“He suffers more than necessary, who suffers before it is necessary.”
The Monday morning quarterback commentators have once again initiated the same cycle of market news from earlier in the year. They are entertaining to listen to and read, but it's best not to let them onto the field unless you fancy a drumming.
Keywords & phrases
Will it be a hard landing, a soft landing, or no landing at all? We have Fed rate hikes, dot-plots, “Higher for longer”, recession risk, inflation, disinflation, CPI, PCE, core inflation, supercore inflation, core trimmed inflation, and housing market slowdown. It's quite amusing how little data is needed to train machines to mimic certain individuals.
Market speculators' security blanket
All this fancy jargon and buzzwords serve as a security blanket for clueless speculators. It's easy to forget that the ultimate goal is to buy low and sell high. Sometimes, we claim that macro and fundamentals don't matter when it comes to making money in this business. But when we find ourselves on the wrong side, suddenly, we become amateur macroeconomists and philosophers. We might even express slight concern for the well-being of others and the general public. We label policymakers as either incompetent because their actions don't align with our books, or, when they do, as finally coming around to our point of view. It's all in good fun.
Still not convinced?
Still not convinced that price fluctuations shape most market views and perceptions? Still believe your forecasting skills are superior to others'? Do you take the shot when it matters and know when to backdown? The real question is: do you think clearly under pressure, or do you panic? Are you a machine or a human?
Let's not delude ourselves
The guts of the FOMC meeting were available since Sunday in the FT-Booth survey, freely accessible to anyone with an internet connection. We don't need more AI gadgets and widgets; we need to sharpen our minds and be fully present in the moment. The future will take care of itself.
Out of the 40 panelists surveyed by the FT, a few were former FOMC committee members, and others may become part of it in the future. If you genuinely believe you can outsmart the collective thinking of these individuals, then you are quite delusional.
Bayern vs. Man U highlights
Here are the key highlights from the Bayern Munich vs. Manchester United (4-3) Champions League match, which Jay Powell and his colleagues disrupted. Harry Maguire was left out.
A Manchester United supporter (from London!) phoned in to a radio show to say that he wouldn't even start Maguire for a Sunday pub team…
