DopeyCowboy.com is proud to present the first blog by it’s newest and pent up ranch hand. Let’s give a warm welcome to the Town Drunk and hear his thoughts on fighting the trend. -Dopey
I would like to discuss something which is making my days hell and my nights misery, the ever rallying market. I, like many of my contemporaries, continue to short into this absurd faux rally. It has all the stability of a three legged table on wheels. Retailers trade at pre crisis levels because consumer spending warrants it while casinos and homebuilders teeter on the brink of devastation and credit card default rates soar but the conundrum is unnoticed because it has been “discounted” which makes no sense. In the words of comedian Lewis Black, kiss my dick. “Discount” the inevitability of having to stop spending and printing money to facilitate growth and instead relying on real economic activity in a mature country down the road. No takers? I didn’t think so. We the USA might as well start acquiring other countries to enable growth like some late stage growth cycle company Mexico seems to be in peril what with drug wars and swine flu, we could probably scoop them on the cheap. If we cancel the back pat Cuba talks we can keep the products of Colombian flowing through the Mexican border towns. Then the government can intercept maybe 1 in 4 shipments and push it back to the cartels at a tidy little profit only to intercept and repeat. Hell we could even pit them against each other and turn it into a bidding war. Anything other than adopting a reasonable savings rate and living within our means right? But my digression is off topic and I will get back to the core of the issue.
I short away with all the confidence of a 13 year old boy facing seasoned meatpacking cougars and with results probably on par with any outcome for said teenager (insert mental image of a puddle). But I hate the market with every ounce of my being, this stupid fucking bear market rally. And I know that vindication will be mine eventually. Even Nouriel Roubini has turned tail and stopped touting death. So much for Doctor Doom, he must be getting TARP funds too in order to enable Doomsday themed NYU orgies on Bernanke’s tab in exchange for his silence…Party on Wayne! Every fabricated economic number, every bullshit comment from the financial pillars while they subsist on a diet of government funding while mass scale vomiting blocks of ever dilutive common stock into the market or converting preferreds whatever the fuck that actually means (although I must admit I have come to quite enjoy watching Ken Lewis and feel themed bobble heads of KL could give the 90s beanie baby fad a run for it’s money), every “dumb money” mutual fund just buying the market because the fed plugged every credit market orifice like some inflationary gangbang.
Calm down, deep breath, I am getting ahead of myself….
Ok so every day I short and every day the market rips me to shreds. It is as if some creature crept into my room while I was sleeping and implanted magnets of varying polarities under my ribcage only to utilize two opposite magnets later the next day to attract those in my torso thus splitting my sternum completely in half resulting in my body severing like an exploding cantaloupe shot with a 50 caliber rifle and flying outward in opposite directions at breakneck pace while I sit gasping for air or anything else. All the while I sit looking calm, swallowing back heart palpitations and thoughts of smashing my fist into my own face for being so stupid. I am completely unable to hear or see or think and want to vomit all over my desk and shoes or run home and cry like a 12 year old girl excluded from a reading of Harry Potter’s latest. All I hear is a faint rumbling electronica type sound which might be reminiscent of an industrial fan malfunction and I taste acidic bile bubbling in my stomach. People ask me if I would like lunch or god knows what other questions but I can’t manage to comprehend what these people are saying. It makes absolutely no sense. I am certain in reality they make perfect sense but I have on the blinders of loss and it is me, my monitor, and endless loathing. All I CAN hear is my inner voice crying, short this market– this is a total crock of horseshit! Take all your stimulus and multiples and technicals and trends and send them straight to hell.
Typically my internal compass is right about these things but lately, Jesus. Some higher power wants to teach me the values of humility and poverty in one fell swoop. I have thrown in the towel on numerous occasions while inside the demons continue to cry for blood– destroy this market, it is unsustainable, short it. It is like the shoulder devil from Animal House but it wants the market’s blood not Dean Wormer’s one breasted daughter. Anyhow, a “V” bottom from the biggest post war correction, which is predicated by a structural credit issue vs excessive valuations, is not possible, is it? Widening a deficit to biblical levels to spend the way out does not work, and trying to plug the gap with nosebleed tax rates is an even worse idea right? Isn’t that what history and common sense teach? Not to mention the coming protectionism, and probable failure of medicare and social security just in time to allow anyone in their 60s to spend their dying days unfunded, unmedicated, and utterly screwed in some state sponsored ward like Junior Soprano eating cockroaches and remembering nothing but the heydey of housing and web based photos of Lake Havasu based Girls Gone Wild videos. But hey Michael Moore is making a documentary right so rejoice.
I guess I should just suck it up and get long. Join the party. The trend is your friend right? Well fuck the trend, the USD printing machines, V bottoms, and long only manager’s rotations, short squeezes, underinvestment, and any other host of bear market rally cheer. I will come out the other side of this victorious or insane, broke, homeless, and drunk. Right now it is looking like the latter. Now who is with me?
P.S. To those of you long the market and making money– please tell me what to do next, bring me under the gentle fold of your wing, I want to attend the next long only “Harry Potter” reading.
-Town Drunk
