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Nvidia and other tech stocks with lofty valuations took a tumble this past week.
Cynthia Lee/Alamy
Misery may love company, but it’s bad for your investment health.
The company part is easy to prove. Just look at the Cure, those 1980s-era musical purveyors of doom and gloom who recently finished up a very profitable summer tour. While it might not have been Taylor Swiftian in its success, it showed there is still demand for songs about emptiness and ennui. Still, even Robert Smith, the band’s singer and main songwriter, knows there is a time for “Doing the Unstuck”—a song featuring the refrain “Let’s get happy!”—even if it leads to puzzled looks.
This columnist, too, can get, well, stuck thinking about what can go wrong for the markets—and the world. When stocks are falling, as they were last year, it’s easy to remain tied to a bearish position despite signs of a turn, or to dismiss a gain as nothing more than a bear-market rally. There are so many risks these days—from bank failures, an aggressive Federal Reserve, and still-too-high inflation to geopolitical tensions with China, war in Europe, and catastrophic weather—that we want to apply for membership among the esteemed permabears of the world.
It certainly felt that way this past week, one that included Moody’s taking issue with the finances of U.S. banks, the imposition of U.S. restrictions on money heading to China, and a swoon in
Nvidia
(ticker: NVDA) and other highflying tech stocks. What’s more, every gain, like the one that initially occurred following this past Wednesday’s better-than-expected 3.2% rise in the consumer…
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