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It’s a strange thing, how standing at a grave can offer clearer insight into the stock market than a spreadsheet ever could. Over the holiday, my family gathered around my father’s resting place, swapping stories, laughing through impersonations, grilling burgers and reminiscing over J Dawgs sauce and banana peppers. There was no ticker tape or volatility skew - just memory, meaning, and legacy. And yet, that’s where the market lessons start.

Because legacy, whether family or financial, isn't built in the frenzy of a breakout, but in the quiet fundamentals: what you value, how you steward, and whether you’re paying attention to the right signals.

And here’s the brutal truth… 

Right now, the market is not paying attention. Valuations are out over their skis. We've pulled forward future earnings to the present, priced in growth that hasn’t happened, and we’re hanging our portfolios on the hope that it will catch up. Spoiler: Hope isn’t a strategy.

Take the Nasdaq 100. At a 26x trailing multiple, we’re sitting at historic extremes. Even the equal-weight S&P 500 is trading well above its 20-year median. That’s not a healthy market. That’s a FOMO-driven runup fed by cheap money, irrational exuberance, and a market addicted to tweets, not earnings.

And speaking of tweets… What a mess. In this market, you can be positioned perfectly on Friday and gapped out on Monday. One headline shifts the whole landscape. We’re seeing overnight gaps driven by tariff posturing, ghost prints, and policy flip-flops that send traders scrambling to hedge on fumes.

That’s why I keep telling subscribers in Ghost Prints: stick to the process. This is not a market to chase narratives or get married to a bias. Adaptation isn’t optional. One minute you’re short banks, the next you’re long financials because bullish prints spike on regional ETFs like KRE or XLF. 

You don’t have to love it. You just have to trade it.

And trade it smart. Vertical spreads over outright calls, especially in high-volatility names like BBAI. Don’t fight the skew, leverage it to find asymmetric risk-reward setups. And for the love of sound strategy, stop expecting clean macro policy when we’re trillions in the hole and pretending it’s business as usual.

Markets are messy, politics are performative, and volatility is structural, not seasonal. You don’t beat this game with bravado. You beat it by reading the tape, respecting risk, and remembering: it’s not about being right. It’s about being positioned.

So while the kids laugh around the gravesite, hearing stories they swear I’ve never told them before, I’m reminded: legacy matters. Make sure yours isn’t built on bubbles and borrowed time.

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