Market Capitulation Bewitching Hour is Nigh
Recalling a prior post (which recalled the “Death of Equities” from a prior era) is instructive if you can keep your wits about you. While pop psychologists and new agers repeat the oft seen “Danger + Opportunity = Crisis” it isn’t quite so. Risk is real. Market risk is real. And what we are seeing in the markets these last few days is the repricing of that risk.
“These are the times that try men’s souls” a phrase written over 200 years ago by a founding father, Thomas Paine, who knew a thing or two about risk. In his December 23, 1776 discussion of the our recent declaration of independence from Britain, he wrote about panics:
“Yet panics, in some cases, have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always short; the mind soon grows through them, and acquires a firmer habit than before. But their peculiar advantage is, that they are the touchstones of sincerity and hypocrisy, and bring things and men to light, which might otherwise have lain forever undiscovered.”
Yes, our world is changing below our feet, but that doesn’t mean the end result is ruin. The market is gripped in panic, but it appears our final capitulation bewitching hour is nigh. I suspect this because the media has finally called the bottom with this gripping headline: ‘The World As We Know It Is Going Under‘.
Which to my eyes looks like this headline from AUGUST, 1979:
