You imagine me sippin’ champagne from your boot
For a taste of your elegant pride
I may be goin’ to hell in a bucket, babe
But at least I’m enjoyin’ the ride

Weir, Mydland and Barlow (all now dead)

I am obliged, of course, to write a few words about Bobby. On balance, I wish to praise him, but I do so with some ambivalence. Yes, he was a driving force of a band that changed my life and arguably the world. He also, while by no means being among my pantheon of shredders, deeply influenced my guitar playing — mostly by making me aware of the barred C chord, which, if played correctly, rings so brightly up and down the fretboard.

Now, before y’all get in my grill, let me acknowledge that this chart does not precisely depict a bar chord. It is the Cmaj shape slid up to the 7^th fret to form a Gmaj, with the flat tip of the index finger applied for the objective of modulation.

Thanks to Bobby, I use this form too. But also lay, as taught by him, my entire index finger across the fretboard for an even richer sound.

He wrote some excellent songs (for instance Sugar Magnolia, The Music Never Stopped, Weather Report Suite, Jack Straw, our title song), along with some annoying ones (as in Playing in the Band, One More Saturday Night, The Other One).

But he was one of the luckiest sumbitches in the rock pantheon. He walked into a Palo Alto music store one New Year’s Eve and met with greatness – in the form of Jerry Garcia, and the rest is history. Weir, in my judgment, road Jerry’s coat tails to untold riches of fame and fortune. There was a lot of talk about the Dead being a Democracy, with balanced contributions across the ensemble. Yeah, right. Kinda like the Bulls of the 1990s were a collective of equally shared responsibility.

To anyone paying attention. It was Jerry’s band. Full stop.

And I have one final beef to register here, having to do with the decade long cash grab in which he, at minimum, participated. Beginning with the Fare Thee Well shows in Chicago in 2015, which, due to representations that these would be the last ever performances of the surviving ensemble, caused ticket prices to eclipse $100K in some cases, all the way through, by my count at least a half dozen tours and Sphere residencies tied to the same representations, by my estimation, Bobby and the boys made more in a single active month in the last few years than they did during their entire thirty year original run.

I’m a capitalist and applaud them, genuinely, for cashing in. As was their right. But particularly with respect to that unending last show/Fare Thee Well spiel, they kind of killed the buzz. And what’s more, I don’t think Jerry would’ve approved.

Meantime, I am absolutely gob smacked by the outpouring of tributes that have flooded the ionosphere since his demise this past weekend. Everybody has weighed in. And that’s something.

Maybe a ticket to heaven. In a bucket. If so, I hope that he paid less than a few schlubs with more money than brains shelled out for those Soldier Field seats, 10 summers ago.

One might also have expected us to have learned something from these experiences, but similar madness appears to abound in every quarter – particularly in the realms of government.

Setting aside those magnificent Reagan years, the government seems to be poking its big fat nose into more places than its business justifiably takes it. Since the Grateful Dead formed in 1965, but particularly of late.

This past fortnight has been a especially active, witnessing the take over of Venezuela and its oil fields, the threatened subsuming of other jurisdictions, the purchase of $200B of Mortgage Bonds and the proposal to cap credit card interest rates at 10%.

All share the common characteristic of manipulation of key markets for political purposes in an election year.

The assault on interest rates, embedded in the credit card and mortgage moves, are particularly instructive – for both their wrong-headedness and their cynicism. If you can read the associated petulant, self-congratulatory announcements, published by the President on his own for-profit media outlet without retching, well, you’re a better person than me.

With respect to the former, I will stop short of going into the tank for the credit card companies, who make obscene (> 50%) profit margins and probably do charge excessive vig on their plastic. But if the Federal Government caps interest rates, it will most certainly diminish the amount of credit that these enterprises will make available to the unwashed.

Moreover, to propose a time frame of one year on this nonsense exposes the unmixed political motivations at play here, screaming, as it does, “vote for me. I cut your credit card rates in half”. And I must ask: do we really want to allocate scarce credit capacity based on manipulation of the electorate?

The answer is no. And I believe that folks are beginning catch on. Most notably as manifested by a surge in the demand for Old School Gold. I probably don’t need to inform you that the shiny yellow metal is up by 2/3rds since Big Orange took over the controls (but I will):

Bob, of course, knew how precious Gold was, as captured in his version of the Papa John Philips-written “Me and My Uncle”, which describes two subsequent thefts of gilded nuggets, the second of which involves the subsequent murder of the above-mentioned uncle:

Now I love those cowboys, I love their gold
Love my uncle, God rest his soul
Taught me good, Lord, taught me all I know
Taught me so well, that I grabbed that gold
And I left his dead ass there by the side of the road

I read somewhere that Philips wrote the song in a tequila stupor and completely forgot having done so. But Suite Judy (Blue Eyes) Collins managed to capture it on tape and record it on an album. Papa John did not realize he was the composer until the royalty checks started coming in.

It don’t know if this story is true. But if it’s not, it should be.

It certainly evokes truisms reflecting the state of latter-day living, where we all must contend with the conflicting forces of faddish hipness, morality and crude self-interest – a battle we appear to be losing on every front.

The story of Bob Weir and the Dead – in its various incarnations is a compelling object lesson for all the above. Across his astonishingly long career, he embodied each component – as the young hipsters’ flavor of the month, as a purveyor of rough but holy justice, and, finally, as an engaged economic agent, successfully monetizing, while contemporaneously maintaining his more ethereal brand.

But his time came, any day, and we won’t worry about him.

Because he asked us not to.

I suspect he would advise us, instead, to worry about ourselves.

We may be going to heaven or hell. With or without a bucket.

And we may, or may not, enjoy the ride.

TIMSHEL

I was tempted to welcome y’all to 2026, but is it really my place to do so? Because who am I? Georgie Jessel¹? Besides, it’s not as though I arrived here before you; we all entered MMXXVI more or less together – beginning with those on the tip of the eastern side of the International Dateline, and ending, 24 hours hence, in the vicinity of its adjacent western neighbors.

I feel we don’t talk enough about the International Dateline – maybe because it’s mostly on the water. But in terms of ushering in a new year, the process, as illustrated below, begins, unmistakably, at the IDL.

Nobody, and to the best of my knowledge, has ever explained the Dateline’s eastward wiggle north of Tonga/Samoa – resembling nothing so much as the logo of the United States Postal Service facing the opposite direction.

Maybe also, if you’re like me, you confuse it with the Continental Divide, a hydrological separation, the northernmost point of which, like the International Dateline itself, is proximate to the Bering Strait which separates Russia from Alaska, but which then takes a turn thousands of miles east, concluding in the South at the Strait of Magellan.

If you’re confused at this point, you’re not alone. Because we enter ’26 in perplexing configuration.

About all I can state with certainty is that the year marks the Platinum (20^th) Anniversary of this here publication. For the math-challenged, it did indeed begin at the end of 2005 and has been in continuous weekly production ever since.

Extending the arithmetical elaboration here, I have produced ~1140 of these masterworks, which tend to run roughly 3.5 pages. Using a handy approximation of 500 words/page, we arrive at the tidy word count of 2 Millions (or thereabouts).

