It can’t rain all the time

Schadenfreude (noun) German, when you open your trading account and note with a sardonic smile that your Netflix stocks didn’t get murdered that much more… but EVERYONE else is taking some pain now. I was feeling a bit abandoned out there on the verge but now I am warmed by the sense of belonging that comes with collective punishment. Yay us!

Right Fam. We need to need to start drinking this overpriced, overrated coffee simulacrum again*. Preferably in a magnitude of buckets. Need to get that stock-price back up there. Also, they spelled my name right… which… I dunno, its eerie.

*guess who owns a metric-fuck-tonne of SBUX?

Also if you could maybe buy some useless crap off Amazon, renew your Adobe and click on some Alphabet ads I’d really appreciate it. (I only really own Adobe, but I wanted to alliterate… but doing that other stuff would probably also help the markets)

I’ve had a miserable month. I tweaked my Levator Scapulae… which sounds like it should be something quite mild, but it absolutely crippled me for the last three weeks. I’ve been vacuuming up opioids, trading health (and maybe sanity) for three hours of sleep. Sometimes not even all consecutive. Sitting at a workstation was just excruciating so I’ve been either been in bed or shuffling around aimlessly (being disconsolate) …

*cough* And now I’m sick.

All while the world economy has been throwing a massive tantrum. (thanks Federal reserve, and maybe Russia)

In any event I am on the mend. The other thing not so much.

This made me laugh…

… which makes my chest heave and my diaphragm spasm. Humor might still be off the cards for a while.

Because my blog is all about Gen-X pseudo-profundity… and I have recently graduated from being a public-health expert to an expert on economics (and the markets generally) I feel the need to share something anecdotal. Although maybe, because I am wizen now it should be a fable.

Fox really wanted Rabbits burrow. It was higher on the hill, with a better view and a cool breeze. Fox went to rabbit and said, ‘Listen I really want your burrow, here is a $150* for it’. Rabbit said he would think about it. Rabbit was reasonably savvy… he knew burrows in his neck of the woods sold for about $100, and here was Fox offering him $150 for his burrow. After some rumination he told the Fox ‘thanks’ but he’d rather keep his burrow for now… but that he’d keep the Fox in mind if he ever wanted to sell.

*prices are indicative of a time before inflation.

Several weeks went by and Fox went back up the hill and seeing Rabbit offered him $100 for his burrow. Rabbit cocked his head and frowned, ‘No… eh… thanks’. He said slightly annoyed, ‘what the heck?’ But he promptly forgot about it.

Another week passed and one morning Rabbit finds a note slipped under his door, an offer to purchase from Fox. He’d like to buy the burrow for $80. Rabbit feeling incensed scrunches up the note and tosses it across the room. ‘Fox is clearly out of his mind’.

Two weeks later another note arrived, this time offering to purchase the burrow for $50. Rabbit was starting to feel a bit nervous… what if… ‘what if this was as good as it gets?’ What if he didn’t take this offer… and next week Fox was only willing to offer $30 for the burrow…. and then $20.

Panicked now Rabbit accepts Foxes offer of $50, thinking, well at least I got something for my burrow. ‘Sure, its not $150, but at least its not $20’.

Its not Animal farm apologue sagacity… but I think there is merit to the tale, even if it is a little cutesy. Only with us the fox (or the market) is making us an offer for our burrow whenever we happen to casually glance in its direction.

The thing to remember is… It can’t rain all the time. Which I realize is a line from ‘The Crow’. But its not bad line to form an investment strategy around.

And really, if you’ve ticked the boxes on the basics, ie avoid concentrated risk (or have diversified holdings) don’t invest money you need to live off of (ie have some cash reserves ) you’ll be totally fine while the markets wobble around and play dead. Unless you know… you were Japanese and invested all your money in the Japanese Stock market in December 1989… then you would have still (30+ years later) not recovered your loses. But you know… Japan *makes dismissive snorting sound* (what are the chances?)

Having said all that, taking advice from a Netflix-bagholder (who is poking the universe) is probably not the greatest idea in the world. Although I still believe in the future of streaming. Ha ha. (I’m sure there were Enron stockholders that believed… and people who bought Doge coins that felt that history would be on their side)

On the other hand I’ve been investing since about two thousand. Which means I’ve lived and worked through the dotcom bubble… the commodities boom. The housing/financial-crisis. The federal-reserve boom years. The Covid collapse… another federal-reserve boom year… and now… well… maybe this. Which could be a massive thing. Or it might just be a wrinkle. People older than me can remember the Asian crisis circa ’97. Black Monday in ’87. The OPEC crisis… eh… in like early 70’s. Each an absolute disaster… the likes of which we were never going to recover from. Only we did. Much to the annoyance of some pundits I imagine.

We will probably be okay. Unless we’re not and this turns out to the comeuppance we all knew was coming because we’ve been kicking the can down the road for the last hundred years.

I’ll be annoyed. Obviously, I was hoping to be dead before that happened… you know, leave the smoking ruin of our planet to the Millennials and the Gen Z’s. Although I’ll blame the boomers and say I was just caught up in the momentum of it all… and what could I do except participate?

The best advice is to turn off the news and just don’t look at your money until 2024… at the earliest. Or start drinking heavily. That can probably also dull the pain, if you’re not into the whole ignorance is bliss approach. Alternatively Joey you could get a hobby that isn’t mindless wealth accumulation. Which… must be a such a weird way to live. Like… what do those people do with their time?

In any event, if you’re into money, probably don’t worry about it. And if you’re not into money, you’re probably not worried about it.

Easy. Peasy. Japan-easy.

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