Hot Streak And A Bear Case In Shambles
European equities just enjoyed their largest inflow in eight weeks.
The $1.5 billion haul was emblematic of what BofA's Michael Hartnett described as "a week of rotation back to 'value.'"
Financials saw the biggest inflow in 10 weeks, for example, and materials the most in two months. Tech inflows, meanwhile, moderated.
I mention the inflows to European stocks on Friday because I needed an excuse to highlight the longest win streak in more than two decades. Note that the Stoxx 600 was on pace
Reading ‘Childhood’s End’.
Frighteningly on point, even though it was written in 1953. I don’t think I am going to like the ending.
You will.
Yup
Gains are ultimately not the point… I mean unless this is some sort of game with a high score we’re all competing for and even if we go extinct in a century it’ll all be worth it because someone “WON”. The entire point of economics in some hopelessly naïve sense was to make us better at doing the things we needed to do to survive. Whatever it is today it isn’t that or is some shadow of that. I’m not sure what the proper wakeup call is but I’m pretty certain the day before the last human dies they could be sitting around their pile of crypto, gold and stocks all at all time highs enjoying the finest luxury goods and services from automatons. So what does being right or wrong about any specific investment call matter if we can’t… survive?
“ Gains are ultimately not the point “
The market is not the economy. The markets are, at best, a roiling dogpile of manic, fearful, confused and conflicting bets on what millions of other players will expect to hear the 500 or 3,000 most successful companies in the economy, the ones that eat the other 100,000s of companies for lunch, say about what they in turn expect to see from their business in a year or thereabouts from today.
You don’t – this is my personal opinion, only, not some commandment I’m trying to impose on anyone – you don’t participate in the market because you’re trying to make anything better for humanity in any bigger sense. You do it because it is one of the most interesting and entertaining circuses on earth, and because there are gains to be sought, that if realized will feed and clothe you better than most other occupations for which you’re suited.
Without the gains, the entertainment part becomes too expensive to bear. So the gains are most definitely the point. Of this game. Not of one’s life, whether one is a single human or a society of humans – or else it is an empty and worthless life indeed. Just of this game.
Video game sales were up 14%, ytd over 2020. We are going to entertain ourselves into oblivion.