The global population climbed to 8 billion people on Tuesday, November 15, according to the United Nations, up from 5.3 billion in 1990. More than half of us — an estimated 5 billion — from every nation, ethnicity, faith, age range, income level and occupation will watch some or most of the FIFA World Cup games during the 29 days of competition underway in Qatar. Not billions but millions of people around the world also tune in to the monthly press conferences held by Jerome Powell, the head of the U.S. central bank. These events are shorter in duration and much less exciting than the World Cup games but produce just as much if not more wagering.

The 2024 presidential campaign season is off to a start already with Tuesday’s announcement by former president Donald J. Trump. The launch of his third bid for the Oval Office came just one week after the mid-term elections flipped the U.S. House to Republican rule by a slim margin but left the Senate under Democratic control, likely reliant once again upon Vice President Harris to cast tie-breaking votes depending on the outcome of the December 6 runoff in Georgia.

More than 18 million veterans who have served our country in the active military, naval or air service will be honored this week at parades, dinners, award ceremonies and other events commemorating their sacrifice and service. A grateful nation pauses once a year to thank all those who have defended our many freedoms — including the one we just exercised with spirit this week. An estimated 42 million early ballots were cast in the midterm elections and, by the time all the tallies are final, this could be the second midterm in a row where voters exceeded 100 million.

Codes are, of course, absolutely critical to communication during times of war and, in modern military history, one that was never broken remains famous to this day. During World War II, Japanese cryptographers intercepted but were never able to decipher the messages sent by the U.S. Marine Navaho Code Talkers. The code was developed at Camp Elliott in San Diego in May 1942 by a small group of 29 Navajo men, some as young as 15, based on the complex, unwritten, verb-based Navaho (Diné) language. Although far from Window Rock, the Navajo Nation Capital, central bankers around the world have developed their own cryptic language that traders and investors struggle to decipher.

In one old Irish folktale, one night on All Hallows’ Eve, Stingy Jack was quenching his thirst at a pub when he ran out of money to pay his tab. The Devil, seeing an opportunity, suddenly appeared. But wily Jack managed to turn the tables and trap the Devil not once but twice. The price for the Devil’s release was that he would leave Jack alone and never ever lay claim to his soul. When he died, he was sentenced to roam the earth for eternity with nothing more than a lantern made from a carved-out turnip to light his way. Folks terrified by the prospect of the wandering soul that came to be known as Jack O’Lantern, began carving scary faces out of turnips, potatoes and mangelwurzels, placing them in windows or near entryways to scare him away. Irish immigrants brought the practice to America, the world’s eighth largest pumpkin grower, and soon every October called for us to start carving jack-o-lanterns out of this plump, orange, easily carve-able fruit. Pumpkins go hand in hand with Halloween and Thanksgiving, and both holidays draw near. It is the season of plenty — plenty of inflation in food, bond yields, fund outflows, bearishness and fear of missing out

The total amount of data in the world as of 2020 was estimated to be 44 zettabytes, or 44 trillion gigabytes, and every day since then we have created about 2.5 quintillion bytes more. So how do we handle this vast pool of information available to us, with more arriving constantly throughout the day and night? In order to be able to function amid all the information flow, we tend to create what some term a “web of belief”, a core logic, whether it is in fact logical or not. Many personal webs of belief have been completely altered during the pandemic. Those campaigning for public office count on many webs to be recast close to election day. It is happening again this year as voters have become laser focused on inflation, mortgage and interest rates, immigration, and crime, among other issues.

The Milky Way is vast: it may be one of trillions of galaxies in the universe, but it is about a thousand light years thick and stretching some 120,000 light years from end to end, holding every alien planet that our telescopes have ever spotted. To travel once around, it would take 250 million years. The Sun is based along one of its smaller arms about 26,000 light years from the turbulent core, which is packed with supermassive black holes. It has a thin, flat disk of gas and an unknown number of stars, some of which are believed to be 10 to 13 billion years old, in the middle. Near the edges, however, it appears rather sloppy, quite twisted and warped. In the financial markets these days, there is quite a lot that is warped, twisted and bubbly.

There is a form of writing going back to the 17th century known as a lipogram wherein a single letter, or a number of letters, are omitted from a work. The author’s challenge is to compose a poem, article or book without using the common letter ‘e’, for example — no easy task. In the case of this short market commentary, 889 instances of the vowel ‘e’ can be found. Imagine the difficulty involved in penning, say, a 50,000-word novel without a single use of that letter. These days we do not need to conjure up new challenges. We have plenty as it is just trying to get through a trading day without another loss, passing a gas station without seeing higher prices, coughing and wondering if we have the new COVID variant, turning on the TV without having a central banker tell us about the harsher dose of rate medicine we need to swallow for the next six months – or longer.