‘Tis indeed cause for celebration. And perhaps a bit of historical context is also in order. It all began not long after I foolishly decided to create my first risk solutions business, with the notion that sending a weekend note to each of my clients might be a sound strategy for, at minimum, maintaining their fond remembrance. Because it’s nerve-wracking, as a service provider during slower intervals, to have no interaction with the latter other than the issuance of monthly invoices. My weekly notes, in other words, were there to remind them that they remained in my thoughts.

Some of the content logically concerned market conditions, which thus allowed me to genericize portions therein, while customizing the idiosyncratic elements within separate sections of each communication.

But the generic components took on a life of their own and soon required institutionalization. All of which was crowned, somewhere around ’07, by my decision to add a pithy title and associated thematic cadence to each publication.

Media content distribution channels then came clamoring to get in on the action, most notably my own LinkedIn page and the Contributors Section of ZeroHedge. And, before I knew it, the thing had reached the improbable zenith of between 300 and 500 readers in an average week.

To place this in context, it has somehow attained the reach of ~0.000005% of the number of bibles (~6B) currently in distribution.

And nobody can legitimately dispute its market impact. In the years since launch, The Gallant 500, two crashes notwithstanding, is a 6-bagger; Cornel Naz – busted to the ranks twice over this period due to poor performance — has risen 8-fold. BTC, now at $90K, was nothing more than a Satoshi pipe dream back then, but I hesitate to take full credit for its subsequent upward explosion.

In terms of the broader world, it was the year of Hurricane Katrina, where, for a couple of terrifying days, we feared the loss of Fats Domino.

Pope John Paul II died in April of that year. I’m not sure the folks in Rome ever replaced him.

YouTube launched in February. And Facebook, still a private company back then, made the financially lucrative but stylishly dubious decision to allow membership beyond college campuses, fostering the birth of billions of cat pictures and other horrors too plentiful to enumerate.

I’m not sure if this is related, but to the good, Charles and Camilla married at (where else?) Windsor Castle, and, to the better, the original members of Pink Floyd joined together for one last time on stage at Wembley.

The Bears won the NFC title that year and began the Super Bowl with GOAT return man Devin Hester taking the opening kickoff to The House. It was, in retrospect, a generational high-water moment. They lost that game to the Indy Mannings, and it’s been all downhill for my team ever since.

But back to the markets, where I wish I could, but cannot, claim to have created unmixed blessings. When I first took finger to keyboard, the National Debt, having recently surpassed $38T, stood at a quaint by comparison $8T.

And total indebtedness? All I can do is show you the chart. And weep:

There are eerie parallels between then and now. We are, again, a year into the second White House term of a nepo baby with a rich daddy, both of whom, heroically and at great financial cost, managed to avoid action in the Vietnam War (though W, to his credit, did spend time as a National Guard Fighter Interceptor – stationed, albeit, in a place where no hostile fighter planes were likely to be found).

Meantime, both president faced or are facing “you broke it/you bought it” conundrums in multiple foreign jurisdictions – then it was Iraq and Afghanistan; now it’s Gaza and Venezuela. It should be noted here that our track record for taking over countries whose leadership we dispatched militarily is less than stellar. The blowback — from Caracas to Berkeley and the Upper West Side — has already begun and is likely to increase in volume from here.

It’s a year of a Midterm election, with every indication being that the pendulum may very well swing back leftward. In 2006, the Dems picked up 31 House and 6 Senate seats, regaining, in the process, control of both august chambers. God help us if there’s a repeat in ’26.

Back in ’05, my city and state were, improbably, controlled by Republicans: Bloomberg running things at Gracie Mansion and the unforgettable (?) George Pataki holding down the fort in Albany. Here, the tables have turned. As of Midnight last Thursday, just as the last $50 pair of Depends sold near Times Square was performing its righteous, elegant duties, NYC swore in a new mayor, who, if he hasn’t ruined the town in less than a week, it’s not for lack of trying.

Twenty years ago, we found ourselves on the threshold of a Housing Bubble which ultimately came just short of bringing the capital market down on its ears. Matters in those realms are much calmer today, but it will be instructive to observe the triumphs and tragedies of Housing this year, and, while not particularly relevant, I can’t resist pointing out that Mortgage Rates are almost precisely where they were when I hit the send button on my first note, two decades ago:

For so early in the year, we’ve put FRED – Federal Reserve Economic Data — to substantial use, and I hope it’s not to our detriment. Or his. Or that of the good folks at the St. Louis Fed he reps. They may after all be tired. As am I. Two million words is a lot two write. No matter how long one has to concoct them.

I’m not sure I have another two million in me. But I reckon that’s in the Good Lord’s hands.

I can, however, wish you the best of fortune in ’26. And I do. Wish you the best of fortune in ’26 that is. And my fondest hope is embodied by my time-honored salutation, supplied below. It is the best risk management advice I can offer. So, if you don’t know what I’m talking about, I suggest you look it up. Before it’s too late.

TIMSHEL

¹ George Albert “Georgie” Jessel (April 3, 1898 – May 23, 1981) was an American actor, singer, songwriter, and film producer. He was famous in his lifetime as a multitalented comedic entertainer, achieving a level of recognition that transcended his limited roles in movies. He was widely known as the “Toastmaster General of the United States,” for his frequent role as the master of ceremonies at political and entertainment gatherings.

Amazona, Is a zone where
There is no doubt, No more fall-out
Why don’t you step, Through the mirror and see?

Bryan Ferry

With a couple of caveats — I’m glad Roxy Music made it into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

First, the institution suffers from a major credibility gap — through its omission of such obviously deserving bands as (among others) Mott the Hoople, the New York Dolls, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Blue Oyster Cult (who at least retain the dignified consolation of having been inducted into the Long Island Entertainment Hall of Fame), and The Smashing Pumpkins.

Beyond this, like so many other great ensembles, Roxy ran out of steam pretty quick. Their first two albums, deeply influenced by Eno’s manning of the keyboard bench, are incomparable. The first one is self-titled; the second’s title is identical to that of this note.

It is their third album, though, that is my favorite. Eno was gone, and Ferry had taken over full stop. The music changed, but arguably, for a time, for the better.

Because that record – Stranded – is impeccable – featuring such gems as Mother of Pearl. And Amazona – the theme for this week’s analysis.

And while I may be late to the party, I realized that we – all of us – have entered Amazona: a zone where there is no doubt. Or fall-out.

But what (or where) is Amazona? Wikipedia, to which I recently donated the princely sum of $52 (after repeated solicitations, I stroked in $50, whereupon they asked me if I wanted to add another two-spot, leaving me with no viable alternative other than to accede) indicates that it is either a genus of parrots or a Portuguese horsewoman.

OK; fair enough, but Ferry, by contrast, suggests it’s a state of mind, and I like that too.

Because there I was the other night, in a football-starved condition, bleakly anticipating the long cold winter that follows the Super Bowl and thus tuned in to the (otherwise unwatchable) Falcons/Bucs broadcast on Amazon Prime. This is far from a first. Team Bezos has been airing one-off games for a couple of years now. But what hit me this time was that during each commercial, my television screen availed me with an option to, at the physical expense of a single click, buy the advertised product.

