Fear and Greed The markets are all the talk of the town this week in this and every town. It is not about a a bunch of market participants going paranoid out of extreme forecasting anxiety. As I heard Rachel Maddow say this evening, the markets are merely acting as a window on the rather extreme impact that the Coronavirus (COVID-19) is starting to have on the world economy. Let’s take a quick survey. We…
Self-Insuring During my career on Wall Street, I had occasion to become an expert of hedging and insurance. Let’s be clear about what I mean by an expert. I founded and ran our futures and options subsidiary thirty-five years ago when hardly anyone understood futures and options and very few in the financial world other than traders and commodities people even understood what hedging really was all about. This was the precursor to the derivatives…
Decoupling I love that word, decoupling. You can go in so many directions with it. Icvbnt can be the bucket of cold water thrown on two dogs to stop them doing what they do (I witnessed that one day during my youth in Maine, when a huge dog got “stuck” tying to exploit a smaller dog that had kegeled itself into protective rigor). It can be a long-overdue divorce that has waited for the kids…
Battery Math Today I went to a battery fair here in Escondido. I was invited by Baker Electric, the premier electricians here in Southern California, who installed my solar system last year. They were joined in this extravaganza, replete with free donuts and mimosas and great swag (umbrellas, string backpacks and notebooks with pens) by the strong and mighty Tesla, the dominant maker of home batteries. Naturally, I had to drive to the fair in…
Storage Stuff Today the moving truck arrived with our stuff from NYC. To be totally accurate, it arrived in two 24’ trucks, one with furniture and one filled to the brim with boxes. These trucks appeared on time at 8:00am (they drove down from their terminal in L.A.) and came with six very nice moving guys who stayed and went above and beyond helping us with rugs and moving furniture. They were on site for…
A Dangerous TV Table How easy should you make your life? I am never quite sure how I feel about that issue. There is a fine theoretical argument that says that struggle is the grit that makes for a better life. But then that’s all very theoretical. Who would make their life harder when they can make it easier? Not very many people I know. And how exactly does one discount that future “better” state…
Beaten by the Market I am spending more and more time these days working as an expert witness in investment management cases. One thing keeps coming up over and over again and that is the value or lack thereof of active management versus passive management. In simplistic terms, for readers who are not financially-focused people, the simple issue is whether people can consistently beat the market or whether the market will always dominate and make…
A Bear in the China Shop Right now there is an area of central China that is quarantined with its residents “blocked” from exiting and all entrances and goods for it are closely monitored to and from the province of Hubei and specifically the large cities of Wuhan and Huanggang. Over twenty million people are inside the quarantined zone. To put that into perspective, that is more than the population of the entire country of…
The Art of Doing Father/son scenes always mean a lot to me. It may be because I had so few, if any, with my father, or it may because I try to do so many with my sons. Obviously the two are connected, but I still find they drill deep with me. Baseball seems to be a common landscape for these interactions given its prominence as an aging, but still inter-generational common ground. The first…
Connections Being in the midst of this last week in New York City before moving to San Diego has meant that I have been taking all the offered lunch and dinner appointments with friends and colleagues that want to send me off with good wishes. Since most of those folks live, work or just hang out in midtown, it means I have been shuttling back and forth all week, but have told myself it’s…