“Laugh at the world’s foolishness, you will regret it; weep over it, you will regret that too; laugh at the world’s foolishness or weep over it, you will regret both. Believe a woman, you will regret it; believe her not, you will also regret it… Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will regret that too; hang yourself or don’t hang yourself, you’ll regret it either way; whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is the essence of all philosophy.”
— Soren Kierkegaard
Today, we draw from yet another ubiquitous source – Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, widely acknowledged to be the father of Existentialism.
While there may be some debate about this, I consider the matter to be settled, because any Danish philosopher, is, by definition, a walking oxymoron, and, therefore, Existentialist to the bone.
You may choose to call BS on this generalization, but on my immortal soul, I have a friend from Denmark. And he tells me that the big joke — out Copenhagen-way — is that summer lasts one day there.
Like I mentioned, if you’re gonna be a Danish philosopher, Existentialism as about your only option.
Kierkegaard’s point in the above-purloined passage should be self-evident. Our options are ever sub-optimal, and this is true no matter what path you take.
But he deliciously begs the question as to whether making any choice is worth the effort. I believe that he’s telling us it is. Just decide already, fer Chrissakes; you’re gonna be sorry anyway, so you may as well choose your own mournful poison.
And of course, so much of this applies to modern times that I just couldn’t help myself from adding to the deafening Kierkegaard chorus.
Let’s begin with politics (I know, I know). It seems to me that our passage was a direct message from SK to Biden. One gets to feeling sorry for him — because whatever he does: a) he’s gonna piss a bunch of people off, to such a degree that; b) he’s bound to regret whatever action he takes.
General consensus informs us that last week was pretty rough for him, and – not gonna lie — I could’ve lived without his hyperbolic claims about Democracy hanging by a thread, followed as it was by a tantrum suggesting that a refusal to support changing Senate rules for the purpose of nationalizing elections was tantamount to high treason. He got hisself all worked up, and it wasn’t a good look. On the other hand, when he goes all beta, staring out with those twinkly, doughy eyes and bleating about his hopes and dreams for us peons, it may be worse. For him and for us.
No matter what he does, he can’t win. For those who propped him up in 2020, he already served his purpose – ridding the premises of the scourge of Trump. And, having done so, no one’s got his back. His supporters have no need or desire to do his bidding; don’t, by all appearance, care, at this point, whether he lives or dies. All that remains is their lists of (incongruent) demands for him, backed by vague threats disappear him altogether if he doesn’t come through.
One wonders if he’s glad or sorry that he went down this cockamamie presidential path in the first place.
My guess is the answer is yes, and that Kierkegaard would understand.
Then there’s these confounded Kierkegaardian markets, within which, it truly seems, it doesn’t matter what you do (or don’t) do, you’re bound to regret it.
At least we come by this condition honestly — because this is one hot mess of an investment backdrop. This week brought confirmation (as if we didn’t know already) that Inflation is running rampant and is presenting itself in realms where everyone has a stake.
Crude Oil prices, for instance, are higher than they’ve been since 2014:
But that Retail Sales, Industrial Production, Business Confidence, Consumer Confidence, etc. are all on the wane.
Most of the banks reported this past week and that, too, was ugly. (However, we’ve yet to hear from Goldman, who probably did OK). The rest of the earnings cycle now follows, holding prospects that few this side of Kierkegaard himself are likely to relish.
Yet, in spite of it all, risk assets hold at near-record valuations, as supported by more liquidity than anyone has experienced in their lifetimes. The Fed is gonna taper, and Jamie says they gonna raise short-term rates, like, six times this year. But they’s still printing > $100B a month, their Balance Sheet remains at a bloated $9T, and the Fed Funds rate continues to rest at a microscopic 0.25%.
Real rates are deeply negative – more so, in fact, than they’ve been in seventy-five years:
Now, in case anyone is confused here, the red line is Inflation. The irrelevant black line is the nominal rate, and the blue line, being the difference between the two, is the real rate.
I know it’s a little hard to read, but Big Blue is clocking in at -6.5%. Meaning that borrowers pay, and clueless lenders receive, 93.5 cents for every dollar put out on the street.
No wonder, in consequence, that corporations are falling all over themselves to borrow all they can.
I reckon there’s some folks (aside from the obvious clique of well-heeled debt issuers) out there who benefit from all of this, maybe even some investors. But they are not among the circle of my acquaintance.
All of which leads us back to our theme: oh intrepid market participant? Watcha gonna do?
A strong argument can be put forward that it don’t much matter because you’ll regret whatever it is.
Load the boat and play for another leg up in the rally? Jamie seems to endorse this, and they didn’t pay him $100 large last year for spit-balling. But I am unable to support the underlying hypothesis.
Limit your action to the high-flying tech names? Ask Cathy Wood how that’s working out.
Play fundamental, long-oriented valuation mismatches? My inbox is chock full of horror stories and morality tales respecting this strategy.
Beef up your shorts and seek to monetize a crash? I’m gonna slap you. No one has EVER made a nickel attempting this; trust me: the stories you hear about short-selling riches are nothing more than urban myths. Besides, there’s too much cash floating around for this approach to play to your advantage.
How about crypto, NTFs and all that jazz? Yes, I know of several young persons who converted their bar mitzvah money into enough jack to purchase private jets and Italian seaside villas. But what’s your edge?
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All of which leads to the extreme option of liquidating everything and bagging your investment activities – full stop. But I don’t expect you to do this. Because you are made of sterner stuff.
And I think you’ll regret it if you do. Yes, you’re likely to also regret it if you don’t, but that, my friends, is beside the point.
And if you don’t understand this, well, then, you probably just don’t get Kierkegaard. If so, that’s a shame, because, I think, Kierkegaard gets you.
But don’t, no matter what Kierkegaard says, hang yourself. I promise that you’ll have reason to be glad for rejecting that.
If you feel you must check out, at least consider the path taken by one Jeffery Parker: former Director of the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA). Not sure what was bugging him, but he decided to off himself, in a manner that can only be described as going out in a blaze of panache.
On Friday, he threw himself in front of one of his own MARTA trains.
I can’t say whether he regrets his self-antihalation or not. But one certainly must award him his style points for his methods.
Somewhere in the cosmos, Kierkegaard must be smiling on him.
And that, my friends, is the essence of MY philosophy.
TIMSHEL