The Atlantic Hurricane season is upon us, having arrived late but with lethal force. It typically runs from June to November, but this year the first major hurricane did not arrive until September 20. The focus is currently on the Category 3 storm headed to Tampa Bay but the remnants of Fiona are still being felt in Puerto Rico and eastern Canada. For people already exhausted by the pandemic, weakened by inflation and battered by investment losses, hurricanes seem to symbolize the hazardous conditions we face in 2022. There are still three months left in the year, but we would all like to evacuate now.

Americans have been playing lotteries for centuries. Some of the earliest ones in the American colonies actually helped to fund the Revolutionary War. There is a lot of scratching and quick-picking going on in the financial markets of late, but very few prizes in the form of returns have been realized in 2022. After years of boom, this year is a big bust for almost every investor seeking returns. Given all the gloomy forecasts for global recession starting as soon as this year, it is hard to be positive on any market sector, although income-seeking investors holding higher yielding bonds are still happily clipping coupons.

One of the easiest ways to learn about the laws of motion is to observe Newton’s Cradle at work. The Cradle was named in honor of physicist Sir Isaac Newton, and was designed to demonstrate the principles of conservation of momentum and energy. It seems an apt device for our times. In these current days of our lives, nearly 300 years post-Newton, long-held principles are being tested in executive offices, courtrooms and voting booths.

Stories about reversals make some of the best tales. We love it when the underdog turns everything around and wins: Rocky, David versus Goliath, the 1980 men’s Olympic Hockey team, the clever con man in Trading Places. This September, while we are busy going back to school, adjusting to new work routines, celebrating holidays and enjoying the change of season, our central bank is starting to undertake one of the biggest reversals of all time. The Federal Reserve is beginning to pare down its portfolio of nearly $9 trillion, one that has grown exponentially since 2007, doubling in size since the start of the pandemic.

When asked about our favorite TV commercials, several always spring to mind. There are the ones that make us laugh, like the 1984 Wendy’s campaign when Clara lifts the bun and asks “Where’s The Beef?” or the giddy Geico camel in the 2013 Hump Day commercial. There are others that make us motivated, like the “Just Do It” slogan that became a core part of the Nike brand in 1988. Then we have the ads that touch our hearts, like the Super Bowl Coke commercial with Mean Joe Greene and the kid in the locker room or the Kodak Times of Your Life series.

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once argued forcefully that “there is no real alternative” to capitalism as an economic system. Nearly 30 years later, equity traders adapted her slogan to fashion the narrative that in prevailing market conditions there is no alternative to stocks, that all other investment opportunities are worse. The acronym TINA popped into Wall Street parlance after the 2008 financial crisis. But it has not been heard much this year. Returns for the Dow are down 9% year-to date, the S&P 500 has lost 13%, the Russell 2000 has declined 15% and the Nasdaq has fallen 21%. Conventional equity funds have seen outflows for 28 consecutive weeks. So, we think a new mantra is now in order, BRANDY: Bonds Really Are Now Delivering Yield.

The older we grow, the more we realize how little we know. Overwhelmed by the universe of data and news at our fingertips, some of us cling to trivial facts: New Jersey grows two thirds of all the eggplant in the world. Mississippi produces the most NFL players per capita. We are more likely to win an Olympic Gold medal than the Mega Millions lottery, and twice as likely to be killed by a vending machine than a shark.

The U.S. postal system was established by the Second Continental Congress on July 26, 1775 and Benjamin Franklin was paid $1,000 dollars a year to serve as its first postmaster. He was charged with establishing a national service at a time when it took months for mail to arrive from near or far and spotty deliveries were made to local taverns and inns. Franklin, the “MacGyver” of his times, rolled up his sleeves and set up more efficient delivery routes from Florida to Maine with wagons traveling in relay teams by day and night.

In Department of Defense terminology, CONOPS stands for a concept of operations, a statement that concisely expresses what a commander intends to accomplish and how it will be done using available resources. As the first quarter of 2022 draws to an end, individual investors may see the need to create or revise their own individual investment CONOPS after some in-depth communications with our trusted financial planners, counsel, tax advisers and investment professionals.