“What ever happened to crazy?”~ Chris Rock
The Center for Nonsense and Bipolar Conjectures (also known as CNBC) is continuing its tradition of mental illness with the recent addition of the most sought-after of delusive diseases – multiple personality disorder.
The site is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the wild volatility that once accompanied the market, but now is becoming a characteristic of the news and analysts’ interpretation of that news.
Against my better judgment, I want to confess to my readers that I regularly use CNBC’s website to check commodity prices, as they have a quick and easy real-time menu that saves me 13 seconds of logging into my own securities account with a nameless broker. Unfortunately, this throws me into the obstacle course of headlines that, similar to grocery store checkout magazines, are offensive, petty, and usually unfounded – but difficult to ignore.
The gauntlet of shock-value advice
Before I looked to see the price crude oil futures were trading on the exchange, I glanced over at to the right-hand column of their site at the laughably titled “What Investors Should Know” column. In the same pile of articles, I found one telling us that the Dow is staged for a “Flash Fire Rally”, another that said charts are predicting “Lows…then more lows [for the S&P]”, another urging investors to think long-term and buy the Telecom sector, and another that features a global strategist recommending that all investors keep at least 50% cash.
Let me give some general advice that can be extrapolated beyond the investment world: If you don’t know something, and you know you don’t know something, just say that you don’t f***ing know. That’s what I do. I did it last week.
I have no problem with analysts providing scenarios and explaining that they aren’t sure which is going to occur, but I do have a problem when a network broadcasts as headlines in their “what investors should know” section (which they must understand people interpret as “what investors should do”) that have completely conflicting outlooks on the market.
That results in a trivialization of the seemingly important words falling out of their mouths, and hence the investing public tends to take their contentions with a grain of salt.
And, above all, mistrust. You might as well tell them nothing. In fact, you’d be better off telling them nothing.
Thainks for nothing
Run, John Thain, run.
That’s my advice. The preceding statement, and those that are about to follow, are not in any way threats, but rather suggestions.
I think that, in order to stave off future scenarios that might resemble the current big bank situation, we should, after removing his genitals with a butter knife, mount John Thain’s severed head on the left horn of the bull statue that resides on Wall Street.
Why the animosity? Because this man is the epitome of all that is soulless and wrong, and exemplifies the problems that got us into this situation to begin with.
The man spent $1.2 million redecorating his office. Not in 2006, when everything was peachy, but last year, when everything was beginning to fall apart. Dennis Kozlowski would be proud.
He received a $15 million signing bonus in late 2007, dwarfing his $750,000 salary. For doing what? Hanging onto $40+ billion in s***-stained bonds and driving the company into what would be oblivion, had it not been saved by the sheer size of Bank of America?
All of these things only make him a prick. That’s it. What makes him deserve to have his cranium separated from the rest of his body is the following set of facts:
All of these things may or may not lead to decapitation.
In nothing we trust
This will probably be stamped on the next round of dollar bills the Treasury decides to run off the press.
Let’s make a brief observation that ties all this together: America no longer trusts itself.
Has anyone noticed that you rarely see the same analysts on CNBC? Ninety percent of the time, you see a new analyst you’ve never heard of touting an opinion about something or other in an interview that lasts about eighty seconds, and that person is seldom heard from again.
This is not an accident. They don’t want you looking at their screen, pondering the disastrously off-base predictions he made two months earlier. There’s nothing wrong with, well, being wrong, once in a while – but when no one trusts you longer than a minute or two, it speaks volumes about your credibility, justified or not.
This can be exacerbated by the diminished faith Americans feel when they are confronted with what amounts to yet another example in a long line of executives committing corporate fraud.
News, earnings… does any of it matter?
The answer is not anymore. There is essentially no amount of good or bad news that will permanently affect this market to the degree that the human psyche will.
Corporate America, no one trusts you anymore. Until you pay the dividend, we could care less what you say you’re going to do. The market will not move until the collective minds of the world decide that they’re going to buy some stock.
Oil moves with the market, the market moves with oil… difficult to predict anymore. We can’t anticipate or even trust the supply numbers. They used to move inversely.
I’ll tell you the only thing I’m sure of. If the market crashes, the pessimism has not peaked. If the market turns up, it’s because people think it can’t get any worse. It will not be because Microsoft laid off 5,000 people, it will not be because Google beat forecasts, and it will not be a result of Apple surviving regardless of Steve’s health.
America needs to get happy and optimistic if it wants to save itself.
John K. Whitehall
Analyst, Oxbury Research
www.oxburyresearch.com
Disclosure: no positions
The Center for Nonsense and Bipolar Conjectures (also known as CNBC) is continuing its tradition of mental illness with the recent addition of the most sought-after of delusive diseases – multiple personality disorder.
