Like Football Fortunes, Investment Fortunes Change
On Saturday, I watched one of the most exciting college football games in many years. The Volunteers of Knoxville,Tennessee beat the folks from Alabama by kicking a field goal in the last seconds of the game to win one of the most exciting games seen in years.
If you had asked many experts before the game if Tennessee could win, most wold have said the Volunteers were doing really good this year, but it is hard to bet against Alabama.
However, things seem to run in cycles, much like electricity.
Investing in the same things, no matter the market cycle, can be very costly. You may have invested in your own company stock for years, but that may not be smart during this market cycle. To prove this point, all one has to do is go to Yahoo Finance and have a look at the chart which shows actual history.
News From Across The Big Pond
Liz Truss became British Prime Minister just a short time ago, and already she has her hands full with markets. Politico had this to say on October 11th:
Despite reversing her plan to cut tax for the highest earners, bringing forward a more detailed budget statement by almost a month and halting the appointment of a controversial senior civil servant to oversee the Treasury, the Bank of England was again forced to step in to try to stabilize market turbulence.
“The PM is panicking and reaching for almost anything that she can do to calm the situation. She was so burnt by the fallout from mini-budget that anything that seemed bold, she now wants to massively trim back,” said a senior Whitehall official.
But in spite of these U-turns, the current market unease may be out of the government’s hands”.
It seems the economic problems in England are in run deep, with pension funds suffering greatly, among may other issues.
And Then There Is This Thing Called ESG Investing
Before you say, “What does this have to do with me", let’s just take a closer look. BlackRock is everywhere, and right in the middle of ESG investing. Is this really a good thing?
Keith Jackson, the great announcer from West Georgia, was best known for using the phrase “Whoa, Nelly”.
Turns out he borrowed the phrase from his great-grandfather, a farmer.
For those who think the mighty BlackRock must be a great place to invest some of your money, I reply “Whoa, Nelly”.
South Carolina To Divest $200 Million From BlackRock Over ‘Leftist World View’.
South Carolina will be divesting all of its BlackRock holdings by the end of the year, the latest instance of backlash from Republican state officials over the investment firm's stance on fossil fuels.
State Treasurer Curtis Loftis’s office confirmed the plan to the Washington Examiner on Monday. His office said Loftis has already been removing BlackRock-managed funds over the past five years and is in the process of divesting the final $200 million of BlackRock holdings by year’s end.
“I will not allow our financial partners to undermine my fiduciary responsibility to maximize investment returns while accepting a prudent level of risk for the benefit of our citizens. It is imperative that we stand up to BlackRock and resist the pressure to simply fall into line with their leftist worldview,” Loftis said.
The news comes just days after Louisiana’s state treasurer told BlackRock CEO Larry Fink that the state is divesting all of its treasury funds from the investment firm because of its pursuit of environmental, social, and governance standards, also known as ESG, and accusations that it intends to move away from the fossil fuel industry.
BlackRock and Vanguard are up to their eyebrows in some of the most questionable investment practices in their history; their involvement with investments in woke companies is a game changer for many.
(To learn more about BlackRock and the ‘Great Reset’, click this link).
The Mighty Are Falling
Wolf Richter reports that Elon Mush is a lot less rich now compared to November of last year. The one thing he hasn’t been able to do is keep Tesla’s stock levitated in the ionosphere, with the stock just dropped to $204.99.
This means that Tesla just got halved since the whole show started coming apart last November, from its intraday high on November 4 of $414.50, and from its closing high the same day of $409.97.
The share price is now back where it had first been in December 2020. Since November 4, something like $640 billion in market cap went up in smoke.
Does anyone remember a thing called “Value Investing”?
During a conversation over the weekend, I overheard a couple commenting about their recent investment reports. One had lost $44k in two months, his wife had seen her assets be reduced by $69k.
We, on the other hand, are not losing, at all.
