Consequently, our scarce, if profound, readers should be alerted to the low divinatory quality of this current expectoration: AND it's gonna be about the booooring markets, so if you are here to read about Claude Levi-Strauss, skip straight to end, spare you the head-shaking.
Exhibit 1: yawn, baby, yawnBe it as it may... here it goes.
A cursory glance at the market action elicit a yawn (see Exhibit 1), and maybe a couple of observations:
1) company results are still coming out, but nobody really cares
2) economic numbers keep on being wishy-washy:
- green-shoots: front we see the US posting better manifacturing performance (ISM manif on monday), a couple of minor employment figures today and surprisingly, in our view, the october car sales higher than sept, despite cash-for-clunkers off. Europe: italy france some decent numbers
- brown cowpats: US: mortgages today, Fed pessimistic, ISM non-manif today rather gloomy. Europe: still mired in -0.4% deflation.
3) do we spy a sign of correlation-breaking? might this be the beginning of the end for the risk on/off 100% correlated markets, where everything moves as if on one dimension? the bonds and STIRS have had a sogginess to them(esp. US and UK) and gold a certain strength, seemingly irrespective of the direction of equity.
Dare we hope for a slightly less uni-modal marketplace, giving us the chances to finally put on a few more sensible, uncorrelated bets?
Overall, not enough yet to justify a massive chance in positioning, long gamma still overall warranted, with a few tactical corrections. But feel uneasy. It's beating around the bush, presaging, maybe, a regime change.
The raison d'etre of the lottery tickets.
And if it happens, inshallah.
Exhibit 2: doesn't he look sprightly at 100? beats Greenspan hands down.Ought to be off for a kip now. Though not before mentioning Claude Levi-Strauss.
Dead now, 100.
No, I have not read "Tristes tropiques", but like many in my peer group, it is not unlikely that I pretended to have done so, on quite a few occasions. The guy loomed large in our discourses, as a totemic symbol, maybe half confused with the makers of 501's, but hey, they're totemic too.
Moreover, Derrida and Foucault were against him, and who can stand those two hot-air balloons. Enemy of my enemies... you get the drift.
Symbol of what, you may ask. Being an intellectual with no need for Twitter, soundbitese, or blogs like this one. Scholarship. Solid fieldwork. Travel, before the one-year gappers were let loose.
Above all, the 20th century. What??? the blood-soaked Schmeisser-toting short century??? Yes indeed, that very one. God knows how sorely missed it is.
Enough with all that. There are 100 of Gunter Grass' stories waiting on the chevet.
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