40 days and 40 nights trying to avoid the news. I almost got my hands badly burnt gambling on oil CFDs, but the G20 meeting saved my neck and taught me a good lesson I read the other day: Nothing sedates rationality like a large doses of effortless money (Warren Buffett).
Easy went, easy came, but overall, almost 2k down the drain.
I guess I learn the hard way, but scars remain, and as a parking fine in an intelligible parking spot makes reminds me forever to look three times and don’t give anything for granted, a couple of months meddling with CFDs taught me a bit of self-control under panic situations and when to admit defeat and take loses before making matters worse (I wish I had learnt the lesson before getting stuck with RBS stock).
Anyway, 40 days with no news brought me the word on the streets:
- Big fire in London
- Barack Obama waving to a friend of mine from the car, G20 related I guess (I just noticed the spike in oil price that save me)
- Something going on with the BBC
- Pyongyang doing Pyongyang stuff and US, EU and UN doing their U stuff.
- The Spanish Prime Minister, Mr Zapatero, reshuffling his government and ousting the Minister of Economy and Finance, Pedro Solbes (as if the current mess were his fault)
And a few more I can’t recall now, so I guess they are/were not important… to me.
I am reaching the point where I am starting to see the light: fundamentals. As I said before, the news is just the slave of advertising. My girlfriend commented the other day that the Vogue subscription I got her for Christmas is shrinking by the month. The cover price has gone up to £3.90 from £3.80 since the beginning of the year and the number of pages, down about a third. “But these fashion magazines are mainly advertising anyway”, you may say. That’s exactly the point.
So yes, I am trying to focus on the big word: fundamentals. I don’t know what they are, how they look or where I can find them but there are some things I can feel in the air:
- Inflation over the roof. I predict +10% in UK and Mediterranean countries
- Massive unemployment levels. I predict 22-25% in Spain. The obvious will be fired will be fired everywhere first, then the lazy and finally the true backbone of companies, if short-lived, this recession will clean businesses off parasites.
- Blood on the streets. Either in the fashion of clashes with the security forces or opportunistic terrorist groups.
- Inter-class tensions. Vilifying and looting of the upper classes. I read somewhere that net-a-porter.com changed their packaging bags to brown anonymous wrapping, as if success had to be a source of shame.
- Intra-class tensions. Specially when long-term employees realise that they cannot feed and shelter their families because benefits are being used up by long-term unemployed.
- Higher taxes to make up for the thoughtless mess politicians have made.
- Twisting of the definition of justice and fairness, specially when preceded by words like social.
I base the above in nothing, I am no pundit (or am I) it is all just a feeling.
But just in case, we are looking into non-UK/non-EU/non-US options for the next 3-4 years until and if Western economies bounce back.
.calvin
