Much as I hate laying ultimatums on y’all, I feel I have no choice but to bring the hammer down — this one time.
I’m giving everyone until year end, at which time I am putting a permanent moratorium on the term “word salad”. And I insist on this deadline — irrespective of the outcome of the November election, which might very well see the person who is (somewhat justifiably) most associated with the term, emerge victorious.
Doesn’t matter if she wins. And we must endure, at minimum, four years of literary lettuce thrust upon us on a daily basis. The term W S will be banned from the vernacular.
Because, you see, having been accused many times of tossing verbiage in a bowl that also contains tomatoes and other garnishments, and combining them into expressions – often in this very space — this is one of the few areas of solidarity between the current Vice President and yours truly that exists.
And I think that both of us would agree: the term itself is little more than Word Salad.
None of which is to suggest that the issues we all confront, and/or articulation of same, is easy to deconstruct and communicate. But for me, the problem is more one of trying to figure out what in the hell is going on out there. Yes, my considerations are all scrambled up in a bowl but are more suitable to be pureed and boiled than they are for tossing.
Call it Word Salad (for now) if you will, but I am more prepared to deem it Thought Soup, and I feel particularly justified in doing so considering, as discussed in our September 16th issue, the Campbell folks in Camden, NJ have removed the word Soup from their corporate branding.
So, we take up the mantel for those iconic purveyors of frothy delights encased in red and white metal cans. And appropriately so, because it is truly soupy out there, so soupy, in fact that a nearly forgotten but once beloved comedian of a brothy handle must be looking down on us with a big ol’ toothy grin:
I learn from my erudite research that Soupy Sales obtained his nick from the reality that he was born one Milton Supman, in the otherwise non-Semitic burg of Franklinton, NC.
He was a World War II vet. He lived to be nearly 90. His two sons played in bands with Todd and Bowie.
His humor is dated by modern standards. Most of us wouldn’t find him funny now. But I’m sure he’d find us to be hilarious.
And it can be cogently argued that we have hit (though God knows what happens in the future) peak
soupiness. And this comes at a rather inconvenient time, because, though we’ve tried to stave it off, October is upon us. And with it, all possible vagaries converge upon the investing populus. There are monthly and quarterly economic data points to parse, along with quarterly earnings.
The geo-political situation has hit a new elevation of temperature, with Israel’s aggressively masterful attacks on Hezbollah. Whatever one’s view of these tidings may be, this much is certain. The IDF is the baddest set of mofos anywhere. First, they blew the shorts off thousands of beeper bearing banditos, Since then, they’ve taken out three top layers of Hez leadership without breaking a sweat. By contrast, it took us a decade and a half to bag Saddam, and nearly 10 years to do Bin Laden – neither of whom had the infrastructure of the Mullah-backed terrorist organization headquartered in Lebanon.
Bibi went into the most hostile territory (for him) this side of the Reichstag (i.e. The U.N. General Assembly) last week, to announce to the world that he had no intention of stopping or slowing until the dogs call off the assaults (averaging ~30 a day since October 7th) on Northern Israel.
And all of this in the days leading up to Rosh Hashanah, this Wednesday, ushering in the year 5785. Due to the caprices of the calendar, Rosh transpires precisely one month prior to the quadrennial American election, a linkage which reminds me of the widely circulated axiom that much of American Judaism can be summed up as the Democratic Party Platform, with holidays added.
Our election itself is perhaps the soupiest part of the soup, and I won’t allow myself to fall too deeply into its deconstruction. More than anything else, it reminds me of a soup that a restaurant produces out of
yesterday’s otherwise-to be discarded ingredients.
The candidates deeply are both flawed, and the prospect of either one of them taking the reins is deeply depressing to me. But I do wonder why any Israeli-supporting Jew would consider voting Democratic, because the latter organization has, at minimum, backed itself into a rhetorical corner in terms of its associated support. They can only do so much, may do nothing at all. And this means that the mullahs will be given a free, no, make that subsidized, hand to wreak havoc – from the River to the Sea.
But what implications any but the most extreme electoral outcomes will have for the markets is entirely soupy to me.
And what I really think is this. By Halloween, or, at latest by Thanksgiving, the economic and financial condition of the markets, such as we can read them, will matter less than investor perceptions of same. Be it right or wrong, a consensus will form which will set the tone for year-end activity and beyond.
For now, investors continue to bid up risk assets, and, perhaps in ominous nod to those who, through lawfare, ballot eligibility manipulations and other tactics, are seeking to save democracy by attacking its protocols, have engineered what can only be described as an economically democratic rally this quarter:
Interestingly, investors are also incrementally embracing the highly democratic asset class of commodities:
I think this makes sense, in part because the portfolio mix includes beef, chicken, rice, eggs, corn and other staples commonly found in any variety of soup one cares to name. Perhaps also, with war beats rising to crescendo and with interest rates on a downward path, owning tangible stuff that is actually useful doesn’t strike me as the worst idea I’ve ever heard.
So, now it’s on to October, and the soggy, soupy state3 it is likely to feature. We’ll get the ball rolling with Friday’s Jobs Report, set to drop as me and my co-religionists emerge from our 5785 celebrations. Then I reckon earnings will begin to dribble in. The inflation figures come cruelly amid our day(s) of atonement. But we will be forced to wait until the eve of All Hallows Eve (10/30) to process (introductory and sure to be revised multiple times) Q3 GDP results.
We will be compelled, all the while, to keep a worrying, wearying eye on the tidings from the campaign trail and on the ominous doings abroad – from Eastern Europe to the Middle East, to the Far East.
None of it, I suspect, will amount to much with respect to asset valuation consensus.
Because we won’t know, save for a glance in the rear-view mirror, what form that new consensus, which surely must be slouching towards us, will assume. These are not conditions for portfolio heroics, and I urge caution on any and all who give a care for that which issues forth from my wandering wits.
Perhaps, much as I hate to ratchet down my consumption everything from Bullion to Bean with Bacon, I should stop this liquid diet nonsense. Because it’s beginning to go to my brain. And, from my brain to my keyboard. And from my keyboard to your screen(s).
I think that all the solid clarity I can muster for now is sufficient to warn everyone that it is not only soupy out there, but also risky.
So, in closing, I encourage everyone to mix in a salad – a word salad if you must. While you still can. And, in reading back the content of this note, I find that for nonce, I am taking my own advice.
TIMSHEL