Maybe this had been going on for a long time, but it was new to me. So, by halftime, I found myself the proud owner of a brand-new Jeep Grand Cherokee, multiple drugs of (to me) unknown application and episodically redundant insurance policies issued by Progressive, Geico and Liberty Mutual.

This marks my entrance into the new world – one where, when enjoying electronic entertainment, not only am I tantalized by the possibility of refreshing beverages and new age pillows but can purchase them as a fluid part of the viewing experience.

Thus far, and to the best of my knowledge, CBS, NBC and ESPN are unable to match this product distribution prowess, and I fear that this will soon redound to their detriment.

And, from this perspective, it seems to me that Amazona should’ve been on For Your Pleasure, instead of Stranded. On the other hand, if one indeed finds oneself stranded, one could do worse than logging into Amazon Prime, and for one’s pleasure, purchasing whatever is offered by associated content sponsors.

The experience, for me, was a glimpse of the future, and lord help us when AI gets its act together and takes over the show. At which point ALL our technology will assault us with enough personally and precisely curated purchase prompts to beggar us into eternity.

But as anyone who was paying attention is aware, AI took it on the chin a bit in the markets this past week, as NVDA wannabes Oracle and Broadcom reported disappointments in the synthetic cognition elements of their enterprises. Which were of sufficient magnitude to place a damper on what otherwise was shaping up to be a pretty fair weekly showing for the equity complex.

To wit, the Gallant 500 breached (albeit modest) new heights on late in the week, before the above-named transgressors cast it down by an alarming >1% on Friday.

Prior to that, I found the vibe to be surprisingly upbeat, as driven, improbably, by a .25% Fed Rate Cut that everyone knew was in the bag. Chair Pow was rather dour in his subsequent remarks, hinting that future such actions would be few and far between.

But he’s out. By May at the latest, and I continue to believe that his exit will transpire earlier, as part of an effort by the Administration to co-opt the FOMC for political purposes. However, the latter showed some stones this past week by unanimously reappointing 11 out of 12 voting members (the 12^th – Atlanta Fed Chair Raphael W. Bostic – is pending resignation at the end of the year).

This renders 45/47’s path towards interest rate hegemony more difficult, but that is not to say he won’t succeed or at least try.

Because the electoral winds, as most recently exemplified by Miami’s having voted in its first Democratic Mayor in three decades, are blowing strong and ominous against him and his supporters. And these cats are known for neither their decorum nor strict adherence to established rules of engagement.

But sneakily, the Fed rendered some improbable aid and comfort in other forms to investors, specifically by initiating the purchase of ~$40B of its own securities this past Friday. In so announcing (at Wednesdays presser), Powell mumbled some gobbledygook about offsetting a growing challenge of reserve deficiencies. But I’m not picking up what he’s laying down.

Because in ancient times, these trades (the financial markets equivalent of copping a case of Bud Lite through an advertising link on a TV football game) were referred to as Quantitative Easing. And, particularly when Big Orange gets his man into the Fed Chairmanship, he and Bessent will indeed be cramming down rates.

Across the board and to beat the band.

The other market factor within his partial control – Commodities – has been for months showing signs of political manipulation which I expect to continue well into next year. Crude Oil – that most politically sensitized of commodities, is down nearly 20% in 2025. Wheat and Corn have yielded ground as well.

Precious metals, however, are a different story, which is not surprising given their historical reluctance to do the bidding of elected officials during periods of political strife. Copper is up >30%; Gold >60%. The biggest winner, though, is Silver, risen an astonishing 114% over this fast-expiring year.

This odd set of price trajectories has created a construct, not witnessed since 1980, where a single troy ounce of Silver carries sufficient value to purchase an entire barrel of Crude Oil

One way of looking at this is that when viewing a football game on Amazon Prime and considering (among other expenditure options) single click purchases of fine cutlery or petrol for one’s automobile, whether one would prefer to secure approximately two fill ups at the pump (42 gallons/bbl), or a single small silver spoon (weight range 1-2.5 troy oz.).

For me, this would present such a vexing quandary as to cause me to switch from the Falcons/Bucs game to the (commercial free) Ken Burns Revolutionary War series.

In further support of that trusty truism: what goes ‘round comes ‘round, and as identified by the WSJ as evidence of an AI-driven redux of 1990s dot.com risk, web infrastructure darling CSCO – the NVDA of its day – has just this past week regained the high ground it last achieved a generation ago:

CSCO’s millennial collapse was indeed rapid and frightening; its full recovery glacial, largely unremarked/unnoticed. But, while instructive, it probably has minimal implications for our fortunes in the dozen trading days that remain in 2025. One could also argue that the real action ceases by this Friday, as both Christmas and New Years fall disruptively in the middle of the subsequent two weeks.

Data-wise, and somewhat tardily, the November Jobs Report drops on Tuesday. And about the only other statistics on the ’25 docket are Friday’s release of the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment surveys.

But in terms of the latter, my advice is either to ignore the results or expect them to be artificially suppressed. Because given recent doings in Ann Arbor, one can only assume that the mood there is some combination of distracted and depressed.

But, perhaps, the less written about this the better.

Other than this; 1) the recent shenanigans at U of M have led to the temporary elevation to the exalted position of Head Football Coach of a guy who formed a successful hedge fund during the Bo Schembechler era; and 2) it has put at risk the largest-by-a-wide-margin NIL deal between the University and its starting Quarterback.

One can take a dim view of these outcomes. Or, like me, deem them as yet further examples of capitalism and free enterprise backing itself up all the way.

But now my Beauty Queens (Side 1, Track 2 of FYP), the time has come for us to become un-stranded, and to begin acting for our pleasure.

One can presumably achieve partial success in this regard in Amazona. During the Falcons/Bucs broadcast. With remote at the ready. And — whether it brings you a Portuguese horsewoman or a flock of parrots – I wish you due happiness.

However, from a risk management perspective, you’re on your own on that one.

TIMSHEL

When we get back, I’ll drop a line

Jim Morrison

Forgive me, but I always get a bit keyed up on December 8^th, and this year is no exception.

Because, across the ages, lotsa shit happened on that date. For one thing, it is the day, in 1776, when General Washington is said to have first crossed the Delaware River – setting the stage for our first significant victories – at Princeton and Trenton.

But more about 12/8 in a bit.

Because first, I feel compelled to weigh in on the sale of Warner Brothers to Mag 7 Junior Member Netflix – bringing the former’s iconic cast of characters – everyone from Bugs and Porky to Stanley Kowalski and Blanche DuBois — officially into the world’s fave streaming family. And to wonder if it doesn’t, from a market perspective at any rate, mark some sort of top.

Because delving back into the far recesses of my memory, I recall a courtside conversation with a mid-level WB executive whose son and mine were on the same munchkin hoops team. A mere fortnight after a millennial turn that was feared would cast us all into darkness, his company had merged with AOL – NFLX of its day insofar as it was the dominant force in the then-emerging forms of entertainment technology. A few weeks later, and for a brief time, options-endowed employees were insta-millionaires.

Sitting with him in the bleachers that winter, I asked my friend how the merger was progressing. “What merger?” he asked, and I said Time Warner/AOL.

