Stock Market Recap | August 21st, 2023

The selling mindset continued for a third week, with more amateur investors spooked by the previous week’s selling. With trading volume very light as is usual in late summer, these sellers had a hard time finding anyone around to take the buy side of their sell order, so had to settle for significantly lower prices. Terrible timing on their part (as usual), just made losses worse.

Of course those institutional investors - and us – holding our positions suffered significant giveback all week as a result.

Very few stocks advanced on the week and many of the declines were equivalent to 6 – 8 weeks of prior price gains. Just a really ugly week. The bright spot was our short positions, which mostly improved.

News was negligible and neutral, with a soft landing still anticipated by many (good news) but which may keep the Fed on course for higher interest rates for longer to battle stubborn inflation (bad news).

Technical analysts see the market currently over-sold on the weak volume, so we may see a rise in prices next week.