PS: My wife says 80s-style shoulder pads are coming back in the Autumn catalogues. A bullish sign?
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Fashion and the stockmarket
There has been serious research on the connection between what people wear and the state of the economy. I forget who, but a successful investment manager used to look at all sorts of apparently unconnected phenomena, including fashion, to get a clue as to what was really happening and about to happen.
PS: My wife says 80s-style shoulder pads are coming back in the Autumn catalogues. A bullish sign?
PS: My wife says 80s-style shoulder pads are coming back in the Autumn catalogues. A bullish sign?
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Dow now, and then - "Brief Encounter"
Discussing the Dow, I have previously suggested that instead of looking back to 1929, we might use the period 1966 - 1982 as a comparator. I've adjusted January 1966 and December 1999 to = 100 and oddly enough, the beginning of September 2009 sees the Dow past and present at a fairly similar point.Is it too fanciful to say that we're now in the equivalent of about 1976?
Signs of a tipping point in the market again?
Jesse alerts us to this piece about current insider selling, a possible sign that the stockmarket is going to tank.
Stinking fish and red herrings
A fish rots from the head down, is the saying, and a truly rotten government we have. Currently they are busy monstering a venal group of auto company directors who did exactly what the Labour (!) government wanted them to do, which was to keep hope alive for MG Rover for just long enough to get through the next General Election. Equally obedient to his master's voice, the mannered and self-regarding Peston now emotes at them ("I feel slightly nauseous").
Those of us who are old enough will remember the history: how venture capitalist Jon Moulton came with a plan to reduce the money-haemorrhaging plant to a smaller, actually-profit-making outfit specialising in sporty cars. The rest of the enormous site would be cleared and developed as a residential and shopping area. Redundant workers would be suitably paid-off and their pensions preserved - and many of them might then have had a chance of employment with other car makers elsewhere in the country.
Oh, no, this would never do. The land was polluted and quite unsuitable for residential development. Rover still had a future. Moulton was a wicked chancer. His twopenny-halfpenny firm had no business meddling with a great bellwether of the British economy.
Now, the site has been cleared for residential and retail development. There is no car making at all. The workers didn't get the compensation they would have had, nor the pensions, nor the alternative employment. A few men have - legally - made about £9 million each, hardly worth mentioning in the same breath as the outrageous booty brought home by bankers and City gamblers.
And the Fourth Estate plays along with the distraction of the public's attention.
Robert Peston is the son of Maurice Peston, Baron Peston of Mile End, a Labour life peerage created for Peston senior on 24 March 1987.
Those of us who are old enough will remember the history: how venture capitalist Jon Moulton came with a plan to reduce the money-haemorrhaging plant to a smaller, actually-profit-making outfit specialising in sporty cars. The rest of the enormous site would be cleared and developed as a residential and shopping area. Redundant workers would be suitably paid-off and their pensions preserved - and many of them might then have had a chance of employment with other car makers elsewhere in the country.
Oh, no, this would never do. The land was polluted and quite unsuitable for residential development. Rover still had a future. Moulton was a wicked chancer. His twopenny-halfpenny firm had no business meddling with a great bellwether of the British economy.
Now, the site has been cleared for residential and retail development. There is no car making at all. The workers didn't get the compensation they would have had, nor the pensions, nor the alternative employment. A few men have - legally - made about £9 million each, hardly worth mentioning in the same breath as the outrageous booty brought home by bankers and City gamblers.
And the Fourth Estate plays along with the distraction of the public's attention.
Robert Peston is the son of Maurice Peston, Baron Peston of Mile End, a Labour life peerage created for Peston senior on 24 March 1987.
Another collapsist
Last month, Marc Faber used the word "collapse"; now, Max Keiser says the same: the dollar will halve, gold will leap 50 - 100%, import prices will soar. In this interview, Keiser is a bit less gonzo and correspondingly more credible.
The question is, how bad is it for other countries (e.g. the UK) and what will trading partners do to stop their export markets being hit? If all major countries try to devalue their currency, then maybe only certain commodities will be worth holding on to while the winds blow.
And Keiser says the wealthy have been shifting their capital out of America since 9/11. He's been choosing defensive stocks, ones that will survive high unemployment, consumer boycott and anti-American sentiment. One big and possibly vulnerable name he mentions is Coca-Cola (remember Qibla Cola?) - a staple of Warren Buffett's portfolio.
The question is, how bad is it for other countries (e.g. the UK) and what will trading partners do to stop their export markets being hit? If all major countries try to devalue their currency, then maybe only certain commodities will be worth holding on to while the winds blow.
And Keiser says the wealthy have been shifting their capital out of America since 9/11. He's been choosing defensive stocks, ones that will survive high unemployment, consumer boycott and anti-American sentiment. One big and possibly vulnerable name he mentions is Coca-Cola (remember Qibla Cola?) - a staple of Warren Buffett's portfolio.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Thursday, September 10, 2009
What's Next?
Thanks to the historically unprecedented peace and prosperity in the West since World War II, my life has been blissfully uneventful . Any hardships that I have endured pale in comparison with those of my parents.
My father was a natural scholar, who was pulled out of school at age 14 by my grandmother, on the grounds that 'education would not do him any good'. My mother, raised in Nazi Germany, lost any chance of further education because of the war.
While raising my brother and me, they encouraged us to do our best, and to take advantage of the excellent (at that time) British education system. In doing so, however, they allowed us to find our own paths, and for that I am grateful.
Why do I make these comments?
It is my opinion that, even if we survive the current economic mess, there are cultural movements that threaten to cement in place a caste system worse than the old class system.
On one hand, we have the 'education experts', who have so meddled with schools on the grounds of inclusiveness and diversity, that the education system now produces people qualified on paper, yet unable to do anything useful.
In the US, we have religious extremists on the right trying to kill public education for many reasons, and attacking science and its funding at every turn. In the UK, students now have to pay tuition, leaving them deeply in debt, just like in the US.
We also have a relatively new phenomenon, the 'helicopter Mom' of the middle class, who micro-manage every aspect of their childrens' lives. I have interviewed students for a select medical school program. Full 3/4 are of Indian descent, with both parents in the medical field. They have been groomed from birth to do just the right things to follow their parents.
Just how free will the next generation be?
My father was a natural scholar, who was pulled out of school at age 14 by my grandmother, on the grounds that 'education would not do him any good'. My mother, raised in Nazi Germany, lost any chance of further education because of the war.
While raising my brother and me, they encouraged us to do our best, and to take advantage of the excellent (at that time) British education system. In doing so, however, they allowed us to find our own paths, and for that I am grateful.
Why do I make these comments?
It is my opinion that, even if we survive the current economic mess, there are cultural movements that threaten to cement in place a caste system worse than the old class system.
On one hand, we have the 'education experts', who have so meddled with schools on the grounds of inclusiveness and diversity, that the education system now produces people qualified on paper, yet unable to do anything useful.
In the US, we have religious extremists on the right trying to kill public education for many reasons, and attacking science and its funding at every turn. In the UK, students now have to pay tuition, leaving them deeply in debt, just like in the US.
We also have a relatively new phenomenon, the 'helicopter Mom' of the middle class, who micro-manage every aspect of their childrens' lives. I have interviewed students for a select medical school program. Full 3/4 are of Indian descent, with both parents in the medical field. They have been groomed from birth to do just the right things to follow their parents.
Just how free will the next generation be?
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