This Lenten Life

The cruelest month? ‘Taint April, Mr. Eliot. It’s February in Brooklyn: bare trees snarling at us; snow still piled on the shady side of the street; surly young men with sweatshirt hoods shrouding their faces, looking like so many Unabombers; nervous young mothers and take-charge nannies clogging the grimy sidewalks, pushing strollers that wrap their young’ns in plastic; sad brownstones gray with a kind of bone-deep moisture; the endless analysis of NBA contracts, the hair-shirt advent of Lent (how’s that for mixing liturgical seasons?).

But there’s hope. Lent’s privations will lead to Easter. Tulips will bloom and bare trees will smile. The hooded swains will bare their heads to seek their Jills. The byzantine NBA will give way to the Amen Corner at Augusta National. Children will frolic in parks while radiant parents and caretakers enjoy a picnic lunch, leaving the sidewalks free for us surly old men on meaningless jaunts.

We know these things are true because a flock of millionaires and wannabes are at this very moment spitting sunflower seeds before heading to the golf course in the gentler winters of Florida and Arizona. We all would have been among them at one time if not for the indisputable fact that hitting a curveball is impossible in the real world. This feat requires a magical incantation passed down among a select few from Nap Lajoie and Wee Willie Keeler (“hit ’em where they ain’t) to Joe Mauer and Albert Pujols. Will Dan Brown reveal it in his next “Da Vinci Code” spin-off?

Forlorn as we are in this somber period, itching to take to the local muni track with yet another new swing and putting stroke, the boys of summer at winter training (hey, it ain’t spring yet) fill us with hope of life after death. They have convinced us to embrace each new minute of sunlight that appears with every revolution of the planet until the vernal equinox, an event for mourning because the hourglass is turned over and the daytime begins to dwindle ever so sneakily.

Before that day in June, we predict the Kansas City Royals and the Pittsburgh Pirates will meet in the 2010 World Series and Eldrick Woods will retire from golf to become a Buddhist monk.

Forty Days and Forty Nights

I gave up cynicism for Lent today but have already broken my vow.

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, is indeed a genius. The guy helped build the behemoth that became Citigroup, then got sacked by Sandy Weill before the comeuppance. Then the guy takes over at Bank One and then JPM and gets Bear Stearns handed to him at the expense of the United States while making a big deal out of not denying telling worker bees they couldn't take a car home if they worked late and kept the driver idling (see Fortune Magazine). What a guy. Oh, and then he rips the dividend to a nominal mount, garroting shareholders , and keeping the TARP dough the company took just to be a good citizen.

Why shouldn't he pay 5% on preferred stock owned by the U.S. when replacing it with private capital would cost who knows how much more? Gotta hand it him, a Teflon CEO on Wall Street.


OK. That's out of my system. What's fascinating to me about the market and everything else is that we must rely on history to forecast the future. What else do we have? Are we "boats against the current borne back ceaselessly into the past"? If so, then today's market will become part of that history and add a piece of data to the regression model. Unless one has inside information or gets lucky, the only way to make money in equities "in the long run," as Professor Siegel at Wharton touts with the diligent back-breaking work of graduate assistants at his beck and call, is to forecast the arc of economic activity.

It really is all about GDP and timing. How about this idea. If you believe GDP will recover in the second half of 2009 then you should be invested. If you don't, then you should not.

Sticking with PALM, F, AMD and AMR. As a hedge, still holding SLV.