May

18

My father was the most benevolent guy in the world. He was easy victim for every tarbeauxian gyp. Often a gypsy would agree to fix our roof for a seemingly low price, and one day later the material would wash away. Or a poor man would ask to borrow money from him for a worthy cause and he would empty his pocket. I must have inherited the trait of being gullible and easy to deceive without the good part about being benevolent. I didn't see that the story was from the Onion and the picture looked so realistic that I easily succumbed to believing it. To make it worse I posted it on twitter as a possible cause of the market's decline and looked like an idiot there also, and lost a large part of the credibility I had there.

Andrew Goodwin writes: 

That one was a play on the true historical incident involving Michael Jackson. If armed with the correct technology, it is far harder for a picture modifier to fool the viewer. Here is a link to an article I read yesterday about photo sourcing and source identification. The article touts an app that uses watermarks and timestamps. However, it also provides a useful list of tools to insure one does not fall victim to a gross deception perpetuated by a photo modifier.

anonymous writes: 

I show everything still saying long-term huge bull market. NO major top this year.

I have short term stuff saying buy into this now on weakness, as I said last night. This drop may be only half over, but it's time to begin adding to it.

One of the funds I run avoids short term, so I'm just riding it out there except to peel off some of the hedge down here and realize some profits from that. The other fund, not concerned with tax efficiency in that sense, much more aggressive. Covered the positions in short vol Tuesday, started re-establishing yesterday and continue to do so. This is a nervous time. There is a coup in progress in America, and it appears to be failing. This thing could go up as quickly as it came down with a vicious V-shaped bottom here (this would not surprise me given the underlying strength in this thing and the pervasive fear out there), or it could continue down, the drop only halfway or so done, but still in the time window to be getting back long this thing.

Rates are still in their 35 year bull market. The correlation to equities may be about to flip again in the coming weeks. I still think we're headed to a 1 big handle on the thirty.

Anatoly Veltman writes: 

You knew of course. What you couldn't fathom was that someone (The Onion, of all) could ANTICIPATE a decline in equity fortunes. I loved the line where Warren initially was on a hot streak… No less fascinating was to read the list this week on and on and on and on about stupidity, as if same had nothing to do with us listers. It seemed only Rocky hadn't chimed in, thoughtfully and busily setting up hedges (remember: Rocky never loses much). Ralph also hopefully lucked out depending on his definition of "on strength". A whole generation of specs hasn't seen a 5.1, let alone a 20.0 percent, correction.

anonymous writes: 

I have no worthy insights on the markets. The preponderance of my speculative (as distinct from investment) domestic equity exposure is in SPY calls spreads with the lower strike at 236, and which expire tomorrow. So my net exposure has fallen precipitously over the past 24 hours and I am sitting on my hands at the moment — neither buying nor selling. Similarly, my treasury bond exposure/gamma has shifted from bearish to neutral. I have not touched my speculative foreign stock positions. The market's reaction on election night defied conventional wisdom, and what is happening right now is being attributed to Trump, but is really Mr. Market doing what it wants to do, and finding a post hoc reason. By way of example, last week, at 6am, Bloomberg radio said (and I quote): "S&P Futures are down 4 after the president's firing of FBI Director Comey." The use of the word "after" shows the worse sort of bias, false attribution, and nonsense. The announcer could just as well have said, "S&P Futures are down 4 after five more people were murdered in Chicago" or "Down 4 after XYZ corporation reported earnings below expectation." I must decide whether, if the market goes down another 3% and I have no unique information unavailable to everyone else, am I a buyer or a seller? And then, if the market goes down an additional 5% and if I have no unique information, am I a buyer or a seller? I do not know my answer at this moment. And I am most certainly not predicting that the market will decline these amounts or I would be short. And I am not short.

This is a long-winded way of my weighing in on the conversation about "stupid" people. I don't know what "stupid" means. Every person has some negative traits and some positive traits. For me, the most amazing thing about Tiger Woods is not that he was an amazing golfer and a dismal husband who kept "stupid" texts on his phone. Someone was statistically destined to be the top 0.00001% of all golfers. The amazing thing about Tiger Woods is that his family recognized his innate rare talent and put him on a path that developed it, rather than force him to spend hours studying piano or reading ancient literature or working in a McDonalds. If he had not been put on this path, he might well be robbing liquor stores, smoking meth, or working as a Wall Street trader. There are surely hundreds of people who could have been as a good as Tiger Woods in golf — but their gift was not recognized and developed (for whatever reasons). Conversely, there are thousands of potential philanderers, but for whatever reason, they remained faithful to their marital vows. My point is simply that calling someone "stupid" is primarily a value judgment and reflects how one relatively values different things.

In Tiger's case, relatively values regarding career versus family — allows one to dub Tiger as stupid or not. I am not making any judgment about Tiger Woods, except to say that a similar analysis can be made about anyone who we label "stupid." And lastly, if you choose to be a philanderer, leaving texts on your cell phone may appear to be stupid, or it might be a gutless person's way of initiating a break up with one's spouse.

Laurel Kenner writes: 

As I was stock market editor at Bloomberg in the 1990s, I was an enforcer of the ludicrous practice anonymous described of attributing market moves to whatever explanation lies close at hand. Sadly, although the creator of that practice has been kicked upstairs, no one has changed it. My reporters and their sources knew it was all malarkey, and I was as lucky enough to have some education in statistics and behavioral psychology through the good offices of Chair and many eagles to whom he introduced me. I lasted only a matter of months after getting wise. I don't believe it was stupidity so much as ignorance. The danger is that the ignorant can so easily become pawns for those with a political agenda, as we saw this week with the anonymously sourced Trump story. The market's reaction was used to give credibility to the story. As anonymous points out, Mr. Market does what he does and will brush off impertinent descriptions. 

Stef Estebiza writes: 

Trump politics has been slowed down by the Democrats. With this new story (employee of Putin), we are at the mobile sands. So the fake news of electoral propaganda actually are only words left in the wind, and do not produce the results that the markets expect. Currently Trump is at check. We'll see if he'll be moving to checkmate #impeachment.

anonymous writes: 

I suggest the opposite is the case.

To extend the chess analogy, Trump is playing a positional game while the Dems howl about each pawn they take as their long-awaited victory.

They lost on SCOTUS and they are going to lose on the budget, taxes, health care policy, and eventually foreign policy.


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3 Comments so far

  1. Andre on May 19, 2017 2:02 am

    I think if men wait long enough they realize in their mid thirties that they can be happy without marriage and not having to raise children which i think is unnatural to a man

  2. Andre on May 19, 2017 6:22 am

    Theres no real freedom in the western world with governments in europe and corporations in the US

  3. Ed on May 20, 2017 8:43 pm

    You might end up being correct - god knows what risks are being underwritten by the “genius who has made far more for Berkshire than I have” (Buffett’s words)in their specialty insurance biz. that biz has had a 30 year hot streak after which how much have stakes been amplified???

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