DR. STRANGELOVE, OR: HOW I LEARNED TO LOVE THE DOW
I am completely at peace with the idea that I don't know squat about the Stock Market.
Everything I need to know, I learned from an old boss of mine. To paraphrase: "It's never as bad as it looks and it's never as great as it looks. If you can skip the fear and the excitement and just look for the opportunities, you'll do all right."
I suppose that's a life lesson as well.
Casting fear aside, what I see from last week is a market that was not happy with the level of capital going to innovation. Last Friday and yesterday the market said "Wake up, People!" and now it's marking time to see if anybody got the message.
Unless you're a retiree drawing down on a trading account, this is an opportunity to reevaluate lots of stuff. Talk to your broker. If you're a day trader...well, there ain't no victims, only volunteers.
STEVIE WILLIAMS AND THE MAGIC PRESS CONFERENCE
For those of you who don't know who Stevie is, stop reading now.
Stevie, crash course on the three pillars of caddying:
1. Show up;
2. Keep up;
3. Shut up;
STANDARD AND (PISS) POOR
So that brilliant analytical house, Standard and Poor, says the U.S. Gov't, which hasn't missed a payment on anything due since 1789, is suddenly not as creditworthy as it was Wednesday.
Never mind that they set up a formula with a number incorrect by over two trillion dollars. Never mind that their reasons for the downgrade were political and had nothing to do with a balance sheet. Let's just look at the track record of these folks.
They predicted the crashlet of 1987. Oh, wait! They didn't. They predicted the tech bubble bursting in the 90's. Oh, wait! They didn't. They saw the open trading of debt swaps as a future as dangerous to our economy and downgraded the players. Oh, wait! They didn't.
These people couldn't predict a bowel movement after a bowl of chili.
Totally aside from politics, we can choose to believe in American exceptionalism or we can believe these goobers. Since there is literally no evidence that these folks have ever predicted anything of importance correctly, I'll bet on the American enterprise spirit.
