World Out Of Whack: 5 Head Scratchers

Market dislocations occur when financial markets, operating under stressful conditions, experience large widespread asset mispricing.

Welcome to this week’s edition of “World Out Of Whack” where every Wednesday we take time out of our day to laugh, poke fun at and present to you absurdity in global financial markets in all its glorious insanity.

While we enjoy a good laugh, the truth is that the first step to protecting ourselves from losses is to protect ourselves from ignorance. Think of the “World Out Of Whack” as your double thick armour plated side impact protection system in a financial world littered with drunk drivers.

Selfishly we also know that the biggest (and often the fastest) returns come from asymmetric market moves. But, in order to identify these moves we must first identify where they live.

Occasionally we find opportunities where we can buy (or sell) assets for mere cents on the dollar – because, after all, we are capitalists.

In this week’s edition of the WOW: 5 head scratchers

Today we’re going to blast through a few shards of information that have bloodied my windshield recently… but first some context.

The world is a web, interconnected at multiple levels but in it’s entirety it is one giant capital flow chart. This is why looking at events, trends and prices from multiple angles and with historical context is critical. It means that in order to understand global capital flows and the world at large investors needs to be generalists. Specialisation renders one towards narrow focus by necessity. There is nothing wrong with narrow focus when you need it so long as it can be brought into focus through a broad understanding.

Let’s therefore look at a number of topics.

1: Saudi Arabia Got WHAT??

In what I dearly wish was a delayed April fools joke the United Nations just elected Saudi Arabia to the Woman’s Rights Commission. No isht!

A quick reminder: this is the only country in the world which actually bans women from driving cars while implementing Sharia Law, which – for those among you who haven’t read the intricacies of – permits, among other heinous things, honour killings. Way to go UN!