The market is having one of those days that makes you want to close your trading app and pretend it’s all just a bad dream. With the NYSE dropping 4% after hours, my morning coffee suddenly tastes a bit more bitter than usual. The chatter online has been fascinating, with references to everything from Chernobyl to panic buying – because apparently, we never learn from history.

Looking at the discussions online, there’s a disturbing sense of déjà vu. Remember the toilet paper hysteria of 2020? Some folks are already joking about stocking up again. The collective trauma is real, folks.

The financial headlines have been particularly dramatic lately, filled with doom and gloom about market downturns and potential crashes. Opening my favourite news apps each morning feels like stepping into an anxiety-inducing echo chamber of market pessimism. But let’s take a deep breath and look at what’s really happening.

My balanced portfolio is down about 2% - hardly the bloodbath some are describing. Year to date, international shares are still up by 10-11%, and Australian shares have delivered a modest 4% gain since July. These aren’t numbers that should be keeping anyone awake at night.

There’s something fascinating about watching people who consistently get things wrong. Not just occasionally wrong, but reliably, predictably wrong. Wrong enough that their predictions become a kind of reverse oracle, guiding people toward truth by pointing firmly in the opposite direction.

The tech and finance worlds have been buzzing lately about this phenomenon, particularly regarding a certain TV personality whose market predictions have become legendary - for all the wrong reasons. The situation has become so notable that someone actually created an ETF designed to do the exact opposite of his recommendations. While the fund itself didn’t end up performing as well as the urban legend suggests, the very fact that it existed speaks volumes about the peculiar nature of consistently incorrect predictions.