“Don’t know” he responded “I’m still working on the integration of Warner Brothers with Time/Life” – a business combination consummated in the Mesozoic era of the late ‘80s – more than a decade earlier. Still and all, there was a huge buzz respecting the latter deal, as evidenced by the following image of Combined Company CEOs Steve Case and Gerald Levin:

Say what you will about the merits of the hook-up, which, on paper at any rate, was intended to integrate the world’s best catalogue of entertainment content with a new-fangled and unimaginably powerful technology delivery protocol:

YOU CAN’T FAKE A LOOK OF LOVE LIKE THAT.

If Case looks happier than Levin, it is with some justification. While Warner’s catalogue proved eternal, AOL’s technology quickly faded to also-ran status, History shows unambiguously who took, and who got taken, in that there deal.

More broadly, during the interval between the merger announcement (2000) and its consummation (2001), Captain Naz lost half its value (and this months before the famous attacks of the latter year):

The Captains Journey: Q1 2000 – Q1 2001

It took the Good Captain almost a decade and a half to recapture its previous high ground. Meantime, by 2003, AOL had crumbled, but Time Warner shuffles on. E. Fudd is still on his quixotic hunt for that Silly Wabbit, Time continues to pump out highly regarded if a bit pompous content – not only through its flagship publication but also via other snooty rages such as Travel and Leisure Magazine.

As if to prove that nobody learns nothin’ never, the Company merged with AT&T in 2016. But, of course, that didn’t work neither. Warner spun out in 2022, and ran independently, until, that is, last week’s announcement of its acquisition by the swarthy Netflix.

We wish them godspeed. But it sure seems like every time Warner Brothers, founded and run for so long by the toughest family of Jewish businessmen in these here parts, gets itself passed around, something bad happens in the markets. And in this instance, the parallels to the AOL episode are especially eerie, involving the sale of WB to a telecom flavor of the month.

Meantime, back to 12/8. While personally triggering for me but worth mentioning nonetheless, in 1886, a pain in the ass organizer named Samuel Gompers formed the American Federation of Labor.

In ’41, FDR gave his “day that will live in infamy” speech.

And now we get to the real stuff. On December 8, 1943, Jim Morrison (quoted above) was born. On his 22^nd Birthday (1965), the Catholic Church issued the formal findings of the Second Vatican Council – the first official ecumenical conclave in 400 years. I’m not sure what they decided, but it seems to have done little harm. Or good.

And then, of course, 15 years later, we arrive at the night when John Lennon was murdered.

The year was 1980 – 45 years ago. He was 40 when he was shot, so has long since passed the threshold, which all of us much reach, where he has been dead longer than he lived.

It breaks my heart.

But with that, we have run the gamut of events about which I care that transpired on December 8^th. No matter; it’s enough.

Here’s hoping that by contrast at any rate, today is quiet.

Because the week heats up from there – primarily due to the long-impending FOMC rate decision to be announced Wednesday afternoon. By now market participants have come to their senses and realized that a rate cut of at least 25 bp is in the bag.

For the bajillionth time, political forces impel this action, but the associated cause was certainly aided by a November ADP Jobs Report showing an alarming 32K contraction.

Meantime, over at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, after having cancelled outright its October release, it has pushed back the November data drop till the 16^th – several days after the FOMC speaks its wisdom.

Two days hence, this self-same BLS is said to be prepared to proclaim its November Consumer Price Index estimates. The release date for Producer Prices remains uncertain. But about these we can infer two things – that again for political reasons, the Administration will seek to influence prices to the downside (particularly foodstuffs and energy products), but that in order to do so, it must reverse the tide of surging commodity price baskets that now prevail:

Since I’ve nothing better to do on this (not so) hot afternoon, I’ll reiterate my belief that Wednesday’s podium turn will be Powell’s swansong. The political winds are blowing less than fair for the powers that be, which must steer its boat out of harm’s way by next Election Day.

Under these circumstances, the obvious thing to do is to throw a few old horses like Chair Pow over the Port side, which, again, I anticipate before Christmas.

If we get through today, there will be 16 trading days that remain to 2025, and I am reasonably confident we can endure them without much bitching things up.

But as for 12/8, much is out of our control. Jim Morrison’s birth had little apparent impact on the content of the 2^nd Vatican Council. Nor did the latter save some cockroach, 15 years later, from plugging John Lennon several times in the back.

It is only with rare wisdom that we bear these things in mind, and to react appropriately.

I’m off now, but I can say with near-certainty that when I get back, I’ll drop a line.

TIMSHEL

The money feels good, And your life you like it well
But surely your time will come, As in Heaven as in Hell
You see, he feels like Ivan, Born under the Brixton sun
His game is called survivin’, At the end of The Harder They Come

Paul Simonon

First, farewell to James Chambers, better known as Jimmy Cliff, who left us a week ago. It’s hard to be my age and maintain your dignity without having at some point declared yourself a Cliff-Head. But for me at any rate, he made his bones entirely in the year 1972, by having played lead gangster Ivan in the classic Jamaican film “The Harder They Come”, for which he also wrote most of the soundtrack.

And let me ask you: has there ever been more of a badass than Ivan, with his two guns, yellow hat and striped pants?

OK, so he’s been mailing it in ever since. But who hasn’t? Most of our heroes quit trying about 50 years ago; many have hung around to collect the check.

But for Cliff’s Ivan – further immortalized in the above-quoted Clash song — the game was called surviving. And, like Tiff, he never had a chance.

Almost indisputably, Cliff’s finest composition, featured prominently in the film, is “Many Rivers to Cross”, which he wrote in 1969 – a full three years prior to the release of the movie.

In late November 2025, he crossed his last river.

Meantime, somehow, we are down to the last 23 trading days of ’25. The associated remaining 9.1% of the action is, improbably, more than we usually get on this late date (8.33%) – mostly due to the reality that the month begins on a Monday and thus offers up 4 full weeks of action (minus holidays).

Still and all, that’s not many rivers left to cross in ’25.

It’s been nothing if not strange. Particularly in the back half, which, for me, has been marked by more bizarro shit than I care to recount. Among improbable events, late this summer I found myself for the first time in my life rocking compression socks. I can’t call them my particular jam, but they served their purpose at the time.

Still and all, the markets have survived — even, by some measures, thrived. All our equity indices are up by double digits. Interest rates are down across the curve. As is Crude Oil. Earnings growth has also dwelt comfortably in the low teens all year.

We’ve got strong GDP and employment numbers. Inflation remains stubborn but not alarmingly so.

So, there is now every probability that we can bring ’25 on home in such a way as to look back with pleasure on the experience. With the only things likely to trip us up being the consequences of human nature.

Ah, human nature. Always lurking to trip us up. The toughest river we are compelled to cross.

A few examples from this very past (holiday shortened) week come to mind. In the realms of food processing, a Campbell’s Soup IT Vice President was caught in a hot mike moment claiming that the chickens that populate its iconic delights come out of 3-D printers, with the finished product earmarked exclusively for poor people with limited information and financially constrained culinary options.

This False Profit of Fowl is no longer with the Company.

