The Third Dispatch...
An irregular discussion of the
intellectual substructure of the quotidian and workaday.
As reported
in the August 20 Wall Street Journal, the English company Brixton
(commercial-industrial real estate) tried to illustrate the "mindset"
of their sector of the market in a first-half report, (which was
issued August 19) by using the opening verse of Bob Dylan's "All Along
The Watchtower":
There must be some way out of here
Said the joker to the thief
There's too much confusion
I can't get no relief
Businessmen, they drink my wine,
Plowmen dig my earth
None of them along the line
Know what any of it is worth.
The Journal's Intelligent Investor column of September 30 considered
"some of the arguments that have been surfacing lately" - the last of
them being "Investors hate uncertainty." Jason Zweig wrote:
"Well, that's just tough. Uncertainty is all investors ever have
gotten, or ever will get, from the moment barley and sesame first
began trading in ancient Mesopotamia to the last trade that will ever
take place on Planet Earth.
If tomorrow were ever knowable with absolute certainty, who would take
the other side of a trade today?
The financial future is no more uncertain now then it used to be; in
fact, it's far less uncertain than it was in the summer
of 2007, when the Dow shot above 14000, the future seemed bright, and
utterly no one foresaw the disaster that would befall the financial
system. The absolute certainty of blue skies ahead was an illusion
then, and the notion that we all know that worse misery lies in store
is an illusion now.
The only true certainty is surprise.
You've probably spent a lot more time worrying about negative than
positive surprises lately. But we could get surprises on the upside by
a further fall in oil prices, a kick from low interest rates - and, of
course, untold other possibilities that no one can foresee.
Whatever happens with the bailout, don't bail out.
Compassion and sympathy are not qualities often found in the market
mindset. The Mighty Quinn, however - with its basis in art and
psychology - can counsel forebearance ("No reason to get excited" is
how Dylan's song continues) instead of what John Keats called "an
irritable reaching for fact and reason" (which produces neither fact
nor reason).
[Pictures: Jason Zweig, the floor of the NY Stock Exchange and
another crazy diver]
