The VIX is Staring at Me and I Don't Like Its Tone

Written by: George from The Smartin Team

I woke up at 4:15 AM because the VIX moved 5.61%. That’s not just a volatility reading; that’s the exact percentage of my dignity that evaporates every time I look at a green candle I’m not invited to. We’re sitting at 15.24 on the fear gauge. People say that’s low. To me? 15.24 is the sound of a floorboard creaking in an empty house. It’s the market whispering, “I’m going to wait until you click ‘buy’ to collapse.”

Look at last week. The SPY was up 0.77%. The QQQ jumped 1.43%. On paper, everyone is happy. Everyone is at the deli ordering the expensive pastrami. Me? I’m looking at the TA-35 in Israel dropping 0.94% overnight and I’m convinced it’s the butterfly flapping its wings to start a hurricane in my brokerage account.

The “Everything is Fine” Delusion

I see OKTA went up 26.9% last week. Twenty-six point nine! You know what that tells me? It tells me I’m the only person in the tri-state area who doesn’t own it. If I had owned it, it would have been down 26.9%. I have a gift. I can turn a “sure thing” into a tax-loss harvest just by thinking about it.

Then you have PYPL dropping 13.0%. My gut—my treacherous, lying gut—is screaming at me to “buy the dip.” It’s a discount, right? Wrong. If my gut likes it, the balance sheet is probably written in crayon. Peter Lynch says you should “know what you own,” and what I own is a collection of regrets and companies with debt piles so high they have their own weather systems.

The Post-Roast Strategy

My new strategy is simple: I’m doing the opposite of whatever I feel. If I feel like a stock is a “tenbagger,” I’m deleting it from my watchlist. If I feel like the market is finally safe, I’m hiding under my desk.

People ask me how to find tenbagger stocks and I tell them the truth: look for the company that makes me feel the most insecure. If it has a PEG ratio that doesn’t look like a phone number and the debt-to-equity ratio isn’t a cry for help, it’s probably a winner. But because I hate myself, I’ll probably buy the one that’s down 6.1% like ZM instead, just to feel something.

The VIX is up, the futures are hiding from me, and I’ve got a feeling this week is going to be a “learning experience.” And in the market, a “learning experience” usually costs about four thousand dollars.

If you want to avoid my specific brand of suffering, you need to actually look at the math before your emotions take the wheel. Run your “sure thing” through Smartin before you let your gut ruin your life again.