceeding 70%. Yet, the S&P 500 fell 7.05% for the week and Nasdaq dropped 8.36%, marking the worst week since 2011. Three details warrant closer inspection. First, the rate hike itself came as no surprise. The selloff was triggered by Powell's remark at the press conference: 'QT is on autopilot and won't be changed'...

First, take a look at this screenshot. This is a sell Put close-out slip from my company's live trading account, with a profit of $44,392. Upon seeing this image, most people's first reaction is: Micron went up again. That's right, on 9/4 Micron closed at 1016, up 6.1% for the day. But this money has little to do with whether it rose or not. The Micron stock in this account had a cost basis of 1000 and a current price of 1016; over four months, the stock price only moved 1.6%. Over these four months, the cumulative P&L for Micron in the account was $101,585, of which stocks contributed $4,680 and options contributed $96,905. 95% of the money came from selling volatility...

On Saturday, I shared the Chinese-English parallel text of Warsh's speech at Jackson Hole in the group chat and recommended reading the original. A group member replied: "How we interpret it doesn't matter; what matters is how Wall Street interprets it." This sounds smart—markets are indeed driven by pricing—but it happens to hit the bullseye of this very speech. We'll start from this quote today because the mindset behind it is exactly what Warsh dedicated an entire paragraph to criticizing. Bottom line: The most important takeaway isn't whether he's 'hawkish,' but that Warsh announced a change in the rules of the game. Understanding this...

Connect Your Brokerage Account to AI and Build Your Own Investing Co-PilotInstructor: 谋定后动 Date: Friday, 28 August 2026Venue: The Central, near Clarke Quay MRTTime: 2:00 PM - 11:00 PM (Singapore Time) R...

In 1811, stocking weavers in Nottingham, England, stormed factories and smashed machinery with iron hammers. The machines had taken away their livelihoods, and this group later became known collectively as Luddites. The workers were not mistaken about the facts; indeed, manual weaving positions were disappearing. However, smashing machines could not stop the progress of machinery. Over the next twenty years, the number of weavers continued to decline, while Britain's cotton textile output actually multiplied several times over: one worker operating a machine could now replace dozens of people, causing the cost and price of cloth to plummet. Orders from all over the world flooded into Britain. Jobs were vanishing, yet output and profits were surging—these two phenomena appeared simultaneously for the first time in history...

In 1992, the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges listed a strange type of stock: B-shares. The same company, with identical equity and dividends, had two different prices. A-shares were denominated in RMB and sold only to domestic investors; B-shares were priced in US dollars or HKD and sold exclusively to foreign investors. Two groups of buyers, separated by a wall of foreign exchange controls, bought independently. The result was: same shares, same rights, but B-shares traded at a long-term discount of 30% to 50% compared to A-shares. This wasn't because the companies were worse; it was simply because the pool of money able to buy B-shares did not interoperate with the pool able to buy A-shares. This discount persisted for nearly ten years...

On July 24, 1987, exactly 39 years ago this week, the first convoy escorted by the US Navy's "Operation Earnest Will" entered the Persian Gulf. The Kuwaiti super tanker "Bridgeport," flying the Stars and Stripes, struck an Iranian mine under the tight protection of three warships. The ship did not sink, but the next scene was recorded in naval history: the three escort warships quickly changed formation and moved behind the tanker. Because a 400,000-ton tanker is more resistant to explosions than warships, the escorted vessel ended up clearing the path for its escorts. An old-fashioned mine costing only a few thousand dollars forced the world's number one navy to change its formation in public...