How bad is it out there right now in the markets?

The summer of road travel that Americans love is at hand at gasoline prices are the highest EVER:

If next week is down for $QQQ it would be the 8th in a row and would tie 2001 and 2008 a couple of notorious tech bear markets:

I liked this data set from Ryan Detrick that shows what has happened one year out after SIX fown weeks in the S&P which we are having right now:

You will notice that the two worst events from this data set were 2000 and 2008 so if we are to have an outlier year like those we should be prepared for at least another 30 percent drop in the indexes.

Until I see a change in the FED actions and tone, I am allocating as if we are in the worse case environment.

Someone asked me yesterday if I was buying the dips (stocks).

I answered that since January I had been selling the dips with a few nibbles and trades along the way.

I have been through a few bear markets and sometimes your second, third and even fourth losses are your best loss.

Every sell I have made that I have NOT wanted to in the last 5 months has been a good sell.

The question with/about ‘selling the dips’ is when to get back.

For me, buying the indexes when we are in a bear market (and well below the 200 day moving averages) is better than picking stocks.

When hundreds of growth stocks are breaking out and you have upward sloping moving averages, I find it much easier to use/pick individual stocks.

So for now, for the most part I will be focused on using indexes for market exposure and not stocks.