Maximum Pain.

ANGLES. · Apr 23, 2023 · 5m

It is said on Wall Street that the goal of the market is to extract the maximum amount of pain from the greatest number of people. What this is getting at is that when everyone is positioned as bullish, the pain trade is for markets to move lower. When everyone is bearish, the pain trade is for them to go higher.

As such, the pain trade has been mostly inflicted on the bears so far in 2023 and is helping support stocks, despite decidedly dodgy economic fundamentals. Sentiment matters in the short-term and so the pain trade was to push the market higher to some degree, especially after general…