Scary night with Amaris (and Trade Alert: Why tech looks ready for a pullback)
I was going to stay at my office and work late last night. Lori’s sister was in town to pick up Lyncoln, my 4 year-old daughter, for a couple days. Lori got home from a day of work and picking Lyncoln up from daycare school. Lori had plans to head up to a beautiful natural springs resort called Ojo Caliente with a girlfriend for a couple days.
But when Lori got home, Amaris was in pain and crying from a nagging UTI. Now you have to remember that Amaris, who turns three years old this month, is a miracle baby princess warrior who has Trisomy 13. And she also has a trachea tube and a gastro tube. And when she gets in big pain or really upset sometimes, she holds her breath until she turns blueish. And sometimes, rarely, we have to use a little handheld bag that we attach to her trachea tube and squeeze in a CPR-like fashion. It’s called “bagging.”
Lori and Lorena (Amaris’s day nurse) had to “bag” Amaris numerous times yesterday afternoon and for the first time ever, Lori called 911 and requested an airlift to UNM Hospital in Albuquerque, 180 miles away. When she hung up with 911, Lori called me at the office where I dropped everything, hopped on my motorcycle and sped home.
The ambulance came and took Lori and Amaris to the tiny local Ruidoso airport where the helicopter was waiting. But the heli couldn’t take Lori and all Amaris’ support stuff so they called for a fixed plane.
Meanwhile, I packed Lori’s Suburban up with her suitcase, Amaris’ oxygen tanks, all her toys, her high chair, etc and drove to UNM Hospital, getting there about an hour behind Lori and Amaris. Lyncoln went home with Lori’s sister for a couple days as planned.
Amaris was stable by the time she got to the ER and was even quite happy when I showed up. We finally got out of the ER and into a room in the pediatric wing at 2 am. I dozed holding Amaris in the hospital bed while Lori slept on the couch next to us and took care of feeds, nurses, etc. At 7am, Amaris woke up smiling, giggling, charming and kicking me. She immediately stole my baseball cap off and glasses off my head and cracked herself up.
She does still has a raging UTI so they’ve started an IV antibiotic and we are waiting for more results. But she’s stable, happy and warrior princess-ing today.
I headed back to Ruidoso this morning at 8am and got cleaned up at the house and back to my office at 11:15 and sat down to write up this note and let you guys know that we’ll do this week’s Livestream Q&A Chat tomorrow, Thursday at 11am ET.
As far as the markets go, I’m starting to get worried that tech is going to have a big near-term pullback, if only because every talking head I see, hear and read wants to explain to us that tech stocks “have LOTS more room to run” or “are still cheap” or that tech earnings were “so incredibly strong once again last quarter” or that tech is “where all the momentum is” and so on. In fact, I’m going to nibble a few QQQ puts, dated out into August with strike prices around $170 or slightly lower or so.
To be clear, I’m not trying to game a near-term top here, but I built a portfolio of these huge tech winners over the years and I’ve done quite a bit of trimming over the last few months already. And I just want to get a little more hedge on the portfolio when so many of our stocks are going parabolic and the world seems convinced that the momentum won’t stop any time soon.
