A friend and I (we used to cover the stock market together before she became a lawyer) were chatting a few days ago about the impending market crash as predicted by Michael Burry. He was the astute trader who predicted the crash of 2008 and became famous after he was featured in the book and movie, The Big Short.
Actually, naysayers said he is wrong but I believe his prediction since we are still on the inverted yield curve and it is persistent. Investors are still pessimistic about the economy, with the sticky elevated inflation and cost of money still high. How whacked is that the 2-year US Treasury bond carry a higher yield than a 10-year bond just 10 days ago??? Corporates are reluctant to borrow now (I just written about it a few weeks ago), startups cannot raise funds, hence, the lay-offs and stalled expansion plans. VCs and PEs are having a tough time raising funds and exiting their portfolios as well.
“I’ll ready my money,” I told this friend. “It’s how I also made money after the Lehman crash.”
She said she is also readying her money but instead of speculative buying, she will be buying for dividends. She stopped forex trading for a while because her toddler demands more attention now and she can’t be on the screen all the time.
Last week, I bought a few ETF shares for less than PHP 100 apiece. This is the first time I bought ETFs below 100—this is how fucked up the equities market is. This prompted me to contact my bank’s treasury department so I can top up my UITF. I know it will be tracking lower towards the end of the year but you cannot catch a falling knife so might as well do cost-averaging for the time being.
Now I’m thinking about using my legal fund to go all in once the market crashes but…I dunno. I need to pay my lawyer, right? But I need to break my contract with my first lawyer because filing my case in QC is no longer feasible and my legal fees would climb if I insist on doing it in QC. Plus it’s impractical.
Anyway, let’s see when and how deep is the crash. Good thing I’m done with the house expenses and I’m no longer renting. The fear of being homeless if I lose my job due to recession or whatnot no longer hovers above my head.
I haven’t gone anywhere. It’s sad. We haven’t gone on a short road trip because I always end up exhausted; the constant cooking and cleaning gets to me. Yes, my house is small and we’re only three people but still, the effort involved in cooking and wash up is the same. And I constantly need to clean and keep everything neat because, as I said, the house is small. It can easily become cluttered and it will drive me nuts.
I somehow need to learn how to be wiser about my housekeeping. I cannot be constantly cleaning all the time. The girls have their chores but still the bulk of the cleaning falls on me. Maybe I should just order food instead of cooking at home? Well, that’s what I plan to do anyway with my girls’ school lunches. I will jack up their weekly allowances so they can buy lunch in their cafeteria. If the food is not good, then I will just have delivered daily by a caterer referred to me by my high school friend. It has been delivering lunches to high schools around here when kids had face-to-face school days.
I already contacted the school bus and and the girls will be fetched at 6:30 am because classes start at 7:30 am, so that means I have to be up at 5:30 am to prepare breakfast—quick ones like white rice, whatever I had prepared the night before, and miso soup or veggie side dish. Or I will have an abundance of bread like pan de sal or monay and stock up on cheese, jams, and UHT/sterilized milk. I think the latter option is more doable.
After they leave, I will take a nap then wake up at 8:45 am to work at 9 am.
I took the easy route tonight and we dined on tuna sashimi—sort of. I had to sear the surface of the tuna to take off the fishiness for my girls.
Oh, the travails of mothers—especially single mothers—have to endure daily. It’s exhausting. Just thinking about waking up at 5:30 am every single weekday terrifies me. I miss Ate C, who now has a baby boy to mind now. When she was around, I had the luxury of waking up at 8 am and not worry about what to have for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I was so spoiled.
No more late-night/early morning Graham Norton binge-watching.
Hmmm, that photo above shows the emptiness of that wall behind my computer setup. I was wondering whether I should install picture ledges there or hang that woven fabric from Zamboanga and the malong given to me by my university after my commencement exercise keynote address last year.
I just had the Arturo Luz and the Juan Senson prints that I received from the central bank last year framed locally.
Ah, I should have known that view is Angono, Rizal. Just like many Fernando Amorsolo and Carlos “Botong” Francisco paintings.
The location of this scene above is this in real life:
Unlike many women today, I’m not obsessed with taking selfies everyday and posting them on social media (such a security risk, by the way). I am obsessed with looking at sunsets and taking photos of them though. I cannot have enough of it.
I had early attempts of doing watercolors of Laguna Lake and sunsets over it but I’m such a failure at it. Let’s see if I can do it now.