Just ask Zero-Hedge. Unfortunately, for wool-dyed pessimists and the other overly-skeptical black sheep of the thundering herd, it pays apocalyptic newsletter writers' paychecks, and Zero-Hedge/Tyler Durden's Manhattan bar tabs rather than those who permanently position against market priapism. And it's worse than zero-sum because those who are optimistically-challenged often pay for the bad advice - whether directly in subscriptions, inflated margins on retail bullion products, or indirectly via page-views and click-throughs AND then they get hosed by the market.
The first step to improving behaviour toxic to one's own self interest is admit one has a problem. As an aid to help those who have difficulty in distinguishing "a bearish trade" from "the lead boots of anger and pessimism", I've devised a little something I call the Zero-Hedge Test to determine more precisely whether readers objective realities are sufficiently paranoid, pessimistic, anti-social and rantingly angry to warrant more serious help.
Instructions: Circle the letter that best describes the adjacent image:
a. a glass of water
b. glass of water, half-empty
c. glass of water, half-full
d. glass of errrr ummm , Grey Goose vodka? (NB: ed. choice)
e. The US Government must have stolen half of a glass of water.
b. Barack Hussein Obama
c. A Former Senator from Illinois
d. tall guy who used to like to sneak a cigarette now & then
e. Jezebel, dark Sith Lord Vader Emperor & Chief of the Plunge Protection Team. Odious non-American african muslim responsible for taking away our world-beating healthcare, encouraging the immigrants and foreigners who took our our jobs, and formulating a secret plan to put two-dads in every home .
b. A greenback, worth a dollar, which, on average, an American is paid each 4 minutes of work
c. A US Federal Reserve Banknote almost universally accepted in exchange for goods and services the world over
d. A cocaine hoovering apparatus c1978
e. Worthless fiat toiletpaper, so useless that bric-a-brac, watches, baseball cards or bitcoin should be more preferred than this P.o.S. that forms part of the elders of Zion grand plan to steal your labour savings before eating your babies.
b. 1oz novelty of pure gold smelted by JM
c. Au = element #79 on Periodic Table
d. Reward for a 9.59 sec 100m
e. The solution to all our financial problems...changer of men from liberal faggot zionist atheist swine into god-fearing hardworking people of fortitude and rectitude...curer of cancer, balancer of budgets....purifier of all our precious bodily fluids and divinely-given laws....come, my preciousssss...
b. Site of the war which was believed to be the war to end all wars (excepting the worse one that immediately followed)
c. Continent with mix of culture, cuisine, history, engineering, and civilized living standards
d. A place for Brits to go on holiday
e. Socialist commie cesspit of looney bureaucrats, unworkable financial alliances, gulag-healthcare systems, leading the world in obstinate unions, lazy workers, regulatory morass and geographical epi-center of the soon-to-be-arriving disintegration of civilized life on earth.
b. an uptrend
c. a squiggly line
d. reflection of long-term (nominal) growth
e. an accident waiting to happen caused by insane, stupid, or insanely stupid people, or conspirators doing insane and stupid things that will end very very badly with the dystopian destruction of the civilized economy as we know it and reversion to an economic life of warlords and barter using nuggets of gold and silver as portrayed in that film with Kevin Costner, "The Postman"....
b. beginning of an uptrend
c. a squiggly-line
d. technical reversal of severely oversold position
e. an obvious orchestrated short-squeeze caused by the elders of zion and their 0.1% lackeys controlling the Soros-Rubin-Banker-Fed-Axis pulling the levers at the Fed Plunge Protection Team for the sake of enriching their cabal whilst duping and hiding the truth of how the rich steal money from hardworking ordinary Americans
b. a low-cost alternative to buying, holding, storing & insuring physical commodities
c. an easy liquid way to bet on the price of gold
d. useful asset allocation tool for diversification
e. a conspiracy to defraud honest hard-working speculative investors who've put their hard-earned savings into physical bullion held at secure vaults outside the USA, who have been cheated by the depressing influence these instrument have on the physical gold price by diluting the buying power which would otherwise raise the price of Gold benefitting all the other paranoid gold-bugs and survivalists who've already bought physical bullion in the form of coins at significant premiums or for delivery in a secure vault outside the USA.
b. ambitious nation that has (for the moment) successfully lifted hundreds of milllions of her citizens out of poverty
c. future demographic bomb resulting from 1-child policy
d. one of the oldest civilizations who made fine silks when most europeans were donning animal skins
e. yellow peril mercantilist currency manipulator who took our jobs (please watch -C.) who are taking the places of children of hard-working americans at our top universities and the trading rooms on Wall Street, and who are taking over ownership of our country
b. Nobel-prive winning economist
c. Princeton Prof & contentious NYT columnist
d. Consistent proponent of the view that it is better to try to grow rather than austerity our way out of economic depression.
