Last night I was feeling a little mellow after consuming far too much ethanol (the French variety – a very reasonable bottle of Cotes du Rhone) when the idiots on CNBC began to rant on about this being 2007, which explained why were in the midst of potentially a global financial meltdown.
There was the global financial disaster of 1987 when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by 22.5% in just one day.
And, of course, everyone remembers 1997 – the year of the Asian financial crisis.
It occurred to me, in my ethanol-induced haze, that we should sack all the mathematicians, scrap all the complex computer models, drown all the analysts along with the economists, and my mother-in-law because she is an awful cook, for failing to spot something as obvious as the fact that bad luck always comes in threes and this is a third year with a seven in it – hence, the crisis could have been predicted. I could have not bought that bloody house in Australia and not listened to that financial adviser who told me to park my money in equities.
I am sober this morning, but I still think widespread sackings and drownings are in order.
What about the supposedly smart people at Goldman Sachs who fed numbers through their computers and estimated that the likelihood of this crisis occurring was once in 100 millennia? First off the short plank, I’d say, minus their bonuses.
Oh, and the by the way, as sevens are clearly worth avoiding like The Plague, here are some tips if you are a chemicals or oil trader:
*Do not buy naphtha as it’s going to fall in price (ICIS pricing placed second-half October contracts at $664-667.50/tonne CFR this morning).
*Brent crude might be worth a punt as it has fallen below the evil $70.33/bbl to $69.49.
*Benzene – go short as it’s $960-970/tonne FOB Korea
*And whatever you do, get out of toluene now as it’s double trouble – $775/tonne FOB Korea
Now where’s my rabbit’s foot gone?
