Man Plans and G-d Laughs!
So in retrospect, in 2015, not a single person got the answer right to ‘where do you se yourself 5 years from now?’
Where you gonna be in 2020?
Stuck at home for almost the entire year!
But you are a fortune teller and are so smart you should’ve rolled your dice in the ever exploding bubble of a stock market.
Oh, that’s right, you did! 😉
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
I went to the mall today.
This is a few weeks into reopening phase 2!
I expected people would have pent up demand and be swarming the stores even while keeping their social distance.
They weren’t at the mall!
The stores were nearly void of people.
The shelves were virtually empty of goods.
Whatever merchandise there was seemed to marked “sale, sale, sale” even on the already deeply-discounted clearance items.
It was completely frightening–like the economy is dead or on severe life support!
Most stores had 3 or more associates standing around or sitting twiddling their thumbs.
This while the stock market keeps ticking up and the NASDAQ is reaching new highs almost daily.
Coronavirus is surging again across much of the U.S. and there is almost 140,000 dead in the U.S. after just 5 months even though much of the population was in self-quarantine.
The economy looks to me in sh*t shape, despite the U.S. pumping $3 trillion dollars more of debt to artificially prop up the economy and the fed lending out money at super low rates.
It makes NO sense for the market to be hitting all time highs as if everything is all roses when the economy is still a true mess!
The New Yorker magazine wrote back in May of a post coronavirus “decade of depression” with an L shaped recovery, yet we keep seeing a V-shaped one and no one seems to be able to offer any plausible explanation for it.
Two-months ago, even before the recent stock run-up to higher levels, Business Insider reported that “the Stock Market is trading at its highest valuation in 18-years.“
Last month, Forbes reported that “the stock market appears to be reaching unsustainable highs.“
Yesterday again, Bloomberg reported that the “economic recovery is faltering.”
Almost daily, I read that companies are laying off their workers (in Travel, Transportation, Entertainment, Retail, Energy, etc.) or declaring bankruptcy (e.g. Hertz, JC Penny, Neiman Marcus, Chesapeake Energy, and more).
This while we are still, in the best case scenario, maybe half a year away from the possibility of a tested, approved vaccine. And then it will then need to be mass produced and mass distributed to hundreds of millions of people in this country and billions globally.
In the meantime, we certainly could be up for a second wave of Coronavirus on top of the flu in the fall/winter. And then the Coronavirus may mutate and become more virulent requiring annual vaccines like the flu shot–more hit or miss.
All this while U.S.-China trade war is imperiling our economy further, and arch-enemies Iran and North Korea remain national security threats.
To me this all points to that we are nowhere near out of the woods and perhaps that there is a wildfire raging and no one seems to be paying any attention!
The stock market euphoria is a common trap and is the definition of “irrational exuberance” but comes after investors have been robotically indoctrinated to buy the dips!
IMHO, buyer beware, beware, beware. 😉
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Look folks, Pinocchio’s nose is getting longer by the minute.
The market continues on a tear, even while the economy is heading in the other direction.
I know people have been conditioned to buy on the dips, but I’m not sure that applies while we’re in the middle (or maybe still just in the beginning) of a pandemic that has claimed 286,000 lives in just over 2 months (and that’s with a global shutdown)!
Somehow, there is a notion that when things start to reopen that all the problems will just magically go away, including the $3 trillion we just added to our national debt, all the bankruptcies being declared, and all the job losses that are becoming permanent.
If you believe this, perhaps you’d like to buy the Brooklyn Bridge.
The greater fool theory is alive and well. 😉
(Credit Graphic: Andy Blumenthal)
I believe this photo best summarizes where we are with the Coronavirus stock market.
As they say:
Don’t count your chicken before they hatch.
This market has gotten way ahead of itself and the pending economic realities of the Coronavirus and the consequences of the trillions of response fund debt.
Remember:
– The virus does not yet have a vaccine, and it is mutating and may become even more virulent!
– The deaths continue to soar in the U.S. with now over 75,000 dead in just two months.
– The deaths involve much pain and suffering both for the victim and his/her grieving loved ones.
– The unemployment is at all time highs since the Great Depression.
– Companies are starting to move from temporary layoffs to permanent firings and contraction, and many eventually to bankruptcy.
– Profitability and gross domestic product are way down and may be even worse in the next quarter.
– Price Earning ratios are around their 10-year highs even looking out toward a possible 2021 recovery.
– Restarting the economy does not mean a return to what was as the extreme trauma from the pandemic, shutdown, and social distancing rebalance us to a “new normal.”
– A second and third wave of Coronavirus may be as bad or even worse than the first.
– The two biggest global economies of the U.S. and China are facing a deteriorating and toxic relationship.
– The lingering $3,000,000,000,000 that we just added to our National Debt is going to increasingly strangle our future economic outlook.
– The election is in November and brings increasing instability and likely volatility.
In summary, the term used by former Fed Chairman, Alan Greenspan of “irrational exuberance” seems like a gross understatement when it comes to our current stock market.
Get ready to see the froth come painfully off this drunken market–these eggs are about ready to crack. 😉
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Please see my new article in The Times of Israel called, “I Want What I Want.”
There are four types of greed/jealousy:
We can be slaves to our egos, emotions, and desires, or we can seek to control them and be better than mere animals. We have a soul, a conscience, and the Torah, so the choice should be clear even if not always easy.
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
There always seem to be another mania.
From the Tulips Mania in 1637, when a tulip went for more than 10x what a skilled workman earned in an entire year!
To Cryptocurrency in 2018, which is down about 80% from its $20,000 peak losing $700,000,000,000.
In between, we had the gold rush, the great depression, the tech/dot-com bubble, and the housing/mortgage crisis, and many more I am sure.
