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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dr. Voodoo who wrote (154358)	3/14/2020 7:02:10 PM
From: sense	Respond to of 218005

So much that is irrational in the responses everywhere... But, when France is shuttering restaurants and bars, it shows the world is finally catching on to the nature and extent of the problem... if already a month or more too late to have the efforts necessary work to actually stop the virus spreading. We're already at the point of the undesirable in the policy fallback to "flatten the curve" as the goal of public health systems everywhere. Among the most irrational bits apparent here in the U.S.: As everywhere... vastly lesser and more rational responses with decisions taken much earlier could have stopped the spread... obviating the need for most of what's necessary now... in a much larger response that has much larger consequence and impact. Closing the border to foreign travel by foreigners, but still allowing the repatriation from quarantine zones of just as likely to be infected Americans. That error is the reason we have the problem here that we do now... and it was amplified in its impact by "public health" officials exceptionally poor decision making. Pure hubris to encourage the vectors of infected cruise ship passengers to be welcomed home. Should have subsidized them to "shelter in place" and get them through it. The virus doesn't care about your race, or your national origin... bodies are just a ride, and the neither the virus, ACE-2 variations not withstanding, nor the people reacting to it, are biased or discriminating nearly as much as some would have you think. And in any case, even if there were racism involved... worrying about it in this context is stupid, as its impact is insignificant in terms of policy impact. Its the virus, stupid. Democrats in Congress trying to pass a law... THIS WEEK... trying to undo Trump's travel restrictions on China. Gee. I wonder who it is that's paying them ? Not closing the borders with Canada and Mexico ? OK. Even it we shut down all travel to and from the rest of the world... Canada hasn't... and Canada is so hyper-woke that they'll prefer having 4% of the population die rather than have the now self-quarantined Trudeau... of blackface and Indian (from India) costume fame... appear subject to accusations of racism. Dying in defense of woke-ness is part of your patriotic duty in Canada, it seems. You can still fly from ground zero in Wuhan to Vancouver ? And we're not closing the border with Canada... ? Also universal, but clearly apparent here, too... the innate tendency of some to respond to any uncertainty or challenge to orthodoxy by suppressing others rights, particularly in free expression. The biggest advantage we have in the U.S. versus China, for instance, is the benefit of free speech... which has allowed those (admittedly few) who are capable of paying attention to rational opinion... to be vastly better informed, and thus vastly better prepared now, than those who slavishly follow "official" information sources (as if they are anything other than... self-aggrandizing dullards) and do only what they're told to do... depending for their success and survival on the idiots in charge getting it right, eventually. There were and are flagrant examples of attempts being made here... to censor and shutdown those speaking truth... who, often, were speaking truths a bit too soon for the comfort of those who'd rather not be forced to face or accept it. Among the most obvious and persistently irrational: "It's just the flu." No, it isn't "just the flu". Anyone who got caught up in that as a mantra at any point in the evolution of the social awareness of this pandemic... when there was NEVER any information in any of the knowledge about the new virus, or any of the DATA considering its impact, to justify that opinion.... needs to step back and examine their own choices... and how and why they were so easily misled. The cognitive dissonance that occurs as people's expectations are disrupted, and they're forced to adjust to a new reality that they've been resistant to comprehending... even long after it should have been made obvious to them... causes a lot of clanking noises and a real grinding of gears... not only in individual cognition... but in the expressions that forces in choices... So, along with all the other more institutional impacts, there's clear market impact... reflecting the noise and uncertainty in thinking of market participants. The sustained irrationality of markets, of course, is legend... and, yet, many of the participants at the time of extremes in illusion... will gladly tell you that the madness of crowds is all about the crowd being right... in being annoyed, even maddened, by that noisy agitator over there... More rational participants will note... it isn't ever about the crowd being right... its only about the inevitabilities inherent in the process... and particularly about the timing and the nature of the changes in behavior made apparent as fundamental change, first, and then fundamental change in awareness occurs... driving the process of correction. So, yeah... the market is always right... eventually... Success in markets at points of inflection isn't so much about getting it right... or having been right all along as others finally figure it out... but is mostly about recognizing and understanding what tends to happen in between... between the sustainment of error and its correction... as market participants behavior changes. Making the right choices during transitions... isn't about "being on the right side of reason in the argument"... but about being on the right side in recognizing the change in patterns in behavior as it occurs.. Note that doesn't ever confer any market advantages on the rational... as long as the irrational still controls the trade ? And then there's not ever a linear transition from the history in the irrational to the future of more rational choices. The mantra, of course, is that the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent... if you err in betting that reason must win over error in emotion. So, where does that put us today ?