The money feels good, And your life you like it well
But surely your time will come, As in Heaven as in Hell
You see, he feels like Ivan, Born under the Brixton sun
His game is called survivin’, At the end of The Harder They Come
Paul Simonon
First, farewell to James Chambers, better known as Jimmy Cliff, who left us a week ago. It’s hard to be my age and maintain your dignity without having at some point declared yourself a Cliff-Head. But for me at any rate, he made his bones entirely in the year 1972, by having played lead gangster Ivan in the classic Jamaican film “The Harder They Come”, for which he also wrote most of the soundtrack.
And let me ask you: has there ever been more of a badass than Ivan, with his two guns, yellow hat and striped pants?
OK, so he’s been mailing it in ever since. But who hasn’t? Most of our heroes quit trying about 50 years ago; many have hung around to collect the check.
But for Cliff’s Ivan – further immortalized in the above-quoted Clash song — the game was called surviving. And, like Tiff, he never had a chance.
Almost indisputably, Cliff’s finest composition, featured prominently in the film, is “Many Rivers to Cross”, which he wrote in 1969 – a full three years prior to the release of the movie.
In late November 2025, he crossed his last river.
Meantime, somehow, we are down to the last 23 trading days of ’25. The associated remaining 9.1% of the action is, improbably, more than we usually get on this late date (8.33%) – mostly due to the reality that the month begins on a Monday and thus offers up 4 full weeks of action (minus holidays).
Still and all, that’s not many rivers left to cross in ’25.
It’s been nothing if not strange. Particularly in the back half, which, for me, has been marked by more bizarro shit than I care to recount. Among improbable events, late this summer I found myself for the first time in my life rocking compression socks. I can’t call them my particular jam, but they served their purpose at the time.
Still and all, the markets have survived — even, by some measures, thrived. All our equity indices are up by double digits. Interest rates are down across the curve. As is Crude Oil. Earnings growth has also dwelt comfortably in the low teens all year.
We’ve got strong GDP and employment numbers. Inflation remains stubborn but not alarmingly so.
So, there is now every probability that we can bring ’25 on home in such a way as to look back with pleasure on the experience. With the only things likely to trip us up being the consequences of human nature.
Ah, human nature. Always lurking to trip us up. The toughest river we are compelled to cross.
A few examples from this very past (holiday shortened) week come to mind. In the realms of food processing, a Campbell’s Soup IT Vice President was caught in a hot mike moment claiming that the chickens that populate its iconic delights come out of 3-D printers, with the finished product earmarked exclusively for poor people with limited information and financially constrained culinary options.
This False Profit of Fowl is no longer with the Company.
And one cannot help but feel a little bit sorry for Bibi, now seeking a pardon from an Israeli President no one knew even existed (or, for that matter, the job itself). If he fails and bails – to New York at rate – Zor will arrest him. There is thus every likelihood that his options shortly will have dwindled to prison in the Land of Milk and Honey’s less than welcoming correctional facilities, or Rikers Island.
If he chooses the latter, perhaps he will benefit from some local civic distraction. Two days before Thanksgiving, the New York City Council tried to slip one past the goalie by voting itself a 16% pay raise. Complicating matters is the reality that the timing of the move –transpiring as it did between the election of a new mayor and their installation in Gracie Mansion — was illegal. The elected representatives of the 51 municipal districts will thus be compelled to wait until 12:00:01 on January 1st to present the proposal to the new mayor for his signature.
I’m really glad this happened, as I gleefully anticipate, yet again, that delicious, ironic intersection between moralizing and profiteering. If approved, the righteous new movement for civic affordability will have, as their first official act, enriched a group (themselves) whose affordability challenges are perhaps not at the top of the associated hierarchy.
This puts Zor in a difficult position. He didn’t come to town to light up a bunch of aldermen who already get free lattes at Starbucks anytime they so choose, and if he signs the proposal, it will give the lie to this rhetoric. Alternatively, he could bust out a veto, and, by doing so, annoy the very group he most needs to do his bidding.
Once he has settled matters with his own City Council, he can pivot to myriad other monetary beefs that await him – including the funding of services operated by unions not particularly famous for setting aside their own well-being in the interest of their constituents.
But once this is done, we can all drop off our kids at free childcare centers, hop on free busses and amble into city-sponsored grocery stores to fulfill our wildest shopping dreams. One can barely contain oneself in anticipation of the paradise that New York will become once that happy day arrives.
But that’s all one month, two major holidays, and 23 trading days, away. Meantime, market participants not given to turkey comas but rather to the resumption of post-holiday trading activities were greeted Thursday night by blank screens signaling malfunction at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s Water-Cooling facility in Aurora, IL. Home of Wayne Campbell. And Garth Algar.
For nine long hours that night, it was “game off”, reminding me of nothing so much as that time a couple of years ago, when the Las Vegas Spere was forced to display the Blue Screen of Death.
But the markets handled the glitch with touching equanimity, with Cornel Naz, after the previous week’s ignominious drop, rallying to end November in near-flattish territory:
Many of my clients, however, have a sadder post-Halloween tale to tell. Of, in some cases, an alpha nightmare. While its underpinnings are strong, the tape is acting strange. I believe that conditions will ease over the next several weeks, and expect, among other matters, that Team Trump//Bessent will have taken over the Fed by Christmas.
I don’t think that this will be a wise policy move, but it will goose stocks into year-end and beyond.
It is not an easy environment in which to operate. But then again neither was Ivan’s Trench town, circa 1972.
I think, though, if we can channel Cliff’s Ivan, we can, if not prevail, at least go out, like he did, in a blaze of glory. And that, my friends, is something for which to give thanks.
TIMSHEL