Way back when I first started out in this business, around the turn of the century, there was this guy who’d walk around the office saying/asking/blurting, “Are you bull or bear?”
He did more than that, of course, and I learned a lot from him. (We even co-co-authored a book; you could look it up.) But, sometimes, his incisive ebullience reduced to nothing more than, “Bullish?”
It was a rhetorical tic. But it was a good one, a way to be constantly breaking barriers and always making market-focused conversation. And I developed a response that, in the early days, was merely an attempt to parry: “Neither.”
Now, after many years and under the pressure of multiple death-defying rallies in both directions, “neither” now feels less like simple wit and more like earned wisdom. It doesn’t pay to get too high, and it doesn’t pay to get too low. It pays to be constructive.
That’s an easy thing to type at this moment in time that’s so particularly fraught, not just for investors and markets, but for people and the world.
But equanimity is indeed one of those things that turns up again and again when it comes to discussions of successful investors, as well as of happy people. It’s the key to clear-minded decision-making.
I was reminded of those conversations with my old friend Yiannis, simple wit and earned wisdom when I read the latest issue of Jon Markman’s Pivotal Point yesterday.
“Investors should not pay too much attention to politics,” Jon writes. “It clouds judgment.” That’s because politics is all emotion — “red” and “blue” in place of “bull” and “bear” — and it’s only getting worse.
At the same time, as Jon notes, “Something really big is happening. Globalism is being undone.”
At the center of a “striking shift toward protecting American workers and struggling domestic industries” is Palantir Technologies, a Silicon Valley-based “big data” company that was founded with seed money from the Central Intelligence Agency.
Here’s Jon:
After failing to make any headway with venture capital investors in 2003, the fledgling firm secured a $2 million investment from In-Q-Tel, a venture investment arm of the CIA. The only other seed money, $30 million, came from Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal (Nasdaq: PYPL, Rated “C+”).
Thiel thought Palantir could simplify counter-terrorism software in the same way PayPal made exchanging money online easier in the early days of the internet.
Gotham, Palantir’s counter-terrorism software, lets intelligence analysts quickly find answers to complex questions without writing code or mastering statistical modelling. Imagine a Google search bar, but also with mountains of government and collected data to work with, too. Shipping logs and manifests, credit card records, customer lists and hundreds of other data points are all integrated, matched are catalogued.
Analysts then ask learned questions and get real-time responses. The information helps them perform their job faster, better.
In 2010, then Vice President Joe Biden credited Palantir software for helping analysts at the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board uncover fraud. A year later, CIA analysts used tools built on the same platform to find, track and ultimately kill Osama bin Laden.
Today Palantir operates in 40 countries and has two additional platforms. Metropolis is being used by hedge funds and other financial institutions. Foundry was designed for use by enterprises.
Karp claims Foundry creates innovation with jobs. In a 2018 YouTube video he explained that Chrysler Automobiles N.V. (NYSE: FCAU, Rated “D”) has 1,500 people using Palantir software. These people are not PhDs yet they are able to use Foundry to determine what materials should be used, and for what applications. The result is better design, safer products and better margins for the company.
Protecting workers has become central to Palantir. After all, workers are essential. None of these functions can be performed by computers alone. Karp, who earned a PhD in Philosophy, says Silicon Valley is growing wealthier as it eats up every job on the planet with automation. Someone needs to stand with workers because without jobs there is no democracy.Last week, Biden, echoed many of these same sentiments. He said America once rewarded work as much as it rewarded wealth. Now, only excessive wealth is rewarded as jobs are destroyed. The presumptive Democratic nominee also advocated for a supply chain review that mandates products purchased by the Federal government be made in the United States.
Wall Street continues to grind higher, even as Main Street suffers historic stresses exacerbated by the novel coronavirus. That’s a troublesome disconnect.
And, within the stock market, there is a “great bifurcation,” as Martin Weiss recently described it.
“In the brick-and-mortar world,” Martin noted, “we see a tsunami of financial failures — corporate bankruptcies, personal bankruptcies, even government bankruptcies.
“In the digital world, we see a tidal wave of revolutionary technological innovations. In the one, unprecedented wealth destruction; in the other, unprecedented wealth creation.”
Does that make this a time to be fearful? Greedy?
Or constructive?
If you believe now is the time to be constructive, the Weiss Ratings can help you sort the wheat from the chaff and target solid opportunities.
Best,
David Dittman
