Reflecting on this Day of Infamy for Americans, it’s amazing resilience that assisted the comeback all these years. We must never forget the attacks on the U.S., or the UK, Spain, France, Germany and Sweden among others, writes our roving Trader Gene Inger back home.
In my recent travels I’ve encountered more understanding for the global picture in realistic terms. More so than one might imagine, and less sympathy for the rationales old-line politicians put forth.
At Berlin’s IFA technology show, a particular conversation I alluded to stands out. One German engineer for a supplier of automobile electronics, in his early 30s, making the point as we chatted about political issues, that many older Germans rely on television, not the internet, for news. And that the news self-censors what’s really out there in terms of threats. Hence, Germans take solace in established parties.
I suspect he was reflecting slightly populist leanings. Nevertheless, he’s got a point about what was not covered. Such as a couple extremist attack stories in Germany itself, and the firebombing by youths (never accurately described, or if so until much later) of cars in several Swedish cities. Plus a few more instances of attacks on single women simply trying to go home.
Reuters: Tech, including Apple, and energy stocks lift Wall Street Tuesday.
We can be favorable to legitimate migration for asylum (from persecution or fear that’s justified. not merely economic standing). We really need to know who and why someone is entering.
Germany has been truly at the forefront of liberalized immigration. They are sobering-up to security needs. As France sadly discovered, after the Trojan Horse is inside your walls is really the hardest time to discern and dispel would-be attackers.
I wish the U.S. government would remind citizens NATO invoked Article 5, only once, and that was the 9-11 (mostly Saudi) attack on the United States.
I’ll delve into the market more below of course, but wanted to reflect just a bit on that awful day in our lives. And the fighting that still goes on almost a generation after the attack of 9-11.
The German Luftwaffe provided AWAC aircraft (Boeing 707s for Airborne Warning & Control) over New York City. And Canada, the UK and France immediately tightened security. The USA must stand shoulder-to-shoulder with these Allies. Yes even as they must contribute more to the mutual defense. but regardless.
On this fateful day, we mourn those whose lives were taken by extremist Islamic terrorists (again that awful Wahhabi sect as preaches submission) on 9-11, at the Bataclan, in London, Manchester, Madrid and Moscow as well as all the other incidents.
This is a long battle and it’s not over. That those of our soldiers, sailors and airmen serving today were barely born in 2001, is testimony to the duration of ongoing struggles.
God bless the USA and especially all secular freedom-loving societies everywhere. Civilized mankind has no choice but to confront evil and every right to expect those who migrate to free countries to assimilate. if we’re to have stable futures.
In this year’s travel, I observed heightened military presence in Italy, with Belgium more calm than one would think wise, and France remaining on military alert.
In Greece there was no security in evidence. Although fairly frequent overflights by military C-130s or Chinook helicopters was noted.
In Germany there was an attack on a citizen in the East (and protest), and as a member called to my attention, the owner of a Jewish restaurant was assaulted in the East (whether by neo-Nazis or Islamic terrorists isn’t yet determined). I for one am enlightened, while tired and glad to go home.
In-sum: Europe has greater unity because of President Trump’s wavering, which triggered their realization of coming together.
Concurrently, U.S. and other NATO Marines just last week landed in amphibious assault training, in Sweden, which is not a NATO member but concerned about Russia.
Of course, Russia has now announced its largest ever military exercise. Sure, we have to be careful with the Russians. Threats by China ongoing in the South China Sea are very relevant (one-third of world trade transits there). At the same time, the enigma of the Middle East persists.
China desperately will need a trade deal with the USA to prosper. And will not be able to grow adequately under the system of recent decades unless they do so. You’d really have to have a China 2.0 for that to occur. And try as they may with other Asian countries (and trade deals with Russia), it’s a far cry from the business they do when you include the USA and the EU.
Monday daily action recognized likely light attendance on Rosh Hashanah while emphasizing the heavy nature of the heart of a preceding advance being the far-sharper declines of FANG or similar stocks within NASDAQ. At the same time efforts to rotate into relative value stocks was unable to mask a fairly hectic couple weeks of distribution, rebounds and procedural decline in such overextended issues.
While this occurred, the S&P tried to hide the distribution as well but only the Dow Industrial Average managed a bit of a holding action. (It, too, gradually surrendered as investors realized what was up…was actually now going down.)
At the same time the most extended stocks were seen as the FANG types. We warned that when everyone is aboard, the next thing they’re going to do is sell (at least some) even while they proclaim the greatest of their investments, and cheer absurdly-priced stocks.
We got to a point outlined, during my travels, where such stocks went so far North they actually were going South sort of an over-the-pole scenario.
Perhaps the analogy might be as I'm typing this at 37,000 feet somewhere over Greenland (polar flight from Berlin to New York overflies part of what remains of the glaciers), but it is surely the case for the likes of Google (GOOG), Facebook (FB), Tesla (TSLA) and others.