There seems to always be something for people to get excited about in an “irrational exuberance” type of way, as former Federal Reserve Chair, Alan Greenspan put it.
Is it boredom, big dreams, unadulterated greed, the desire to “get rich quick” and easy, the belief that you’ve discovered the Holy Grail or is it just people being stupid.
Either way, we have a way of getting ourselves in trouble, some “losing their shirts.”
Not sure who said it, but there isn’t an easy fix to your life.
There are small and big problems, and then there is you trying to fix them (with G-d’s help).
As to bitcoins and tulips, they ain’t worth what you think they are. 😉
(Source Graphic: Andy Blumenthal with photos from Pixabay).
So we stopped in this gallery in Palm Beach.
And there lay this piece of “art”.
Well, I’m not sure–is this really art?
The proprietor explained that this is made up of scrap pieces of metal from the garbage dump like from old discarded automobiles.
The artist welded the garbage together, painted it, and voila there it is–some very pricey art.
Who pricey you ask.
Take a guess.
No really.
No, you’re too low.
Try again.
No, you’re still too low.
Not even in the ballpark.
Okay, I’ll tell you, but only because you asked so nicely.
It starts with a 95.
No, not $9,500.
No, not $95,000 either.
That’s right $950,000!!!
All this “art” can be yours if the price is right.
Can anyone say “irrational exuberance” again? 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
So Agile development is great for iteratively working closely with customers to develop and refine information systems that are useful to them and the organization.
But even in Agile, there is a beginning and an end to the sprint planning and project management.
Taking Agile to somehow mean endless in terms of adding more and more requirements or scope creep is not what is intended.
Agile has to be bound by common sense somewhere between what is needed for a minimally viable product (MVP) and what is achievable with the designated resources, objective, and scope.
Good project managers always have to be sound arbiters and be willing to ask the tough questions and determine if something is truly a requirement or simply a wish list item that is out of scope (but of course, could perhaps make it in for future enhancements).
We need to understand the difference between genuine customer service and irrational project exuberance based on inflated expectations.
It’s not a dangerous project bubble we want to create that can and will get busted, but rather a successful project that is delivered for our customers that help them do their jobs better, faster, and cheaper. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
I remember hearing the phrase (not sure from where), “everything and the opposite.”
I think it refers to how within each thing in life are elements of the exact contrary and opposing force.
Similar to the interactions of ying and yang, the world is an interplay of opposites–males and females, black and white, fire and water, ebb and flow, good and bad, optimism and pessimism, and so on.
Everything has a point and it’s counterpoint.
It was interesting to me to see this concept expressed in terms of the financial markets (Wall Street Journal), where bull and bear contend in terms of our finances.
But what was even more fascinating was the notion from the economist, Hyman Minsky, who noted that the very dynamic between stability and instability was inherent within itself.
So for example, Minsky posits that a stable economic market leads to it’s very opposite, instability.
This happens because stability “leads to optimism, optimism leads to excessive risk-taking, and excessive risk-taking leads to instability” (and I imagine this works in reverse as well with instability-pessimism, retrenchment and limiting risk to stability once again).
Thus, success and hubris breeds failure, and similarly failure and repetitive trial and error/hard work results in success.
It is the interflow between ying and yang, the cycle of life, life and death (and rebirth), the seasons come and go, boom and bust, and ever other swinging of the pendulum being polar opposites that we experience.
The article in the Journal is called “Don’t Fear The Bear Market,” I suppose because we can take comfort that what follows the bear is another bull.
But the title sort of minimizes the corollary–Don’t (overly) rejoice in the bull–because you know what comes next.
Go cautiously and humbly through life’s swings. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
What a 2014 it’s been as the world continues it’s descent into madness.
If Ebola, the War with Hamas in Gaza, the shoot down of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 killing 298 including 80 children and 15 crew, the intransigence of Iran on Nuclear Weapons, employment still near a 30-year low, the National Debt hitting over $18 trillion (and growing $2.43 billion a day!) and the suicide of comedian, Robin Williams wasn’t enough…
– Criminal Records: 1 in 3 adult Americans (i.e. 80 million people) now have a criminal record…hmm, if the average family has around 2.5 people then just about 1 person per household has a criminal record. Are you starting to look around you now?
– Economy: Uber, yes, it’s a online “ride-sharing” (i.e. taxi) service, but after it’s recent IPO, Uber is worth over $41 billion dollars (more than Delta, Charles Schwab, Salesforce.com, and Kraft Foods). Someone’s getting taken for a ride. Is this even surprising considering the S&P is priced over 27 times average 10-year earnings (while the historical average is only 16), the result of pumping the economy with short term easy money policies.
– Cyber Attacks: After a blithering cyber attack by North Korea, Sony withdraws the release of the movie, The Interview, surrendering to cyber terror, and putting us all at greater risk in the future because cyber crime does pay!
– Islamic Terrorism: While ISIS advances in Syria and Iraq, 132 school children (mostly ages 6-18) plus 9 adults massacred by the Taliban this week in Peshawar, many shot in the head and others lit on fire with gasoline and burnt to death so they are unrecognizable. This only 9 months after the April kidnapping by Boko Haram of more than 280 schoolgirls in Nigeria, which was repeated this week with the kidnapping of another 185 woman and children.
– Russian Militarism: The Great Bear is back with a vengeance as Putin continues driving Russian nationalism and buildup of advanced weapons, including WMD (e.g. nukes), aircraft, submarines, and ICBMs to counter alleged “Western Aggression.” And despite, the rubbles’ massive decline, Putin promises an economic comeback within 2 years–he’ll wait out the West and hold Crimea hostage and spoil it for everything it’s worth.
So where are we going next–more hell on Earth or at some point a turnaround towards heaven again?
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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