“The story is told that when Joe was a child his cousins emptied his Christmas stocking and replaced the gifts with horse manure. Joe took one look and bolted for the door, eyes glittering with excitement. “Wait, Joe, where you going? What did ol’ Santa bring you?” According to the story Joe paused at the door for a piece of rope. “Brought me a bran’-new pony but he got away. I’ll catch ’em if I hurry.” And ever since then it seemed that Joe had been accepting more than his share of hardship as good fortune, and more than his share of sh*t as a sign of Shetland ponies just around the corner, Thoroughbred stallions just up the road. Were one to show him that the horses didn’t exist, never had existed, only the joke, only the sh*t, he would have thanked the giver for the fertilizer and started a vegetable garden”.
— Ken Kesey –“Sometimes a Great Notion”
Really sorry to do this to you, what, with it being Christmas Eve and all. But old habits die hard. I’ve seldom missed a week of sending out this Thoroughbred Stallion of a note, and, even though today’s offering may be nothing more than a Shetland Pony, I reckon this week is no exception.
I’ll dedicate it to old Joe: Joe Ben Stamper, one of the greatest characters in what may be my favorite book of all time: Ken Kesey’s “Sometimes a Great Notion”.
I highly recommend this novel to anyone who wants to place his her squarely on a piece of true terra firma. But you’ll have to be patient. Let the book come to you. It is written in a stream of conscious motif, with multiple characters, along with a narrator, telling the story from different points of view, at different times. Once you crack the code, if you’re like me, you won’t be able to put it down.
I read it first in college, and, while I have since consumed hundreds of works of literary fiction, this is the only one for which I can say, once I finished it, I went back to the beginning and began again.
One cannot help but admiring Joe Ben and his inexorable optimism, particularly given that the book’s title (and some of its content) assumes darker hues. The title itself is purloined from Hudie (Leadbelly) Ledbetter’s classic song “Goodnight Irene”, and more specifically from the verse:
“Sometimes I live in the country, sometimes I live in the town,
Sometimes I take a great notion,
To jump in the river and drown”
Well (SPOILER ALERT), Joe Ben did end up drowning in the river, but it was no great notion of his; in fact, it was no notion at all. The very thought would’ve horrified him.
With ’17 winding down, I feel we could all use a little dash of Joe Ben’s eternal hopefulness, but this righteous quality appears to be in drastically short supply this holiday season. Everyone, instead, appears to be angry, and one wonders why.
Case and point: completing my cycle of obligatory holiday conspicuous consumption (as perhaps reaching its crescendo with last week’s viral news of my purchase of an I-Phone 8), on Friday, my wife and I copped a full drum kit, begging the question as to how we endured without one for so long.
The model I chose looks like this:
Pretty sweet set, no? But at the checkout line, I got into argument with the cashier when she positively insisted on trying to sell me one of those rip-off Extended Warranties.
An Extended Warranty? For a drum set? The sound that you hear is John (Bonzo) Bonham and Keith Moon executing a synchronized roll in their final resting places. I still plan on enjoying the purchase, and I don’t even play drums. But some of the seasonal tidings were lost in Warranty Episode, and I can’t help but feeling that this sort of buzz kill vibe is needlessly pervading our sensibilities, to no good purpose, in inappropriate forms, and certainly at an unfortunate point in the calendar.
Closer to our core interests, for instance, the Ruling Party managed, against considerable odds, to push through a pretty material piece of tax reform legislation this past week, and, in what can only be characterized as a double dip, even gathered itself to waive in a Continuing Budget Resolution which enabled the President to sign the Big Bill. But did the equity markets rally on this achievement? They did not. The Gallant 500 actually closed down a few basis points on the heels of the announcement.
Perhaps this is due to (presumably backed by the type of extensive voter analytics that catapulted Hillary Clinton to – well, back to Chappaqua) the Democratic Leadership’s desperate struggle to outflank one another in terms of hysteria-driven criticism of the initiative. Here, there was a clear winner, the Favorite: one Nancy Pelosi (D-Cali), who characterized the legislation as “the worst bill in the history of the United States Congress”.
Even Bernie couldn’t top that one.
But really Nancy? Worse than the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which forced indentured souls captured on free soil to be delivered back into servitude? Worse than the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798, that allowed for the wholesale imprisonment of non-naturalized immigrants, and made it a crime for anyone to speak out against the Adams Administration?
But apparently, for whatever we’ve lost during these troubled times, we have gained back in the form of unhinged political hyperbole.
Last week also featured a rude awakening for Bitcoin investors and other virtual currency enthusiasts. Everyone’s favorite (at least for now) non-asset asset dropped 25% on Friday, in part due to some mean things that former Hedge Fund Honcho/current crypto maven Mike Novogratz tweeted about the concept. Those that read the tweet all the way through (admittedly a challenge in the expanded 240-character Twitterverse) are aware that at the end of the “tome”, he characterized his selloff projection as “just pausing”. But no matter, the damage had been done.
Be that as it may, I have nothing useful to convey about Bitcoin, so I will leave it at that.
Soy Beans continued their rout, as did Natural Gas.
Soy Beans:
Natural Gas:
Other markets were quiet, and presumably will remain so through the ball drop at midnight on 12/31.
So I think I’ll take my leave on a more Joe Ben-like note. I have a Great Notion that investors may be served up a pretty strong market in ’18. My repeated theory about the scarcity of quality investment securities is now so ubiquitous that I heard Cramer crowing about it on TV last week. All the macro figures are pointing upward, and not just in the United States. The good folks with whom I reason are telling me that Q4 earnings look like a blowout. And whatever else happens with this new tax regime, it is a windfall for most corporations, and Ms. Pelosi is right when she predicts that many will apply large portions of their newfound bounty to the continuance of their stock repurchase programs.
So the time may indeed be upon us to look past the sh*t served up in our stockings and towards the Shetland Ponies from which it issued forth. Joe Ben showed us how, keeping (SPOILER alert) his joyful spirit to the very end, when, though drowning, he actually died laughing. This holiday season, we could do worse than follow his example.
Happy Holidays to everyone, and of course, as always….
TIMSHEL