New Delhi, Aug. 17 -- Dear reader,

Last week, I wrote about retail traders latching on to a slender hope and the impending Trump-Putin meeting in Alaska triggering a hope-based rally. The executive order signed by Trump to funnel US retirement savings plan 401(k) into riskier assets like stocks and cryptocurrencies triggered some greed. As I wrote last week, big-ticket retirement savings in stock markets have not done well in the past, and a near-term benefit is all we might get.

The Trump-Putin meeting in Alaska turned out to be a damp squib with no resolution of the Russia-Ukraine war. Apart from future meetings to thrash out the thornier issues, there seems to be little hope of concrete gains from this exercise, at least for now. The...