Bad stuff happens. There is no getting around it. No denying it. No pretending it isn’t so.

The only real question is: Where are you when it happens?

It can be fun to sail out far from shore… until you realize you forgot to pack the food hamper.

How much better it would be to have understood your girlfriend’s meth addiction – before you married her.

And what a thrill you get from watching your go-go stocks rise like rockets… but you don’t want to be standing beneath them when they start to fall on your head.

The River of No Returns

The Dow shed another 365 points yesterday – for a more than 2% fall.

“Stocks take a beating as alarm grows,” announces a Wall Street Journal headline.

Between just two companies – Amazon (AMZN) and Google (GOOGL) (now called Alphabet) – $100 billion of fantasy capital has been lost since the beginning of the year.

Fifteen years ago, we tagged Amazon as the “river of no returns.” Since then, the share price has soared. The company has flourished… and we have looked like an idiot.

On paper, the company is worth a fortune. CEO Jeff Bezos has shown the world what a genius he is. He has constantly reinvested Amazon’s cash flow to gain market share and garner headlines.

But wait… The bankruptcy courts are full of geniuses. And being able to sell the public your story is not the same as being able to sell a product at a profit and return earnings to the shareholders.

Despite all the water under the bridge, as near as we can tell, Amazon is still the river of no returns.

Where’s the Money?

In a bull market, investors are content with hope, hype and earnings tomorrow. They are patient and don’t ask too many questions.

But in bear market, hope goes into hiding, patience fades… and the question marks come out in the open.

“Where’s the money?” they ask. Investors want cash in hand, now. They want dividends. They want protection from tides and full disclosure of the risks.