“The problem with bounces is that you have to make two very good calls. You have to buy them right and you have to sell them right. And guess what? If you make just one good call, it's not going to work.”
RenMac · October 2026
After a sharp sell-off in semiconductor and hardware stocks, a listener asked whether it was time to stop shorting and start buying the dip. deGraaf says no: he covered some shorts, but doesn't yet see the sentiment that usually marks a buyable low.
Transcript
…it is, you know, in mass and we have sort of expanding 20-day lows for the market that you start seeing the real signs of the bears. So the good news, take it with a grain of salt because it was all in defensives, but the good news is the money's or money is staying at least in the equity markets.
…give a shout out to Damon Butler, who submitted this question because I think it captures it. Are we there yet? Is it time to go from shooting them in the back to picking them off the floor? I want to read through the tea leaves with what you just said, but I'm going to leave that question for you.
No, I would not pick them up off the floor. If you are the most tactical of tactical players and you like to call balls and strikes in an otherwise nine-in-baseball game, yeah, I mean, you kind of had that liquidation that you could get a bounce, but I would, you know, the problem with bounces is that you have to make two very good calls. You have to buy them right and you have to sell them right. And guess what? If you make just one good call, it's not going to work. So I don't tend to do that. Again, I covered some shorts. That to me is kind of standing over after you shot them in the back, but it's certainly not picking them up off the floor.
And this is typically what you see in October, right? Like you get this market uneasy, but then towards the end of October, it tends to, and I'm not saying that that's necessarily what's going to happen, but you get these rallies, right?
Yeah, I don't want to call a bottom or seem like I'm trying to call a bottom, but the 23rd of October today is actually the day that it tends to be some type of low.
Right. And then, of course, that's