Toward the end of February 2020, I was gearing up for a week of multiple trips and a long time away from home.
But I got this big, bearish alert from our system around 7 p.m. on Thursday, February 27.
It basically said: “Run for the hills and sell your stocks.” So I did.
I sold nearly all of my stocks that Friday, February 28.
And then I told my wife that I would take the weekend off of work and spend a lot of time with my family before I traveled for a week.
You see, I work all the time. I love what I do. It’s clear that my work not only helps my family and me, but it also helps tens of thousands of investors.
So, I put in a lot of time getting things right and producing the best work I can to reach people in a timely manner.
A lot of times, that means working seven days a week and many nights.
But I needed a break, and I wanted some quality time before my trips.
After all, from a personal standpoint, I didn’t have much to worry about with my finances. I sold nearly all of my stocks on that Friday.
So, on Saturday, we went to lunch in town as a family. I say “in town” because we live out in the country and are far from normalcy.
And then something happened that I’ll never forget…
Panic in the Air
On the way home, my wife said: “Stop here, I need to pick up a few things.”
“Here” was Target. That’s not exactly what I call family time.
And if you recall this time frame, it was after we knew about the coronavirus, but before we believed it was a threat to our health and economy.
That certainly changed within weeks…
Anyway, we were walking around Target, and we had about $30 worth of items in our cart.
We were near the checkout when we saw this lady pushing a cart full of Clorox wipes.
This cart was packed! Wipes underneath, inside and hanging over the sides. That’s all she had in her cart.
She needed help guiding her cart to the checkout.
I looked at my wife and said: “I should have bought Clorox stock yesterday — it’s going up for sure.”
And my wife looked at me and said: “That’s not funny. We need to stock up. We’re going to be home for a while…”
I disagreed, but I lost — we left Target with over $500 in groceries and supplies.
Clearly, there was panic in the air, and that was the first time we were seeing and feeling it.
By the way, I still have three of the four gigantic boxes of Cheerios from that day in my pantry.
The Bearer of Bad News
On Monday, I flew down to Florida to meet a group of my peers. It was a meeting of 50 of us pitching our best and biggest investment ideas.
Person after person pitched greedy parts of the market that were about to soar.
Then my turn to present came Tuesday morning…
I got up on stage and said: “I sold almost all of my stocks on Friday.”
Then I urged everyone to be safe with their investments and consider warning all of their subscribers that a bear market was rapidly approaching.
I was laughed at and told not to panic. Not a single person in the room wanted to hear what I had to say.
It was bad news for sure.
And I showed them proof of why I knew we were headed toward the fastest bear market in history.
One that would catch everyone by surprise and destroy years of wealth-building.
I showed them the alerts I received and then how accurate these alerts have been over the last 20 years.
These alerts are based on proprietary algorithms that we created years ago and routinely test and update.
They’re based on momentum, as well as short- and long-term trends. And they’re eerily accurate.
Here are the most recent bear market signals prior to that day…
I was so happy to get out of those meetings.
I Was Right … but I Wished I Was Wrong
I left that Tuesday night to head over to London for business meetings that I had on Wednesday and Thursday.
There were people everywhere wearing masks already. It had never even crossed my mind, and clearly, I didn’t understand what they knew.
Italy was already breaking down, and the U.K. was too. I just didn’t understand what I was seeing.
So I proceeded with my business adventure.
Wednesday, after my meetings, I headed back to my hotel room and ordered room service: a burger and chips.
These “chips” were the best fries I’ve probably ever had. The burger was great too.
And I was exhausted! So, I rested in bed and watched TV — something I hardly ever get to do.
Flipping through channels, I landed on a local news channel.
It was talking about the coronavirus and its impact. I was shocked at how bad it was.
And moments later, there was an emergency broadcast…
Flybe, a popular airline in the U.K., literally went bankrupt while it had flights in the air.
It was trying to figure out where to land these flights and how to notify ticket holders of this unfortunate news.
There was a family being interviewed that was awaiting a flight to go to Disneyland.
There were flight attendants who wanted to know if they’d get paid.
There were people getting off flights and trying to figure out how they’d get to their destinations.
It was awful to watch. And I knew the signals our system produced were spot on, so I was officially worried.
Worried about people’s health … worried about our economy … worried about my employees and the business … so much was running through my head.
It was one of those times when I quickly realized that I was right in my warnings, but I also wished I was wrong.
I knew this wasn’t going to be good at all.
The Fastest Bear Market in History
I eventually headed back home to Baltimore, Maryland.
I locked down travel for our company. I sent everyone to work from home. I made sure our team members could do their jobs remotely and support our customers in what I knew would be an immense time of need.
The markets were then breaking records every day:
- Fastest bear market in history.
- Biggest intraday gains.
- Biggest intraday losses.
It just kept going. Record after record was broken, and it was mostly bad news.
The economy was shutting down, markets crumbling, people losing their jobs…
We all remember how ugly it got quickly.
Many investors were finally throwing in the towel as the market was actually bottoming … but they didn’t know that at the time.
My personal portfolio would have suffered had I not sold on February 28.
Exactly a month after I received the big, bearish alert … I got an early bullish alert
And as I’ve been conditioned to do, I trust the signals and I take action.
A Reliable Signal for over 40 Years
This signal has almost always been right over 40 years of use and testing:
I started gobbling up stocks that had seen big pullbacks and were noted as “healthy” in our system by their green designation.
And I started broadcasting these results and how investors could take advantage of them right away.
We’ve built everything from a robust portfolio-tracking system to signals that can give you instant market direction forecasts.
I love our products and can’t wait to reveal more to you over the next few days.
In the meantime, I’m excited to announce that on February 25, Ian King will be joining me for The 4X Stock Accelerator Summit.
During this event I’ll show you how my system could help you squeeze up to 4X more profit from stocks you already own — without using options, leverage or any other risky gimmicks.
It’s going to be great, and I hope you’ll join us.
To reserve your spot for this FREE event, simply click here now.
Warm Regards,
Keith Kaplan
CEO, TradeSmith