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While glancing through this morning's financial news, I saw this article about short-sellers which prominently featured this image:
Whoa!! I realize that we bears aren't widely loved, but is that really how we're perceived?
I guess since bears aren't part of any specific racial or (cough cough) religious group on Wall Street, they can get away with this. Where's the Sloper Anti-Defamation League when you need it?
I read a very interesting article this week illustrating how bull manias were closely correlated with Sotheby's stock price (ticker symbol BID). The article quite convincingly illustrated that the late 80s takeover mania, the dot-com boom/bust, and the real estate/credit collapse all lined up nicely with auction insanity and record-high art prices.
The thrust of the article was that the present mania is located in China, where vases and paintings are fetching unheard-of bids. The implication, naturally, is that China is heading for a cliff. And, as past examples of have, Sotheby's can lose about a third of its value in one session when speculation in art ceases.
Below are the charts of the S&P (blue) and Sotheby's (black).
I happened across this song today, which took me back to my childhood and the oh-so-bummer 1970s (maybe that's why my personality is so bearish……) It's amazing that a song like this was actually a hit. I guess it speaks to the social mood of the times.
Incredibly, the artist lightened up the lyrics to make them less suicide-inducing. ("Jacks' revisions tended to add a bit of ambiguity as to the nature of the storyteller's demise, allowing listeners the option to choose whether the death is from suicide over a failed life – quite possibly to escape drug addiction – or someone accepting death from natural causes, or cancer. References to a cheating wife were also removed.")
OK, stop the world. I want to get off.
While thumbing through this Sunday's New York Times, I saw an advertisement for "The RL Gang", a video tale of a bunch of ethnically diverse little scamps dressed in extremely expensive clothes.
And in a world where a billion people can't get access to clean water on a daily basis, here's the beauty part – this is the first "shoppable storybook". That is, you can click on any of the little darlings in the story, buy the clothes they are wearing, and make Ralph Lauren even richer by giving him some of your money.
The entire premise makes me want to ralph.
