[ExI] Belief in Market Efficiency

[Frank McElligott]

For those who were interested in it, The Super Bowl was won by the Pittsburgh Steelers with a last second touchdown. For those who bet the Steelers even though they won the game they still lost because they did not win by enough points as the Cards cover the evil spread with its 6 point add on. Over 1.2 billion dollars changed hands based upon their (the bettors) view of RISK and UNCERTAINY. A perfect zero sum game with equal winners and losers, almost like the stock market but with smaller bets.

 

And what has this to do with this list, first it is my annual post which all of you ignore, except spike thank you spike, and of course you are right to ignore it as you are discussing the American civil war and the social implications of slavery in America back in the 1860's. But if you did not know it and  by now you should  if you are a viewer of the marketplace and have opinions concerning that marketplace  ,  you would  see that the Super bowl is a small window  of America's mood not in the 1860's but right now. .

 

Tickets are 1000 dollars for the game, and in good years they inflate to 1200 at the door, this year deflation occurred and they were bought for 700 at the door.

 

The ads are more important than the game as they reflect the state of business in this country, but then again here you fight the civil war, and Rome burns.

 

Corp parties were cancelled Stock brokers and manufacturing companies both were absence, normal ad's like  FED EX and such were no where to be found, and the most telling was of the ad's was the one for you to send them "cash4gold.com" your gold earrings  which they then would meltdown and send you the cash for gold that was present in those earrings. Their spokesperson's were Ed McMahon and MC Hammer both who filed for bankruptcy.

 

Unemployment almost double digits and cars being sold at the employee price, no money down, zero financing, cash back and 1 basket of apples which you can sell on the corner in your spare time. But then of course I learned than the civil war was fought because the slaves were needed to pick cotton, and  state rights was just a side issue.

 

At this moment in time the world is de-leveraging 53 trillion dollars of debt caused by unemployed PhD's who could not find tenured teaching positions that went to Wall Street and explained quantum mechanics to Hedge fund managers at Bear Stearns.

 

Now if you want to discuss football, or risk or uncertainty or black swan events, with the last one in 2008 that caused Madoff to blow up, I am all eyes.

 

But the causes of the civil war, hey the French are rioting now in Paris  in an effort to keep their jobs, the Irish government just bought bad debt of 24 billion Euros for it's banks and had to add another 7 billion Euros to stop them from closing the front doors and could this be the first crack in the EU when nationalism becomes a issue AGAIN in Europe. Then there is always DAVOS where Russia PM Putin wants five reserve currencies instead of the dollar,  Maybe a discussion that all that is  needed is for the China to invade Taiwan that will take the heat off America's job market, but worst maybe they will not buy the debt we are issuing to finance the second new deal.

 

There is an answer to these times, but a discussion of the civil war and its causes, my  oh my, are you people out of your league

 

Frank

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