I ask you: is there a more righteous acronym under heaven than our titular letter sequence?
Especially lately, and especially for me, as I have found over the last fortnight or so, that nearly everything my senses encounter evokes a GTFO reflex. Including the markets.
But, as always, we’ll get to that anon. The markets, I mean.
Meantime, a quick inventory of the upper reaches of my GTFO list is perhaps in order.
This past weekend featured the closing of the Super K, on U.S. Route 27, in Bridgehampton, NY. Improbably, it was the last fully stocked K-Mart in the Lower 48 – in Bridgehampton, FFS! And I say good riddance! Because Bridgehampton can make much better use of this primo real estate — by opening a few more hair/nail salons, bad restaurants and overpriced tchotchke boutiques, as, presumably, the Good Lord intended. So, says I, GTFO K-Mart! GTFO of Bridgehampton!
And GTFO Major League Baseball, whose seemingly endless season is coming to a nauseating close, but not soon enough. After yet another sequence of interminable, mind-numbing contests, the mighty engine of capitalism at last prevailed, with the three teams that feature by a wide margin the highest payrolls emerging as the only surviving participants. Two of them, the only two to have eclipsed the $300M salary threshold, are from New York. The third (and likely champion), used to play in Brooklyn but now operates in Los Angeles, and just paid some Japanese dude >$700M for his services.
One of the NY teams is owned by a former boss of mine, to whom I owe a lot. He’s one of the greatest investors of all-time, but never made a better trade than his purchase of the Mets – for which he obtains a full tax write-off, an antitrust exemption, and an asset that can only appreciate in an era of globalization and global telecommunications.
You can’t therefore blame him for “investing” in his payroll/roster, snapping up (and arguably overpaying), for the last three years, nearly every available top tier player. The message is clear – the way to win is to treat your franchise like an Investment Bank, or, worse yet, a hedge fund. OK; fair enough.
But let’s not try to pretend that he and his ilk are latter-day versions of Branch Rickey or Red Auerbach.
Embracing this reality in NY is particularly problematic, as their franchises have a maddening habit of throwing wads of cash at brand name athletes on the decline, and then congratulating themselves for so doing. In the case of the Yankees – newly crowned A.L. champs, much of this is funded by taxpayers, who spent $2B on a new stadium and then gifted the property to a Tampa-based ship-building concern, whose name is synonymous with the franchise. For these reasons and others, and though I have lived here for more than half my life, I can never root for New York teams. In fact, I say: GTFO New York teams!
The latest example of the NY money-whip has-been-trade is the Jets Aaron Rodgers saga, with whom, as a Bears fan, I have a legit lifelong beef. GTFO, Rodgers! He’s had a busy couple of weeks, first losing to the Vikings, then getting his coach fired, then losing to the Bills, then plucking his boy Davante Adams from the dubious environs of Vegas.
Lastly, they finally cut a deal with the holdout prima donna that they plucked away from the Eagles. Anything else we can do for you, Rodgers? After all, we’re all here to serve you.
On further reflection, just GTFO.
Moving on, GFTO Sinwar, the late leader of Hamas, who is most distinguished by: 1) having masterminded the 10/7/23 terrorist attacks, and 2) bearing perhaps the most aptly diabolic surname in history (Sin war). The Israelis did him on Thursday, and his last act was to throw a wooden stick at the IDF trainees and reservists who planted several bullets into him. He’s presumably now enjoying his 72 virgins, but my hope is that at least a few of those lovelies had previously yielded their maidenheads.
And of course, GTFO U.S. election. I’m so over it and I suspect that the rest of y’all are as well. There isn’t much I can add to the erudite analysis of this monkey show, though I do take note of published reports that Trump’s lopsided advantage in political exchanges such as Polymarket are in part the result of a handful of speculators cornering the Trump market. Kind of like Nelson Bunker Hunt did, unsuccessfully, in the Silver Market, a couple of generations ago. If true, it the spreads should normalize soon, as those who drove up the price artificially seek to unload their holdings at an inflated price, in classic “pump and dump” fashion, and giving rise to a new variant of same: the Trump pump and dump.
Or if you prefer, the Trump chump pump and dump.
Notably, the Polymarket exchange is a crypto-based platform — within which one must transact in digital currency USDC – a so-called stablecoin that is pegged 100% to the USD. And I am almost, but not quite, prepared to lob a GTFO to crypto.
