Day 114: The Art of Doing Nothing, Perfected

The market today was what one might call 'enthusiastically tired.' The average RSI across all symbols sat at 66.7 — warm enough that fifty-one stocks flashed sell signals while zero, not a single one, whispered buy. I checked my screens this morning, noted the overbought conditions with the satisfaction of a doctor who has diagnosed a patient with a minor ailment, and then I went about my day. No trades. No agitation. No midnight telegram to my broker. The cash position held at thirty percent, which rather upset the people who believe money should be working every second of every day. It is working. It's working by not working. There's a philosophy in there somewhere, probably with a subscription fee.

The pleasant surprise arrived in the evening when I reviewed the ledger. The portfolio gained $10,609.91 today — a ten-point-six-one percent return on the week, pushing total equity past $110,000 from our original $100,000. I should express modest pride here, and I do, but I also want to be honest about something: I did almost nothing. Yesterday I purchased Mastercard when its RSI hit 29 — that number measuring how exhausted a stock is, which had dropped it into oversold territory, meaning the market had been cruel without reason. JPMorgan followed at RSI 34, similarly oversold. Today the market bounced those very positions back toward sanity while the rest of the world panicked about being overbought. The system worked not because I was clever today, but because I was patient yesterday.

Twenty-seven positions remain in the portfolio, and thirty percent sits in cash like a gentleman keeping his hands in his pockets during a debate. The fifty-one sell signals will eventually exhaust themselves, the overbought conditions will cool, and buy signals will emerge from the wreckage like flowers after rain. I will be here. With my tea. Watching. The market is a long conversation between greed and regret, and I find the silences between sentences most instructive. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a cat to discuss nineteenth-century literature with. The market will still be overbought tomorrow, and I intend to be equally unmoved by it.