I Bought Every Dip… Until I Went Broke
How Losing Everything in 2008 Taught Me to Stop Buying Weakness and Start Following Strength
The first time I opened a brokerage account, I didn’t know what the hell relative strength was.
I just bought dips.
In 2008…
And like clockwork, the market kept falling... and I lost everything in that little account.
Every damn dollar.
I remember thinking, “How do people actually learn to trade? Is this even possible?”
It felt impossible at the time. But deep down, I knew I’d figure it out, I had to.
Fast forward a few years—I'd devoured every book, article, chart, and white paper I could find on relative strength (not to be confused with RSI—different beast).
Relative strength compares an asset’s performance to a broader index. If it drops less or climbs more, it’s showing strength. And strength attracts capital. Leaders lead. That’s the game.
But this flew in the face of everything I was ever taught…
Buy low, sell high.
Where does that logic even come from?
Think about it. Like the great 80s hair metal band RATT once said:
“Nobody rides for free.”
(And if you haven’t watched Point Break, fix that immediately.)
We live in a world of scarcity and everyone wants a deal.
No one says, “Let me buy apples at $3 because they’re probably going to $10.”
They wait until they’re $1 and call it smart.
That’s how we’re wired.
So when someone tells you to buy strength, it sounds insane and it feels insane.
I thought the same thing back then.
But here’s the truth:
It works.
Over and over again.
Need proof?
👉 [Here]
👉 [And here]
That’s what I do now.
Every day.
I find strength—in life and in markets—and I follow it.
This is how I spot leadership.
We sorted the most sensitive groups in the market by how close they are to their 52-week lows. If they’re near the lows, they’re weak. If they’re far, they’re strong
@NullCharts on X built this sheet for me, give him a follow.
Bitcoin, Industrials, and Global Infrastructure are leading.
Biotech, Vacation Stocks, and Homebuilders are near the bottom.
The middle is messy—Speculative Growth, IPOs, Small Caps are stuck.
On the right, we break down how many groups are above or below their 21, 50, and 200 day moving averages. It tells you how many groups are in an uptrend or downtrend.
When half of these ETFs break below all their key moving averages, markets crack.
This isn’t a new idea, it’s an old process. As Stanley Druckenmiller said—"The best economist I know is the inside of the stock market."
And…
”I did exactly the wrong thing. The cotton showed me a loss and I kept it. The wheat showed me a profit and I sold it out. Of all the speculative blunders there are few greater than trying to average a losing game. Always sell what shows you a loss and keep what shows you a profit.”
Jesse Livermore
I built this process years ago while standing on the shoulders of great traders to help catch shifts early—tops, bottoms, rotations.
And as we do every week, you can do this with any asset class.
$DE Deere & Co. — This Thing’s a Winner
Deere just broke out of a multi year range in 2025.
If we’re heading into a strong cycle for ag stocks and industrials, this is the kind of leadership we want to own.
You’ve got options:
In a long term portfolio, I’m happy to keep adding here at new highs. If you missed the breakout, this is your shot because we just made a clean all time high.
This isn’t guesswork, it is what relative strength looks like when it’s real.
Deere’s not lagging—it’s leading.
From This Weeks Portfolio Review:
EPOL (Poland): +46.98%
GDXJ (Junior Gold Miners): +35.02%
ECH (Chile): +31.55%
GXG (Colombia): +28.44%
EWI (Italy): +28.55%
DAX: +27.33%
EWZ (Brazil): +24.98%
GDX (Gold Miners): +33.9%
GLD (Gold): +20.95%
FXI (China Large Cap): +19.04%Leaders doing what leaders do.
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