And one cannot help but feel a little bit sorry for Bibi, now seeking a pardon from an Israeli President no one knew even existed (or, for that matter, the job itself). If he fails and bails – to New York at rate – Zor will arrest him. There is thus every likelihood that his options shortly will have dwindled to prison in the Land of Milk and Honey’s less than welcoming correctional facilities, or Rikers Island.

If he chooses the latter, perhaps he will benefit from some local civic distraction. Two days before Thanksgiving, the New York City Council tried to slip one past the goalie by voting itself a 16% pay raise. Complicating matters is the reality that the timing of the move –transpiring as it did between the election of a new mayor and their installation in Gracie Mansion — was illegal. The elected representatives of the 51 municipal districts will thus be compelled to wait until 12:00:01 on January 1^st to present the proposal to the new mayor for his signature.

I’m really glad this happened, as I gleefully anticipate, yet again, that delicious, ironic intersection between moralizing and profiteering. If approved, the righteous new movement for civic affordability will have, as their first official act, enriched a group (themselves) whose affordability challenges are perhaps not at the top of the associated hierarchy.

This puts Zor in a difficult position. He didn’t come to town to light up a bunch of aldermen who already get free lattes at Starbucks anytime they so choose, and if he signs the proposal, it will give the lie to this rhetoric. Alternatively, he could bust out a veto, and, by doing so, annoy the very group he most needs to do his bidding.

Once he has settled matters with his own City Council, he can pivot to myriad other monetary beefs that await him – including the funding of services operated by unions not particularly famous for setting aside their own well-being in the interest of their constituents.

But once this is done, we can all drop off our kids at free childcare centers, hop on free busses and amble into city-sponsored grocery stores to fulfill our wildest shopping dreams. One can barely contain oneself in anticipation of the paradise that New York will become once that happy day arrives.

But that’s all one month, two major holidays, and 23 trading days, away. Meantime, market participants not given to turkey comas but rather to the resumption of post-holiday trading activities were greeted Thursday night by blank screens signaling malfunction at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s Water-Cooling facility in Aurora, IL. Home of Wayne Campbell. And Garth Algar.

For nine long hours that night, it was “game off”, reminding me of nothing so much as that time a couple of years ago, when the Las Vegas Spere was forced to display the Blue Screen of Death.

But the markets handled the glitch with touching equanimity, with Cornel Naz, after the previous week’s ignominious drop, rallying to end November in near-flattish territory:

Many of my clients, however, have a sadder post-Halloween tale to tell. Of, in some cases, an alpha nightmare. While its underpinnings are strong, the tape is acting strange. I believe that conditions will ease over the next several weeks, and expect, among other matters, that Team Trump//Bessent will have taken over the Fed by Christmas.

I don’t think that this will be a wise policy move, but it will goose stocks into year-end and beyond.

It is not an easy environment in which to operate. But then again neither was Ivan’s Trench town, circa 1972.

I think, though, if we can channel Cliff’s Ivan, we can, if not prevail, at least go out, like he did, in a blaze of glory. And that, my friends, is something for which to give thanks.

TIMSHEL

Moon River, wider than a mile, I’m crossing you in style someday,
Dream maker, you heartbreaker,
Wherever you’re going I’m going your way,
Two drifters, off to see the world, there’s such a lot of world, to see…

Mancini/Mercer

This one goes out to you, Tiff – Tiffany Grant Tulley my recently departed half-sister –who, though I didn’t find out about it till a week ago, left us on November 9^th.

Yup, that’ s her. Looking a good bit like her mother, which is understandable.

Because while Tiffany and I shared a father (we think, but with me more certain of my patriarchal lineage than her), that’s where our bio connection began and ended.

She is pictured here on the Mendicino coastline – near where she lived. I know this, because she was not one to travel much. And she didn’t need to, because, as anyone who’s been there will tell you, Mendo is a beautiful place.

And I have another half-sister, Sabrina (of even more questionable paternity): she’s Tiffany’s full sister (we think) — two years her junior. And (as I am sure you will agree), it’s only fair that I share her image as well:

I have not encountered Sabrina in more than a decade, and perhaps (though perhaps not) it’s because she may be a Sister from Another Mister.

Of the two, it is Sabrina that appears more likely to share DNA with me – if for no other reason than that unmistakable schnozz which resembles the probosces passed down from Grant generation to Grant generation, since the days when the Cossacks, overlooking these flaws, for several centuries ravaged our women.

But there is biological evidence to the contrary, and, though this is a story upon which I am disinclined to elaborate, the transfer of said intelligence was sufficiently upsetting for me to sever ties with Sab for eternity.

On the other hand, I stayed in touch with Tiff – albeit sporadically. So, I was not terribly surprised, if a little vexed, that I only learned the sad news indirectly, a fortnight after her passing.

This much is certain: Tiff was brilliant. I’d like to state that it runs in the Grant family, but, near as I can determine, the modifier can only be applied fairly to me and her. Among other things, she had a stone-cold photographic memory, a condition that I routinely tested by allowing her one minute to peruse pages from obscure books, which she would then recite verbatim.

But she never stood a chance. Affairs just never broke in her favor, and some of this was her own doing. For example, she quit Berkely a month before graduating Suma Cum Laude — after having financed her own tuition by doing the books for a clothing store on Telegraph Avenue, run by a dude that was fall-down drunk every morning by ten.

Meantime, while the girls were of uncertain paternal lineage, it can be confirmed that she and her sister were indeed the biological daughters of my dad’s second wife (whereabouts unknown), and a woman to whom I owe an eternal debt of gratitude — for turning me onto Audrey Hepburn.

I was in my 30s before I realized that she named both of her daughters accordingly – Tiffany based upon a line from main protagonist (the divinely named Holly Golightly), played by Miss Hepburn, in the film adaptation of Truman Capote’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (which, in outlier fashion, was a better movie than the novel upon which it is based).

“Sabrina”, of course, is the title character – played superbly by Miss Hepburn — in the Billy Wilder classic that also starred Humphrey Bogart and William Holden.

I also took a page from my step mama’s book, by naming my own son, whose 34^th birthday would have been this Wednesday, after the disturbed hero from “A Clockwork Orange”. As far as I am aware, the actor who played him – Malcom McDowell – is still with us. As is, presumably, my sister Sabrina. I’m not sure about my step mama, but the others are dead – including my son, my other sister, Truman Capote, Billy Wilder, Humphrey Bogart, William Holden and Miss Hepburn.

And it terms of the last of these, I think I fell in love with her during the scene in “B @ T’s” wherein, sitting on a windowsill of a Manhattan flat with a nylon-stringed guitar perched on her lovely lap, she authentically played, and sang, in a breathy voice, our thematic song.

Which is now one of my favorites. But this wasn’t always the case. This timeless classic, penned by no less than Henry Mancini (with lyrics by Johnny Mercer) was ruined for me during my childhood for being adopted as the theme song of Andy Williams, sung as smarmily as can be expected at the end of each episode of his weekly variety show.

But as for me, I will forget that outrage and think of the song only in conjunction with Audrey. And Tiffany.

There’s a moon river out there. It’s wider than a mile. We’ll cross it in style. Some day.

But not today.

It’s been that kind of year.

