This Week in Episodic Pivots: September 17, 2023
Another week down.
Who would have thought last week, the week after Labor Day week, would have been more boring than Labor Day week itself? It’s crazy how little happened last week.
And nothing happened to most of our positions. Most were up on the week and we didn’t get stopped out of anything. So we still have 8 open positions to track.
That’s a pretty full portfolio. Especially as the market is beginning to show some signs of weakness. And the price action on Friday was a bit worrisome.
Below is a chart of the S&P 500 Index. You’ll see that Friday’s candle cut through the support at the 10-day and 50-day moving averages. Not a strong day.
The news that brought it down is a bit disconcerting as well… Taiwan Semiconductors told suppliers that it would need to delay shipments. The semiconductor giant, said it cannot find enough skilled workers to complete their scheduled fabrication facilities in the U.S. So that is delaying the open date of these facilities.
These fabs were scheduled to open in 2024. While that’s not great news for TSM, we need to take that one step further. It is now nearly impossible for semiconductor companies to beat the expectations in 2024 now. At least those that use TSM. And that includes the likes of Nvidia and AMD.
Nvidia and AMD both are leaders in the artificial intelligence race. Their GPUs are the best at running the newly popular large language models like ChatGPT. Nvidia in particular is the bellwether of AI-bubble we are in. And if NVDA turns lower, it’ll likely take the market with it.
Also, I just saw a stat that showed when September starts rough, it usually finishes rougher.
So we’ll hold our positions this week and watch the market before adding any new positions.
I could say more about the economy and how we’re seeing slowing credit growth and that the leading indicator index shows a recession coming. But none of that matters for trading. What matters for trading is to have a plan and stick with it. So that’s what we’ll do… And not worry about anything else.