By QTR’s Fringe Finance - March 13, 2025

To most of my readers, the move in markets today won’t be much of a surprise. In fact, a couple of the names I talked about over the last week or two (and here) are actually green in today’s blood red tape.

For the most part, I’ve already explained why I think markets could be set up for a much bigger move lower. I detailed this in both my March market review and my piece explaining why I think the next crash could very well be different from those of days past and could “break the brain” of market participants: This Next Market Crash Will Break Our Fragile Brains.

I wasn’t going to write a piece midday today until I turned on the television and, despite the best efforts of David Faber to inject some semblance of reality onto CNBC guests, watched portfolio managers justify paying 26x to 40x earnings for tech stocks they said are “on sale”. Thank God I hadn’t eaten lunch yet, or I may have heaved.

So here’s my quick take on where we stand today and what I’ll be watching for to try and denote some type of overall market bottom in the future.

First, let’s keep our bearings about us. While the NASDAQ is down more than 3% today, it is still up more than 140% over the last five years.

Those are astonishing returns that, in my opinion, have been fueled by insanely euphoric expectations, arrogance, hubris, a relentless passive bid as a result of Covid liquidity, and weaponized gamma in the options market.

It was a combination of these three things, in my opinion, that led us to . . .

[SNIP]