e. A liberal faggot anti-christ he-Devil, devoted to Keynes and insulting to the spirit of the greatest economist of all time: Ludvig von Mises causing vilifiers to wonder why the USA Govt can increase its credit card bill, when if they do it (individually), they just get mean letters from Capital One or the card-services department at their bank; just wants to take the money of hardworking Americans and give it to entitlement-cheats who make babies to collect welfare and food stamps so they can buy drugs and Fritos (in that order).
b. An accessory when listening to late-night radio
c. a joke from ser. 6, ep. 6 of Big Bang Theory
d. art project c.1977 gone very wrong
e. an important tool in preventing aliens and the American government from influencing your thoughts and controlling your brain which is one of the best kept secrets along with the PPT, George Soros' role as the leader of the conspiracy by the Elders of Zion to take over the world financial system and rule the world and keep the hard-working man dumb and stupid and rig the system against hard-working Americans.
How to Score:
a=1pt; b=1pt; c=1pt; d=1pt; e=5pts
Interpreting the results:
0 - 11 - Surely a grad from an effeminate liberal east-coast university
12 - 22 - Got some financial redneck potential in you
23 - 33 - Wishing you had a Kazcynski-cabin of your own?
34 - 44 - Likely owner of guns, ammo, & survivalist subscriber
45 - 55 - Honorary Fight Club Member; NB: The NSA is watching you...
funny stuff
ReplyDeleteHow come ZH isn't on your friends list?
ReplyDeletefo real, just like year six bush turn. lol
ReplyDeletejust like bush year 6
ReplyDeleteTried to put the link on tf metals but have been suspended for suggesting gold could go lower .
ReplyDeleteBut this is fantastic
Fucking hilarious!
ReplyDeleteBrace your self for the ZH ditto head trolls soon!
It used to be a far better site-- a money-machine provided you fade every damn call they make. I still remember going long swedbank because of their Swedish banking collapse "reportage".
ReplyDeleteThere are fewer calls to fade now, and it isn't funny as much as pathetic.
top notch, Cassandra. well done. I especially liked:
ReplyDelete"The solution to all our financial problems...changer of men from liberal faggot zionist atheist swine into god-fearing hardworking people of fortitude and rectitude...curer of cancer, balancer of budgets"
"The solution to all our financial problems...changer of men from liberal faggot zionist atheist swine into god-fearing hardworking people of fortitude and rectitude...curer of cancer, balancer of budgets"
ReplyDeletetop notch. well done.
Masterful. Simply beyond
ReplyDeleteYour sentences aren't nearly run-on enough or preachy enough to be true ZH material.
ReplyDeleteAlso, not enough praise for Vladimir Putin and his propagandists at Russia Today, the only TV station that will speak out against the Zionist Rothschild one-world government and its machinations against peaceful Iran.
You probably also need a few worshipful Ayn Rand paraphrases, but I can understand if you leave them out, since after all you might have an important use for all the braincells you'd destroy by reading her.
Read Ayn Rand, or maintain bladder control into your seventies... a hard choice.
Oh btw... now that everyone's mocking ZH, is it the market top? :-)
ReplyDeleteThanks for returning to blogging with a passionate keeness. The keeness was always there, the reinspired passion probably the publicity hey I can do this...keens the keeness.
ReplyDeleteIWNATTOS,
ReplyDeleteI am wary of these precise tell-tales. And while I do not know if this is "the market top", I do know that the positive feedback loop is in full-swing. And - like the rather uber-pessimism of 2ndHalf 2011, the feedback loop continued until it became a caricature of itself.
Finally, I must thank YOU. I chanced across your market narrative some time ago, and it made me howl out loud with laughter - probably one with some permabear strategist (or perhaps Mish) and "f*cktard" in the same sentence.
Now, when I feel road rage coming on, all I have to do is shout this heretofore unknown-to-me word just once in the direction of the offending vehicle, which makes me think of this word in your sentence with mish and Presto! laughter ...with road-rage defused. I am flabbergasted by the power of this word and am afraid I will wake one day up and it will longer amuse me....but that moment hasn't arrived just yet.
Of God, I destroyed brain cells by reading her? It was decades ago when I was a teenager and I've sworn off. Is that why Uncle Alan is a slobbering mess? I suppose Andrea is busy changing his diaper.
ReplyDeleteCan you post an article[not comments] from zerohedge that claimed something was a zionist conspiracy? I know the authors there are cynic there but don't think they are anti-semitic or any other religion for that matter.
ReplyDeleteYou got to give credit to the guys for exposing a lot of the conflict of interest in politics, business and regulators.
ReplyDeleteI never read Rand- too busy improving my mind with (formerly) science fiction and (currently) comic books, surrealist literature, and Naked Capitalism.
ReplyDeleteI totally get that a lot of the non-Tyler contributions are more far-right-politics than actual hard-hitting financial analysis. But we also need to face up to the fact that ZH and Tyler have done a lot to shed light on the nefarious activity on the sell-side, HFT, SEC conflict of interest, etc. It's not all batsht crazy over there...