Because, c’mon! We’re more than a decade into this thing, and I still don’t know what it’s all about. Billions and billions pour into it — all, so it seems, on a purely speculative basis. It rises and falls based upon such factors as interest rate differentials, geopolitical trends, risk appetite and others.
Great. Just what the world needs: another macro instrument that no one understands. Meantime, at least on these here shores, nobody seems to apply it to any practical purpose. As the crypto saga unfolded, I had become intrigued the blockchain technology upon which it is based. Blockchain can be described (albeit imperfectly) as a multi-user encrypted record transmission and repository system, where every participant accepts its content. It is therefore in a perpetual state of reconciliation – without impeding the record-keeping of individual users. The idea is simply too powerful not to ultimately take hold. But it hasn’t — at least yet. Nobody is using blockchain, or if they are, they’re sure keeping quiet about it.
Meantime, in a world of increasing uncertainty, benchmark crypto instruments are lurching back towards all-time highs. Somebody must know something, and, as such, I am unwilling to issue a broad-based GTFO to the asset class. But it should be forewarned: I’m watching. And my patience is growing thin.
Balancing matters out, it would be irrational, for now, to consider offering a GTFO to the capital or commercial economy, which remains a matter of miraculous wonder. One can, here as elsewhere, always complain, but considering all it has endured, it is mind-boggling to contemplate its resilience. Prices are indeed too high, but not escalating in Weimar Republic fashion, as well they might have.
Half of this country GTFOs the other half, and the other half GTFOs the half. And, as a major component of its branding/strategy, GFTO Group 1 has issued an all-out assault on fossil fuel production. But, under its governance, said production has reached a new all-time high:
Presumably, if fossil fuel-hating GTFO Group 1 prevails next month, these figures will drop dramatically, and at a time when geopolitical tensions in the most important region for energy production are as elevated as they have been in more than five decades.
But God Oh Mighty! Q3 GDP drops Wednesday week, and just look at where it projects:
I think it wise, though, to keep the economic GTFO gun loaded and at the ready, because so much of this vigor is fueled by borrowing from The Man, leaving so little in reserve for future adventures and emergencies:
Much of this may merit discussion at this week’s International Monetary Fund/World Bank conference in (where else?) Washington, where they may also discuss the reality that global sovereign debt will, for the first time, exceed $100T this year. Though space limitations preclude further articulation, I doubt there are two more ossified organizations under heaven than the IMF and World Bank — to whom I also say GTFO.
On balance, though, and temptation to do so notwithstanding, one can hardly bust out the GTFO to the equity markets – which, not only in the U.S. but globally, continue to gobble up new high ground. The benchmark Taiwan index is up >30%, including blowout performance last week by the country’s only valuable corporate asset – Taiwan Semi – and all as the Chinese (who will certainly take over its island neighbor sooner or later) conducted its largest ever flyover of military jets into the former’s airspace.
And Germany. Somebody explain how that country’s securities, whose banks are insolvent, whose economic footprint is rapidly disappearing, is experiencing new valuation elevations in its own markets.
Ravenous investors appear to have an insatiable appetite for risk assets, as well they might. Central Banks declared open bar > 15 years ago have yet to either stop serving or turn on the registers. Under such circumstances, who but the teetotaling and/or most effete among us is likely to push away from the table?
Instead, investors hurl GTFOs at risk factors including an unmanageable credit bubble, horrible governance everywhere with no remediation in sight, the powder keg of Mid-East violence, natural disasters and other manifestly unpleasant but transiently ignorable matters of concern. We’ve all got stocks to buy, after all. And crypto. So, for now at any rate, it’s begone with these hazards, and GTFO to their potential consequences.
All of which will run its course. Why? Because all things subject to downward acceleration at 9.8 meters/second2 must. Just as it now seems as though nothing can arrest or even impede the market’s bid, there will come a time when it will seem as though such a thing as a bid never existed.
As we move towards the depressing spectacle of November 5th, as we await the next sandal to drop in the Middle East, the earnings cycle will accelerate. That’s all a lot of fat to chew, and I would urge folks to step lightly with their risks.
Because as indicated above, whatever commands our obsessive focus will run its course. The K in Bridge is gone, the baseball season will soon conclude, Rodgers is fading, Sinwar is dead, and November 6th is blessedly on the horizon. We’re probably stuck with the IMF/World Bank, but they can head up my new GFTO list, which should not be a problem to compile.
However, that’s for another day – perhaps one where I’ve better conquered the demons that plague me.
So, instead of issuing y’all a hearty GTFO, I will instead conclude with the time-honored, uplifting…
TIMSHEL