On Wednesday of last week, the major stock-market indexes soared 3%, 4% or even higher after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell spoke. Judging from the moves in equity prices, one might surmise that a Fed pause or pivot is imminent – but as always, hasty assumptions can lead to capital loss.

Every story that’s worth telling has a protagonist and an antagonist. When it comes to the FTX debacle, it’s hard to say who the protagonist is. At the very least, however, we have a clear-cut bad guy and his name is Sam Bankman-Fried.

“But, the consumer is strong…..” That’s the commonly heard excuse that politicians and their puppets in the press will use when they have to deny that the U.S. is in a recession. The American consumer is supposed to be the final pillar holding up the economy – but what if people aren’t buying what the pundits are selling?

Now that the major stock market indexes have corrected and the Big Tech wreck has created some rare dip-buying opportunities, it’s time to put together your investment shopping list. To help you pick the best and forget about the rest, there’s a rough-and-ready way to measure a stock’s value as compared to the company’s intrinsic value.

Silver continues to keep bouncing off of $18. Don’t think it’s a coincidence – the market is sending you a clear message. Every time the amateur traders panic-sell their silver, there’s big institutional money coming in to buy it at a discount.

Red wave or no wave at all, the race in the Senate is too close to call. We knew it would be a nail-biter, but hardly anyone expected a literal tie in the U.S. Senate. Now, the financial markets are struggling just to make sense of it all, not to mention achieve price discovery in stocks.

Everybody and his uncle is pronouncing judgment on FTX, though it’s easy to pile on the cryptocurrency exchange after it’s already circling the drain. The core question here, really, isn’t whether there will be anything left of FTX after the dust settles, but whether anyone has actually learned anything from this.

When it’s time to buy, you won’t want to. This is precisely what makes successful long-term investors so difficult for so many people. Catching the bottom of a bear market is among the hardest things to do, and it’s not due to a lack of research and technical tools.

It was a quick bump and then a precipitous dump after the FOMC meeting as financial traders combed through Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s heavy words. The official FOMC statement offered a glimmer of hope, but Powell had his “Volcker moment” and threw cold water on any near-term pause or pivot hopes.

What kinds of feelings do you get when a major market-moving event is approaching? Fear, anxiety, loathing? It’s normal and natural to have these feelings, but they won’t benefit you as a long-term investor in great businesses.

Unfortunately for some beginner investors, a counter-trend bear market rally can look and feel a lot like the start of a new secular bull market. It might be tempting to get drawn into a trade that feels good and seems to make perfect sense as the stock market jolts upward for a short time.