“Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.” This is one of those quotes that has been misattributed to dozens of famous people, reaching back to ancient Greece, except maybe for Abraham Lincoln.
Other variations include: “When a god plans harm against a man, he first damages his mind.” “When the devil purports any evil against a man, he first perverts his mind.” I like this one best, “For whenever the divine spirits want to harm someone, they first steal away his good sense, and turns his thought to foolishness.”
The last phrase perfectly describes today’s financial and asset markets.
The Bubble-Babblers have been screaming about the markets for the past 10 years. The stock markets, crude oil, cryptos, you name it. They are all in a bubble, which is just about to blowup any minute now. These kinds of people are just as annoying as their ancestors were a few thousand years ago. During the solar eclipse they were the ones running around, yelling, “Apep the Moon Serpent is eating the Sun!”
When the Sun miraculously returned it was because Ra always manage to fight free of the serpent’s coils. When the markets fail to collapse it is because the US Federal Reserve comes to the rescue.
Both John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan repeatedly used the imagery of the “Shining city on a hill” to describe the vision for the United States. Unfortunately, the US has become more like Gotham City’s “The Elizabeth Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane on a hill.”
I have spoken enough about the recent fun and games with GameStop Corp. stock. Now that the price had stopped going ballistic, the US politicians are no longer concerned about their probes, hearings, and investigations. But that does not mean the madness has stopped.
On March 20, 2000, the British newspaper The Independent wrote, “Snowfalls are now a thing of the past.” The UK paper The Daily Telegraph updated that prediction on December 7, 2020: “Snow days could ‘disappear’ by 2100 due to climate change.”
This past week the polar vortex has hit the middle of the US with temperatures the coldest in more than a decade, natural gas wellheads are freezing cutting off supply. ONEOK Gas Transportation operates an intrastate natural gas pipeline system in Oklahoma. The “Natgas” cash price has gone from $3.46 one week ago, to $9 last Wednesday, $60.28 on Thursday and an insane $377.13 on Friday, up 32,000 percent in a few days.
Any discussion of madness must include cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin has gone from $4,000 to $47,000 in two years, up around 350 percent over the last 12 months. Elon Musk just bought $1.5 billion, apparently doing a “GameStop” short squeeze, pushing the price up almost 20 percent higher in a matter of minutes of Musk’s buying announcement.
Cryptos are supposed to be out of the control of governments. India is said to be levying a complete ban on cryptocurrency investments, including those done outside of the country. Like China, probably crypto to crypto trading will be allowed but no “real” money to crypto. In other news, the Reserve Bank of India is planning to issue its own cryptocurrency.
But don’t misunderstand me. I like crazy markets fueled by mad men and women. Rudyard Kipling said it best. “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, you’ll be a Rich Man, my son!” That is not an exact quote, but I know that is what Kipling meant.
E-mail me at mangun@gmail.com. Follow me on Twitter @mangunonmarkets. PSE stock-market information and technical analysis provided by AAA Southeast Equities Inc.