I must cop to having something of an inferiority complex with regards to the University of Michigan. Having taken my degree from the flagship institution of the state immediately to its left (and one that has the more legit claim to the Upper Peninsula, but that’s another story), I’ve had to live with the following realities.
It consistently ranks higher on the endless string of academic surveys that plague us, but which we cannot ignore. It has the more illustrious alumni (one former president, Madonna, the founder of the SDS). It sends many more graduates to Wall Street.
Heck, even in terms of team nomenclature, I am repeatedly compelled to remind myself that badgers are members of the wolverine family within in the short-legged omnivore sub-genus Mustelidae.
In the signature sport of football, they have cleaned our clocks – 18 B1G titles to our 14; Four Heisman winners to our two. Head-to-head record 17 to 52.
And, if I’m being completely honest, they have a better fight song than we do.
So, naturally, I shed no tears that the B1G has taken the baller step of suspending slightly unhinged Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh for the final three games of the regular season.
At issue is a convoluted sequence where a staff level coach booked himself tickets to upcoming opponent’s games, busted out his cell phone, and stole hand signals issuing from the sideline. Is this even illegal? Or immoral? Heck, I think that not doing so would represent a grievous failure of due diligence.
The suits at B1G HQ felt otherwise and banned Harbs from the sidelines for the final three games of the conference schedule.
Perhaps this is a message to incoming institutions UCLA and USC (which are certainly capable of various forms of espionage in their quests for glory for the Bruins and the Men of Troy) not to pull any fast ones.
But Harbs is not happy (not that he ever is), and is taking his case to the courts, where, presumably, his argument will take the form of reminding the judge that stealing signals is the American Way. For 2.5 centuries, our boys have died face down in the mud to protect the ritual, which, if not codified in the Bill of Rights, certainly ought to be.
So, there’s a lot riding on the pending ruling here. Perhaps even the very existence of society as we know it.
Meantime, taking a quick glimpse at the calendar – which I do from time to time – I note that there are a mere 6 weeks left to 2023.
At the risk of stating the obvious, it seems like it has barely begun, or, at minimum, should be no more than half over.
But here we are – two weeks left in November and four in December. That adds up to six.
Translated into trading days, we’re looking at ~30. But if you factor in holidays such as Christmas, Thanksgiving, as well as the market irrelevant Black Friday, the Christmas Eve midday close, and, of course, the 10th of Tevet (12/22), which consigns me and my observant Mishpocha to fasting, the number of sessions in which to authentically chop some wood dwindles to 25.
That’s 25 out of 250 each year, or, in other words, somehow, we’re 90% completed with this trip around the investment sun. It’s thus now or never in terms of generating a respectable full-year result.
Time is therefore running out to use signal stealing as a means of posting a constructive ’23 return.
This week’s action suggests that investors are taking notice and are striving mightily to create accretive market scenarios. Our equity indices have all rallied +/-10% over the last fortnight, and Col. Naz closed Friday a skinny 20 index points from its year-to-date highs. 10-year yields are off 40 bp. USDJPY hit record levels during Friday’s session.
Crude Oil, the raging of wars in geographic proximity to two important production centers notwithstanding, has settled in at benign levels. The VIX is at a subdued 14. Bitcoin is up by >30% over the past rolling quarter.
Outperforming all contestants, though, are two tasty edibles – Sugar and Cocoa – both of which are surging from one all-time high to the next:
But unless your bag is quirky commodities, there have been few signals to steal, and the signal supply for the remainder of 2023 is dwindling down to imperceptible levels.
I reckon that this week’s CPI and PPI readings will give us some indication of Inflation trajectories (else why calculate these figures at all?), but nearly all of us will receive these data points contemporaneously, and anyone seeking a purloined early read should probably think again. The enforcement crew at the Bureau of Labor Statistics are meaner than rattlesnakes, and I would counsel one and all against locking horns with them.
Both measures are projected to be benign, suggesting further progress in our battles against price demons. But this comes at the expense of dilutive economic activity. On Thursday, we get a look at October Retail Sales, projected to have declined 0.7%.
It also bears mention that Wednesday marks the close of the always-dreaded 45-day hedge fund redemption window, which, alas, is unlikely to offer much insight.
Moody’s – that Uber patriotic organization that is the only major credit rating agency to steadfastly maintain its top rating on Treasury debt – has now put this paper on ominous “Negative Watch”. A signal? A portent of things to come? The answer will require our patience.
Other than that, not much. For the rest of the year.
Of course, there are less data-driven stimuli on the horizon, including the progression of the latest scuffle in the Middle East, the approach of the increasingly depressing presidential election cycle, another debt ceiling showdown, etc.
But I suspect that all this is thin gruel for signal stealers. For those deriving signals from reading charts, they all look great, but I suspect that the good vibe feel of this tape will soon run its course. And we will be left where we began. In a valuation limbo where the signal to noise ratio is alarmingly low.
Which is another reason why the expected return to signal stealing is probably not worth the attendant risk.
Whine about it if you will. The Wolves, when not singing their punchy fight song “The Victors”, were crying rivers all weekend.
But to The Victors go the spoils. Michigan, with Harby reportedly attending a Wolve hockey game in Ann Arbor, scored a victory on Saturday on Mount Nittany against the 10th ranked Penn State Lions.
And, to add insult to injury, one of the key plays featured a TD saving tackle by a 340-pound Michigan DT, whose name I couldn’t help but notice.
There he is. Number 78. In Maize and Blue. But he ain’t me. While the Mich KG was motoring, I was in NY, fixin’ to watch my Badgers suffer perhaps their most ignominious loss in decades, getting crushed at Camp Randall by lowly Northwestern. The score was 24-10, but the game was an absolute slaughter; perhaps the most humiliating loss by them that I have ever witnessed.
My eligibility ran out in the early ‘80s, and these days I am rockin it sub-200. But in these troubled times, if they need me to line up over Center, all they need to do is give me a call.
Score another one, meanwhile, for the Wolves, who don’t even have a real or anthropomorphic mascot, while Bucky the Mighty Badger licks his noble wounds.
Alas, some things never change. But I’m not gonna cry about it, because I am not a whiny wolverine.
TIMSHEL