weekend notes

Hope all goes well… “Japanese stocks are down 25% from last year’s peak,” said Yoda, high in the Rockies. “If our market fell 25% we’d be jumping out of buses – which is what we’d be riding.” Gulfstream G6s blinked overhead, filling the skies, Aspen fire flies. “Savers have been forced into so many risky investments,” he said, a warm mountain breeze appeared from nowhere, then vanished. “And

Hope all goes well… “Gambling websites say Brexit’s a 3-1 bet against,” said the CIO. “And if you polled every one of us who wager for a living, I reckon 90% would say the Brits Bremain.” I mooed in agreement, nose nestled in tail, huddled in the herd. He mooed back. “But the polls are 50/50, margin-of-error kind of stuff, and they were pretty good in the Scottish referendum, the London mayoral vo

Hope all goes well… “Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!” he cried, atop a prodigious pile of private equity. “You hear that cry at the highs of every cycle, when the feeding frenzy gives guys like me the chance to sell our overleveraged deals, our walking dead,” he continued, dizzy from so many turns. And on alert for such a sign, he paused, hearing distant cries, moans, groans. But with th

Hope all goes well… “Tough day little man?” I asked Charlie, kicking off family dinner. He looked at me, puzzled. “Your hair’s turned grey, seems premature, you’re six.” The table erupted. Jackson, Olivia, unable to contain their laughter. Teddy pounded the table, howling. Mara and I looked at one another, confused. And there sat Charlie, quiet, a sly smile. “Ok Teddy, so what happened today

Hope all goes well… “The market is not positioned for a big move to the upside,” said Roadrunner, the industry’s biggest equity vol trader. “We’ve seen massive volume in options, someone’s selling skew, distorting volatility in way you almost never see.” The consequence is option traders are heavily short futures. On weakness they buy. On a strong rally, they’ll scramble to cover. “If volatility p

Hope all goes well… “Jackson’s so dumb, he threw a rock at the ground and missed,” taunted Teddy. “Teddy’s so stupid, he put a ruler next to his bed to see how long he slept,” countered Jackson. “You’re both so ugly that when you entered an ugly contest, they said, no professionals allowed,” chortled Charlie, wiggling in. I turned our Suburban’s radio up. “Yo Mama is so done with you boys that whe

Hope all goes well… “I am the king of debt. I do love debt. I love debt and I love playing with it,” stammered The Donald, lips pursed, sitting in his sandbox, now nearer than ever to toying with mankind’s most prodigious pile of the stuff. “I would borrow, knowing that if the economy crashed, you could make a deal,” he cried, knowing all too well that if you owe someone $1bln it’s your problem, b

Hope all goes well… “Amazon and Facebook are two of the top GDP destroyers,” said Lithium, hands-free on Highway 1. “They’re run by brilliant guys, obsessed with innovation, creative destruction.” Their earnings were great; frightening for competitors. “Apple was a GDP destroyer, but no longer, they’re too large, they’ve saturated the market.” Apple’s performance sucked tailpipe. “Think deeply abo

Hope all goes well… “On Thursday this bull market will become the 2nd longest in American history,” bellowed Biggie Too. “2,607 days old,” barked Biggie, not missing a beat. “Gonna surpass the 1949-1956 raging run. The 1990-2000 bubble was the longest.” From 2009 to the end of QE in Oct 2014, a 50/35/10/5 weighted portfolio of equities, bonds, commodities and cash returned 98%. But since then it’s