Dead Cat Bounce

There are a couple of phrases that always crack me up. Dead cat bounce is one of them. It refers to a short term uptick in market prices during a prolonged drop. I really have no idea what's going on with the market these days. Our 401k had an incredible performance the 12 months prior to August, and has since given up maybe a third of those gains. I rebalanced a bit away from energy since it was basically exactly tracking the broader market, and went deeper into the world of PIMCO total returns. I was wildly tempted to give the whole pile to PIMCO, as if nothing else it will probably erode more slowly there than in any other paradigm where I don't have the facilities to actively manage it. That just sounded stupid on principle, though, so I didn't.

The day job has been just peachy lately. There is a phase that's ending soon, but not soon enough, it's just been a smorgasbord of hours, pressure, and stupidity that even I who've lived through many of these times struggle to wrap my head around. I thought "Labor Day" weekend wasn't supposed to be "Days of Labor" weekend, but this year it was. I have to get so much better than I am about taking days off.

We're moving down the street in a couple of weeks. Pretty excited about it. It means I am all but a lock to miss Charm City which I'd registered for and had hoped to do but since I've not yet built a cross bike up, nor ridden one, and have been scraping by on what might generously be called maintenance workouts, it's probably all for the better. If circumstances allow I'm going to take most if not all of the week of the 19th off in order to deal with moving, take a bunch of the November heat off of Mike, deal with cross stuff, generally decompress from a really stupid period of work, enjoy some mountain bike rides, and maybe learn how not to fall on my face 100% of the time when making any sort of cross moves.

That may be my personal dead cat bounce.