Get Norris McWhirter on the phone

In the history of predictions there are many that stand out for the magnitude of their incorrectness;

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers” - Thomas J. Watson, 1943, Chairman of the Board of IBM

“640K ought to be enough for anybody” - Bill Gates, 1981

“With over 50 foreign cars already on sale here, the Japanese auto industry isn't likely to carve out a big slice of the U.S. market” - Business Week, 1958

 

However, last night I witnessed a prediction that will stand in the pantheons as the quickest to be proven wrong. At 49 minutes and 47 seconds into the Spain v Russia football game, George confidently stated that “Russia would score an equalizer soon”. At 50 minutes, Spain scored their second goal. And that is why George is one of my favourite people in the whole world…

 

 

 

 

A man is known by the company he keeps

“if mechanical rabbits could be trained to eat curried pizza, we'd have a natural man-made market for our takeaway shop”

Even if these words have ever been used together in a sentence, it is unlikely that they will have been in this order. This means that the perfect way to navigate to this blog if you have forgotten the url is to enter the sentence in google.

This service to mankind was performed by George.

 

Ruining "Hancock" for you

She’s a superhero too. Hahahahaha. Oh, by the way, spoiler alert. Oops. Many thanks to John for picking me over George. And many thanks to Vanessa for picking John over a long list of “proper” investors. Oh, and many thanks to Charlize Theron for dressing up for the occasion.

 

With a stock ticker like this, it's bound to end in tears

 

The real market movers

Stock market participants have super-powers - that’s why they get paid so much money. And these are no ordinary super-powers like super-strength or x-ray vision. They are incredibly subtle. John, for example, can make the market go up by eating. The more delicious the food, the quicker and further it moves up. Phil, on the other hand, moves the market down with his eating but the impact is correlated to the sweetness of the food.

 

Unfortunately, all these superpowers being thrown around tend to make the markets very messy. The picture shows a typical day in the DJ Stoxx 600 with some blow-by-blow commentary from yours truly.

 

So the next time you hear someone talking about how the market is up because of something that Bernanke said, you can smile knowingly and tell them that John has just finished his foie gras and moving onto his Kobe steak.

 

Oh, and just in case you were wondering, my super-power is the ability to shouting naughty words at my screens.

 

 

 

Don't be tempted to bottom fish in the equity markets

You may find that you’ve bought the worlds most expensive toilet.