ReplyDeleteI fail to see why we should accept apologies for hyperbolic "bat-shit" because ZH happens to post the occasional non-hyperbolic non-bat-shit piece. There are plenty of venues treating these issues with the gravity and objectivity they deserve, that are designed by sane adults, for sane adults. Bat-shit is bat-shit in my book, and I wholly expect to be called out if I publish batshit, and be given the chance to debate competing views with a view to discovering the perspective containing the most truth.,
ReplyDeleteBut all this would be moot if ZH "came clean" and admitted it is squarely "entertainment", most of which is self-serving survivalist QVC and financial infomercials lacking integrity and neither serious nor objective financial analysis.
Although some of your wildly exaggerated piece have a shades of truth, it's sad that you decided to associated ZH with homophobia and other bs that's not in the site (although maybe the reader's comments are different) Just to take an example of how silly your criticism is, are you aware that wars would be almost impossible (or at worst very short lived) if countries were to adhere to a strict and pure gold standard? They would simply not be able to afford to run around blowing shit up for fun. By your loose logic, I conclude you must enjoy global suffering of innocent people? I will not deny that the writers of ZH love the smell of their own poo, but if you've ever tried to inform people who refuse to see facts, you'd know its very frustration and cynicism enducing.
ReplyDeleteWhere the sheep come for water.
ReplyDeleteIn 2008, sometime after the absolute pillage of the national treasury, I immersed myself into a 5 year study which included plenty of naked capitalism, (not featured here), William K Black, ZH and books like the Creature from Jekyll Island. I even studied the history, failure and success, of the world's great banking families- how it was that the great minds of yesteryear including Lincoln- rejected compounded interest- debt slavery. It seems Lincoln knew what slavery really was.
What happened to me was a transformation. I began to realize that the vast majority of people- schooled by the state- were force fed a diet of absolute BS. This was not coincidence. There is a reason nobody is taught the history or the inner workings of the Fed Reserve. They don't want you to know. It is not unlike the Finance Manager on a car lot- he doesn't want you to know that you can really get the paper on your car at 4% because that is all the dealership pays- he desperately wants you to believe the best he can do is 7% so that he can pocket the difference. That scenario will be played thousands of times- today. People will get screwed. They call it business. It's like lambs to the slaughter at the car lot....
I also became aware of my ego. My ego, like Cassandra's ego, wants me to think I am vastly superior to all others. It thinks it's genius IQ entitles it to belittle and mock others.. to make itself feel better. Awareness and consciousness came on swift wings once I was ready.
So I let the "facts" (in as much as I could find supporting or corroborating evidence) take me where they would. I left the world of illusion and make believe behind. I began to realize whether it was a 17th century tulip bulb craze or an 85 billion dollar a month fueled stock market- it all relied on the complicity of a bunch of hopeful yet wildly delusional marks. A bunch of fearful people, who would do what people like Bernanke wanted them to do.
So here's the bottom line. I've made 500% on my gold holdings and nearly 300% on my silver holdings since 2001. I don't give a rat's ass who wants to play Monopoly with the bankers. You go ahead. The market will never return 500% in 12 years- it never has. Pretend as a country we don't owe 17 trillion with another 77 trillion coming due and payable. Pretend inflation isn't 6 or 7%. Pretend the economy is good and that jobs are everywhere. Pretend that the best interest rate on your loan is 7%. I don't care.
The world has relied on sheep for a long time.
I have had the privilege of being kicked off ZH's comment board...I consider myself blessed. The comments there are pedestrian at best. 'Tyler' has turned into a blog nazi. EVERY post has comments by the same people over and over with no real intellectual input. Mish destroyed himself with his 'anti-gun' rant. ZH is following the same path. Buh-bye, ZH. I hardly knew thee.
ReplyDeleteI'm just curious - what other 'serious' places that some have referred to are posting pieces on high-frequency trading (HFT), showing exactly how HFT algos are distorting the market? Where is the general media outrage on the outright theft of customer money from WFT accounts?
ReplyDeleteI bought gold in 1999 at $250/oz. Can any of your oh-so-bright readers suggest another investment that did as well, and then point out where it was touted at that time? (Yes, APPL was under $10 at one point, but NO ONE was saying 'buy it' at the time.)
Yes, I too get tired of the anti-semite, Obama-the-muslim comments, but I read three daily papers, and none of them cover the subjects that ZH does in any kind of concerted way.
Gold punters always gotta tell what they're up, and all their logic and when they bought their first ounce. Just like apple people can never say they have a computer. Same disposition, fucktard arse clowns.
ReplyDeleteI love this so much.
ReplyDeleteWhenever I feel I might be, well, you know, 'crazy' I just read ZH comments section and am always relieved to find I am only moderately neurotic and not, 'the radiator is talking to me', off my rocker like those folks. "Pfewwww" (wiping brow with back of hand).
Your are just too funny!