From a market perspective, we entered it in encouraging fashion. Political conditions favored the fortunes of the capitalist class. Artificial intelligence was poised to power our boats across any stream – no matter how wide. The regulatory vise was poised to come off.

The Prez and his family, themselves minting billions in crypto, were certain to use their political power to unleash the full force of digitized currency on the masses they presumed to control. They was also gonna squeeze the nuts of the Fed Chair and his cronies, forcing them to take short term interest rates down, while the Treasury Secretary took care of affairs at the longer end of the curve.

That’s adds up to a set of pretty fair winds for risk assets, and, indeed, our boats came out of dry dock in ’25 with sails unfurled into a gentle breeze. But we hit a stormy patch in early April, when 45/47 not only decided to unilaterally co-opt the world’s international trade protocols, but to do so in whimsical, inconsistent fashion. If it’s Tuesday, we are tariffing the shit out of everyone, if Thursday, not so much.

And so on and so on and shoobie doobie doo.

Ironically, the composer of that phrase, the incomparable Sly Stone, died in June. But by then the markets had recovered. Equity indices were on their way up; rates were coming down. BTC was trading comfortably in the six digits. The Fed began cutting in September, and it looked like we might at last reach the other side of that Moon River well before year end.

Somehow, however, we simply can’t seem to hold ourselves together. Like Tiff blowing off her last semester finals, we are acting, at present, against our own interests. Earnings have been about as pleasing as any mere mortal could wish them to be. And, just this past week, and after some hand wringing about whether AI was ahead of itself, that great corporate ship captain NVDA reported blowout earnings and guidance.

This delighted investors for all of about 15 hours, after which it and the rest of the equity complex sold off. Hard.

Contemporaneously, the deferred September Jobs Report showed strong gains — despite the impacts of the then-pending government shutdown (now ended) and the permanent dispatch of tens of thousands of public sector bureaucrats. Atlanta Fed Q3 GDP estimates now exceed 4%.

Thus, we enter this holiday week with the blessings of strong jobs and earnings data, surging GDP, significant downward pressure on interest rates, and, in summary much for which to be thankful and little about which to complain.

Yet not only are we in a pissy mood, but we are self-sabotaging in a way which perhaps only my sister(s) (either one) can fully appreciate. Indices are down. Vol is rising. BTC, recently up >50% from its April/Liberation Day lows, is now negative for the year.

I am tempted to refute this buzzkill and remind everyone of the penultimate lines of our song: “we’re after the same… …rainbow’s end, waiting ‘round the bend…”. Which of course is a hopeful message.

And there is hope. Particularly over this holiday week.

But then I think of Tiff. With so much going for her, and nothing ever going or going her way. And now she’s gone.

But we remain, and that same rainbow’s end is out there. In fact, it’s just around the bend.

It’s time to set our course and go.

TIMSHEL

As a former math major who earned a math degree but does not actually know much math (or, at any rate a good deal less than is generally assumed by the traders to whom I act as risk management cop), I feel particularly qualified to riff on our titular subject.

Further burnishing my credentials is my participation in that great but long-forgotten band – The Math Pistols – for whom I had the privilege of holding down the rhythm guitar spot some 45 years ago, and who delighted Madison audiences for several months with punk-inspired renditions of songs like Cat Stevens’ “Wild World” and Carol King’s “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?”.

After which, by popular demand, we broke up. But we did play the 1982 Mifflin Street Block Party on the roof of the Mifflin Street Co-op. And how many of y’all can claim as much?

If that doesn’t impress you, nothing will.

So, I may as well proceed by informing you that, routinely, I find math doing anything but mathing. If you’re a math major, you deal with this routinely. You can’t divide anything by zero. Negative numbers have no square root.

And even in word problems. The unresolved chronological emergence of the chicken and egg. The barber’s paradox: if a barber shaves everyone in town who doesn’t shave himself, and only those who don’t shave themselves, does he shave himself? The Monty Hall problem: should a Let’s Make a Deal contestant, after having made a door selection and having one of the other doors revealed to be worthless, change his pick (somehow, the answer is yes)?

One can look at non-mathing math in one of two ways – with frustration or with joyous acceptance. I choose the latter. And it has helped.

Because the parallels in the real world are striking. Take, for instance, the production of pennies, discontinued this past Wednesday after 238 years of fruitful multiplication. The math here simply wasn’t mathing (or, if you prefer, the economics were not economizing) – particularly insofar as producing a each one — the worth of which had been fixed for all time at $0.01 – costs $0.036.

OK; fair enough. But maybe we could do one more minted printing. Just another 3.8 quadrillion of them – to be used as a one-time payoff of our ~$38T debt. Of course, there are practical problems here – most notably the storage/transport of these new metallic Lincolns, the weight of which, at 2.5 grams/coin, would exceed 100 million tons.

Then again, the math of entire $38T and growing deficit ain’t, by any stretch, mathing. Reasonably reliable ratios (~125% of GDP, > $105K per capita, etc.) and the certainty of continued expansion tell a tale of unsustainability.

We ain’t gonna pay this back – at least by conventional means.

One would hope this was the motivation behind Chicago Treasurer/2026 Congressional Candidate Melissa Conyears-Ervin’s move to boycott the purchase of United States Treasury Securities, of which the lion’s share of the above-mentioned 38 Tril national hole is comprised. She does, after all, hold an MBA — from the conveniently located but heretofore unranked Graduate School of Business at Roosevelt University where she presumably received thorough preparation for managing the city’s $10B investment portfolio.

However, one would be wrong on that score as well; the move is instead a self-proclaimed one finger salute to 45/47. Indisputably, she has her reasons. But managing the financial affairs of a city which: a) now owes three times the value of its investment portfolio ($30B), b) takes in taxes about $2B and c) runs its own annual fiscal deficit in excess of $1B, one hopes that they are good ones:

As pointed out by the WSJ, the Windy City’s $10B of assets generated a 3.6% return last year, which falls short of the >4% yield on the U.S. 10 Year Note.

Presumably, though, the boycott is good politics –as she moves towards assuming the Congressional Seat of Danny Davis – retiring along with Pelosi after serving 14 terms. On the other hand, I think she stands about as much chance of losing as does JFK’s grandson Jack Schlossberg, now running to represent Manhattan’s 12^th District. Kalshi place’s Schloss’s odds at a meagre 25%, but given his connection to Camelot, I’ll take the over.

On a related note, and with only partially functioning math, the government re-opened this past week, after 7 weeks of furlough which nobody even noticed until the shortage of air traffic controllers disrupted the travel plans of the electorate. At which point peace and harmony prevailed on Capitol Hill.

One side benefit of this, albeit of dubious merit, is the deferred release of critical macroeconomic data – including September Retail Sales and (perhaps even more importantly) that month’s Jobs Report. However, no data point under the sun rises to the dignity of Wednesday’s NVDA earnings release, upon which not just the fate of the markets, but that of the economy and arguably of the entire world, rests.

Investors have demonstrated happy feet on the name, and, indeed upon the whole tech complex, wondering, in a non-mathing way, if this whole AI thing is all it’s cracked up to be. I wish I could help y’all here, but I’m fresh out of ideas and my subscription to Gemini just expired.

Some of the hand wringing is also owing to increased concern that the Fed, rather than cutting rates, is more likely to stand pat. So much so that the futures market now tilts probabilistically towards the latter:

I’d hasten to calm everyone’s fears about this. The decision is still 2 ½ weeks away and I’ll all but guarantee that it’s another slice at Fed Funds. If not, it’s so long Powell, been good to know ya.

More broadly, rates across the curve are coming down. By all accounts, the Treasury Department is active, if surreptitious, buyers of their self-issued securities and will continue to be so for at least the next year.

Whether this offsets the rate-rising impact of the Chicago boycott remains to be seen.

After that, the trajectory of rates will depend entirely on mid-term election outcomes. And it is a near-certainty that if the Democrats win, Team Bessent will be a less enthusiastic buyer of its own paper.

Till then, though, fixed income and equity securities should, at minimum retain a bid.

There may be some math that doesn’t math about the associated impact on inflation. But that, I suspect, is a trade-off that our betters are willing to accept. Among other matters, and as has been the case throughout history, the academic community sets the tone – as evidenced by a recently released internal report from Harvard University, indicating that grade inflation is now so rampant that the average Crimson GPA has reached a near-upper bound at 3.83.

I fell somewhat short of this threshold back in my undergrad days. At the University of Wisconsin, where, in 2024, the average GPA clocked in at a paltry 3.481.

I won’t say where I landed relative to the Wiscy standard back in ’82. Suffice to state that with the Math Pistols on the rise, I didn’t see much point in busting my hump.

But the Pistols broke up and I went on to grad school. Where non-English speaking, non-math majors cleaned my GPA clock.

Meantime, I am proud to be affiliated with an undergraduate institution that does not bestow the mark of perfection on its constituents for simply existing and showing up.

From this perspective, my world of non-mathing math comes full circle, the area of which is equal to the square of its radius, multiplied by T.

As even some non-math majors know, T is an irrational number, meaning it goes on forever. At last count, it has been calculated out to 105 trillion digits, a task which took a supercomputer 75 days to complete. And it’s not done. In fact, it is closer to the beginning, because there is no end.

Mathematicians have accepted this paradox with blithe spirit since T was first discovered. In ancient Egypt. More than 4,000 years ago. One could therefore argue that mathematicians have been non-mathing for more than 40 centuries.

Maybe the rest of you are simply catching up, and if so, it’s about time you did.

Because, viewed correctly, non-mathing math can not only be lucrative but fun.

TIMSHEL

Not gonna lie — from a general news perspective, I’ve had better weeks. Election Day Tuesday, my birthday notwithstanding, didn’t turn out as I would have wished it. Never thought I could root for any Cuomo other than Mario – any office in the land. But was forced to pull for his boy Andrew in the NYC Mayor’s race. And he lost. Badly.

I really liked the divinely named Winsome Earle-Sears, Virginia’s Lt. Governor. Who ran for the Dominion’s top spot. And got crushed.

I’ll never understand New Jersey – home of the highest state income taxes in the land and surrounded by economic agents from jurisdictions that would love to view it as a tax efficient alternative. If they weren’t so greedy – and particularly with Zor about to enter Gracie Mansion, the Jersey crew could be rocking the joint.

But no. Now that the current governor/former Goldman Sachs partner centimillionaire (all of whom, once they cash in, become touchingly liberal) has been term limited out, they replaced him with someone who will, with purpose, squander the opportunity.

California voters, ostensibly in response to a similar stunt by Texas, passed a 5-seat gerrymander. And, in general, it’s fair to summarize the Tuesday result in the following manner: if the midterms were held tomorrow, the Democrats would probably win by slaughter rule. At which point we can bust out a few dozen impeachment articles and have ourselves a real good time.

It only got worse from there. On Friday, we lost James D. Watson – co-discoverer of the DNA Double Helix structure, at the pleasingly advanced age of 97. He was kind of a crazy dude, but I will miss him, nonetheless.

The unkindest cut, however, came with the announcement of the pending discontinuation, after 208 years of publication, of The Farmer’s Almanac. And even though: a) it’s not done yet/will put out one last annual edition; and b) I have never cracked a single one of its pages, I feel the loss.

Adding to the confusion is the reality that there are two Farmer’s Almanacs – the soon-to-be-discontinued, above-mentioned periodical, and an even more ancient one, originated in 1792 (during George frickin’ Washington’s first term and in the midst of the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror), called, appropriately, the Old Farmer’s Almanac, which will continue to role out its annualized wisdom – in print and digital form.

Given that the Old Farmer’s Almanac launched a full generation before the regular Farmer’s Almanac, one wonders about the nomenclature. Did the former publication use the introductory geriatric modifier at the start, or did they only add this when the rival publication emerged in 1818? The question reminds me of the old joke about Famous Amos and his eponymous cookies. And the associated ponderings as to what, other than his indisputable cookie making acumen, what made him famous in the first instance and allowed him to so declare himself as a celebrity ere a single sheet of dough emerged from the oven?

All the above put kind of a buzz kill vibe onto the markets. Which a month ago would have bothered me not at all but is beginning to get under my skin.

And I believe I know part of the reason. Specifically, this past Wednesday the U.S. Supreme Court heard the first Oral Arguments in “Learning Resources v. Trump, and Trump v. V.O.S. Selections” — a combined case intended to determine, once and for all, the legality (or absence thereof) of the current administration’s wandering, often indecipherable International Trade Policy.

And it seems like a particularly sticky wicket because of all the unknowns. We begin with the timing of the decision, which, under normal protocols, would likely not take place until the end of the SCOTUS session next June. However, given the stakes, I have a hunch that they move quicker on this one.

There is also a good deal of uncertainty as to the predisposition of the justices themselves. Multiple published reports suggest that even the conservative contingent is expressing skepticism as to whether this policy is consistent with Presidential protocols. And, for my part, I join them in this doubt. In addition to my general disdain for economic transactions under which private agents are the payers and governments are the recipients (which I believe to be necessary but should be kept to a minimum), my reading of our laws grants the power of taxation not to the President, but rather, to Congress.

Finally, I’m not sure how the following Harvard Matrix should be populated:

Gun to my head, I think the market does better – at least in the short term – if The Court gives Trump his way – mostly because if the Big Guy can’t do his tariffs through the front door, he’ll do it through the side or back.

But I don’t know.

And, given all the above, it’s little wonder that the tape felt a bit wobbly this week.

Meantime, there are weird doings in the short-term bank funding and Repo markets – at a point when (coincidentally or otherwise), margin debt is surging from one all-time high to the next:

And were that not enough, the government shutdown is now squeezing out U.S. airspace. However, perversely, I believe this is a good thing. Nothing will bring politicians to heel in my opinion quicker than a bunch of cancelled and or delayed flights – particularly with Thanksgiving looming. So, my bet is that Congress gets its act together and passes a Continuing Resolution within the next fortnight.

To this end, it does appear that the Labor Department is fixin to release Inflation and Retail Sales figures this week. Apparently, pricing and affordability were wedge issues in last week’s elections – particulary in New York City, where, seconds after the Times Square year-end ball drops, the new mayor will take office and everything will be free.