The site is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the wild volatility that once accompanied the market, but now is becoming a characteristic of the news and analysts’ interpretation of that news.
Against my better judgment, I want to confess to my readers that I regularly use CNBC’s website to check commodity prices, as they have a quick and easy real-time menu that saves me 13 seconds of logging into my own securities account with a nameless broker. Unfortunately, this throws me into the obstacle course of headlines that, similar to grocery store checkout magazines, are offensive, petty, and usually unfounded – but difficult to ignore.
The gauntlet of shock-value advice
Before I looked to see the price crude oil futures were trading on the exchange, I glanced over at to the right-hand column of their site at the laughably titled “What Investors Should Know” column. In the same pile of articles, I found one telling us that the Dow is staged for a “Flash Fire Rally”, another that said charts are predicting “Lows…then more lows [for the S&P]”, another urging investors to think long-term and buy the Telecom sector, and another that features a global strategist recommending that all investors keep at least 50% cash.
Let me give some general advice that can be extrapolated beyond the investment world: If you don’t know something, and you know you don’t know something, just say that you don’t f***ing know. That’s what I do. I did it last week.
I have no problem with analysts providing scenarios and explaining that they aren’t sure which is going to occur, but I do have a problem when a network broadcasts as headlines in their “what investors should know” section (which they must understand people interpret as “what investors should do”) that have completely conflicting outlooks on the market.
That results in a trivialization of the seemingly important words falling out of their mouths, and hence the investing public tends to take their contentions with a grain of salt.
And, above all, mistrust. You might as well tell them nothing. In fact, you’d be better off telling them nothing.
Thainks for nothing
Run, John Thain, run.
That’s my advice. The preceding statement, and those that are about to follow, are not in any way threats, but rather suggestions.
I think that, in order to stave off future scenarios that might resemble the current big bank situation, we should, after removing his genitals with a butter knife, mount John Thain’s severed head on the left horn of the bull statue that resides on Wall Street.
Why the animosity? Because this man is the epitome of all that is soulless and wrong, and exemplifies the problems that got us into this situation to begin with.
The man spent $1.2 million redecorating his office. Not in 2006, when everything was peachy, but last year, when everything was beginning to fall apart. Dennis Kozlowski would be proud.
He received a $15 million signing bonus in late 2007, dwarfing his $750,000 salary. For doing what? Hanging onto $40+ billion in s***-stained bonds and driving the company into what would be oblivion, had it not been saved by the sheer size of Bank of America?
All of these things only make him a prick. That’s it. What makes him deserve to have his cranium separated from the rest of his body is the following set of facts:
- Merrill traditionally paid executive bonuses in late January or early February.
- Thain so graciously and righteously agreed to forego a bonus for 2008.
- As he came to the realization that Merrill would be no more, he decided to step down. But not before moving up “executive bonus time” to December, so that he could put the maximum amount of employee, shareholder, and taxpayer money into his own pockets.
All of these things may or may not lead to decapitation.
In nothing we trust
This will probably be stamped on the next round of dollar bills the Treasury decides to run off the press.
Let’s make a brief observation that ties all this together: America no longer trusts itself.
Has anyone noticed that you rarely see the same analysts on CNBC? Ninety percent of the time, you see a new analyst you’ve never heard of touting an opinion about something or other in an interview that lasts about eighty seconds, and that person is seldom heard from again.
This is not an accident. They don’t want you looking at their screen, pondering the disastrously off-base predictions he made two months earlier. There’s nothing wrong with, well, being wrong, once in a while – but when no one trusts you longer than a minute or two, it speaks volumes about your credibility, justified or not.
This can be exacerbated by the diminished faith Americans feel when they are confronted with what amounts to yet another example in a long line of executives committing corporate fraud.
News, earnings… does any of it matter?
The answer is not anymore. There is essentially no amount of good or bad news that will permanently affect this market to the degree that the human psyche will.
Corporate America, no one trusts you anymore. Until you pay the dividend, we could care less what you say you’re going to do. The market will not move until the collective minds of the world decide that they’re going to buy some stock.
Oil moves with the market, the market moves with oil… difficult to predict anymore. We can’t anticipate or even trust the supply numbers. They used to move inversely.
I’ll tell you the only thing I’m sure of. If the market crashes, the pessimism has not peaked. If the market turns up, it’s because people think it can’t get any worse. It will not be because Microsoft laid off 5,000 people, it will not be because Google beat forecasts, and it will not be a result of Apple surviving regardless of Steve’s health.
America needs to get happy and optimistic if it wants to save itself.
John K. Whitehall
Analyst, Oxbury Research
www.oxburyresearch.com
Disclosure: no positions
