The ‘bad trip’ I’m alluding to in my title was the type some substance experimenters used to get from self-administered hallucinogenic drugs like LSD (Lysergic Acid Diethylamide). This was the preferred trip-inducing substance of Harvard psychology professor Dr. Timothy Leary who thought it might have great potential in psychotherapy. “He used LSD himself and developed…
Tag: marketwatch
Please! Don’t confuse me with the facts!
In an era when playing fast and loose with the facts seems de rigueur, not only for the newsmakers but the media covering them, you are bound to get some carryover to the mundane world of economic and financial news. But in financial media what you get is opinion and speculation about assumed facts. The…
Apres le deluge, Le Summer Rally?
My apologies to the French and the late King Louis XV, for slightly reworking a phrase attributed to him, “Apres moi le deluge” (After me the deluge). The king had it right. Within 18 years of his death the French Revolution erupted. A better word for “deluge” might be “cataclysm.” Apres “Brexit” le deluge? Based on…
Beware of Pundits Bearing Wet Blankets, or …
How to take a silk purse and turn it into a sow’s ear in one easy lesson. I give the prize to CNBC … more specifically Bob Pisani and Art Cashin (with runner-up honors going to Barron’s Magazine). This exercise might be especially instructive for kortsession followers with short attention spans. You may have forgotten…
Finally, I think I get it!
I have been puzzled for many weeks over the apparent, lock-step action in the stock and oil markets. Whenever the price of oil dropped, equities would immediately follow. I questioned this, because I felt lower oil prices were a major benefit to every consumer and industrial user, even if it might create hardships for certain…
The Market’s Gonna Do What The Market’s Gonna Do
Be careful what you wish for! In May of 2015, all the popular averages had tripled off their lows. There was a great clamor among the media and punditry that we needed a correction. A retracement of at least 10% had not happened in 18 months. In August of last year we got the correction, and…
“OMG!!!”
It is obvious from Friday’s market action that the end is nigh, or we are on the “eve of destruction”: or better yet, stock market Armageddon has arrived. What tripped this all off? A well-respected value manager, Marty Whitman and his firm Third Avenue Management got themselves a little bit too far out over…
Conventional Wisdom Undone
The end of Quantitative Easing (QE) will spell the end of the post-financial crisis recovery of the U.S. economy with a spike in interest rates and hard times for the stock market. It did not happen. Here is a link to what we were saying in December of 2013 that may add credibility to our post…
“Eve of Destruction”
Eve of Destruction “Eve of Destruction ” was the cheery title of Barry McGuire’s chart-topping single of September 1965, words and music by P. F. Sloan. This war protest song shot to the top of the charts almost overnight. Take a listen, and I bet you have to agree the more things change the more…
HELP! Plus more piling on.
Help Me Understand this Market. Maybe I’m missing something, but the way certain interest sensitive sectors of the market are acting, especially those with leverage (MLPs, REITs, Utilities and BDCs), you would think a major bump in interest rates (maybe even tightening by the Fed) is imminent. Can you tell me from whence this is…