And adding to this positive pricing vibe is Trump’s insistence that we believe him instead of our lying eyes and that prices are not increasing but actually coming down.

Phew, that’s a relief. Not only is everything cheaper, but the trend paves the way for the series of interest rate cuts which I am convinced, come what may, are imminent. Particularly after last week’s election pendulum swing, either Powell accommodates this, or he’s gone by Christmas.

I believe in light of all the above, the market is in double helix configuration:

It ain’t pretty. Nor is it easy to trade.

But it is our DNA. So we learned from James B. Watson and Francis Crick.

Both are now dead, as will shortly be the Farner’s Almanac.

I’m not gonna pretend to understand the DNA stuff, or even the weather and gardening content of the Almanac. Instead, I simply hang on to the reality that both have served us for ages – the former since we emerged from the primordial ooze; the latter for more than two centuries.

These are the tools bequeathed upon us by the heavens. Let’s use them wisely, and weep for no troubles but our own.

TIMSHEL

Honey, got no money,
I’m all 6s and 7s (and 9s)

Mick and Keith

I begin, stepping intrepidly into the realms of the overly personal, by informing you that tomorrow is my birthday. My 66^th birthday. Which means I will be beginning my 67^th trip around the sun.

To which I only have one thought.

6-7!

If you’re wondering what I’m writing about, you’re not alone. But know this: 6-7 has taken over the world and no one knows why. The phrase was once believed to have originated during the height of the Roman Empire: with senators and the privy council uttering VI-VII, as a precursor to Caesar’s famous phrase Veni Vidi Vici.

This is not correct, however. In point of fact, it was first coined by a Musical Maestro Skrilla – in his Symphony 27 — 3^rd Opus for Oboe and Viola (aka “Doot Doot”). And then, somehow, a TikTok video superimposed it upon the persona of upper tier and still-emerging NBA player LaMelo Ball (who happens to be 6’7”). And off we went.

The phrase (often accompanied by an alternating upward/downward move of each hand, as though operating an invisible Slinky) has since dominated the pre-teen/teen lexicon. I first learned it from my older grandsons – age 10 and 8. I asked them what it meant, and they didn’t tell me because they didn’t know. Nobody does.

The inference here is that it has no meaning, which, I reckon is the beauty of it. Near as I can determine and depending upon context it reflects either greatness or mediocrity.

Or (if you’re into dialectics and who isn’t?) both.

I was at least relieved to rule out its association with the misandrist, arguably diabolical phrase 6-6-6, suggesting that a man is only datable if his salary is (at least) 6 figures, he is (at least) 6 feet tall, and his privates measure (at least) 6 inches in length. Though (not to brag) I check each box, I find the standard to be humiliating.

Instead, I prefer 6-7, which one can interpret any way one chooses. And aside from that, I believe it well reflects the realities of the world in which we live, as well as those of the markets in which we invest.

If one takes the effort to look around, one sees helzapoppin’. Lots to do; lots to see. One can go whale watching in Nantucket for example. Or visit the Great Wall of China. Until yesterday, all four of Americas fave sports were operating at full throttle.

There are high-profile regional elections tomorrow – none perhaps more impactful than that for the NYC Mayoralty. None are likely to change anyone’s life much (including in NYC, where the presumptive winner is likely to neither do anywhere near the damage that many fear nor confer the bennies for which many hope). But here’s the best news: it should be a boon to cable viewership and associated advertising revenues.

Referring to the latter, want new bathroom appliances? There’s a company out there that will simply build a new bathtub right on top of your old one and complete the process in a single day. There are supplements which will energize our sorry carcasses, improve our memories and extend, no matter what our anatomical footprint, our most pleasureful romantic interludes.

6-7.

There’s new technology out there which allows us to relax our weary, worried minds by doing our thinking for us.

Again, 6-7.

This last concept dominates the current market vibe – particularly during the Earnings Season. Our best loved companies are reporting blowout results, but experiencing, at least episodically, the wrath of the Investment Community concerned about how much all this is costing.

6-7.

The Government Shutdown carried across the November 1^st milestone, where, according to law, it must stop the conveyance of food benefits – allowing both sides of the political spectrum to accuse the other – not only of starving babies, but of doing so purposefully as the main objective of their policy agendas. Meantime, we can look forward to the prospect of a glittering new White House Ballroom to be enjoyed not by us, but by our betters.

6-7.

As expected, the Fed cut overnight rates by 0.25% this past Wednesday. But Powell was a little pissy in his presser, suggesting in particular that we cool our jets on further hackage and thus causing a petulant selloff into the close.

Well, 6-7. But I have a strong suspicion that if he doesn’t cut again at the December meeting (the 10^th), Chair Pow will almost certainly be deep sixed (sevened?) by 4(6?)7. Because we are entering the portion of the cycle when the politics of interest rate policy will begin their path towards crescendo. The powers that be must have lower rates by Spring – to goose, among other things, the Housing Market. And they will have them. The process has already begun.

It should thus come as little or no surprise that along with the distressingly (though benign) hawkish tone adopted by Powell in his remarks, comes news that Fed Balance Sheet reduction is at a practical end (for now at any rate). It is at the longer end of the curve where Fed activity will be most impactful. Don’t be surprised if, as opposed to shedding assets, our central bankers do a little shopping.

(Everyone say it with me –) 6-7.

To great fanfare, our heroes at NVDA witnessed their stock breaching into quaint >$5 Trillion territory. This figure, of course, is in eyes-glaze-over realms, but make me rather nostalgic. For those simpler days of 2018, when there as much hand wringing over the prospect of a single company’s (AAPL’s) valuation reaching for the first time to a dainty $1 Trillion.

The new figure is, of course, 5x this value, over a period where U.S. GDP growth increased an impressive 50%. But back in ’18, NVDA market cap, which backed of by the week’s end to an ignominious $4.92T, topped out at about $90B.

6-7, 6-7, 6-7, 6-7, 6-7.

Earnings season continues but we must wait till nearly Thanksgiving ere we are enlightened by the latest NVDA tidings. There’s plenty with which to occupy ourselves in the meanwhile. But one data point which we will be compelled to forego is the October Jobs Report – scheduled for release this coming Friday but postponed due to the (presumably temporary) shuttering of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The Fed, which however remains open, continues to project a ~4% growth rate for Q4, which is a heady performance.

Of course, there’s some spooky spots out there. Including that reflected by this little tidbit I unearthed:

I reckon nobody told the credit markets that Halloween is over.

In general, however, I think there is ample cause to embrace our inner 6-7, viewing it not as a wishy-washy non-factor, but rather as a joyful expression of glad tidings to come. Market conditions are on the whole favorable, and this is neither always the case nor a condition that lasts forever.

Because some of these days, 6-7 will also disappear from our awareness, as did its predecessor: Skibidi – another term of no coherent meaning.

So, I say, chin up, y’all. If I didn’t mention it before, tomorrow is my birthday. The start of my 67^th trip around the sun. It’s not beginning as I would have willed it, because of the miles between us. I deeply wish it were otherwise and recognize that it’s on me to make it so.

Because now is the time.

And in closing, I have only one more comment to make. But won’t offer it.

Because if you haven’t figured out what it is by now, it’s likely you never shall.

TIMSHEL