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Much like a curator ensures their museum provides an educational and entertaining experience, our goal with the Connection is to deliver something of significance in a meaningful and engaging way. Relaying information related to the economy, the market, or general finance can be boring, but if done well, the result can be of great value. Forty years from now, the Connection will serve as a time capsule of sorts – ideally, the pages will be utilized to create, develop, and improve relationships with our readers.
December 28th, 1984 was a memorable day. If you were to perform a quick search on the internet, you would likely emerge empty-handed, but you have access to OmniStar’s Connection, pocket Aces…a nice hand. This was the day my grandfather published his first newsletter, Waters’ Bits and Pieces. After jumping out of planes for the US Army, my grandfather pivoted careers and worked as a stockbroker for 42 years. Over several decades, he wrote many volumes of Waters’ Bits and Pieces. I have them all – a royal flush. Although he traded his pen and cuff links for golf clubs (he will tell you he questions his sanity), his inscriptions provide a tale worth telling. Fear of repeating history’s worst moments should drive us to study, analyze, and effectively draw conclusions from…you guessed it, history. My grandfather’s monthly newsletters are not the only pieces of history I read, but they serve as a wonderful starting point and useful comparative.
His first letter, written nearly 40 years ago, eerily reflects the on-goings of today. I am going to share some bits and pieces, no pun intended.
“Stock Market:
Positives:
- Decreasing interest rates
- Inflation leveling off
- Many money managers must be invested in the stock market, if for nothing else, liquidity.
- Most investors are hard core and cannot stay away from the market for any length of time.
Negatives:
- Concerns of budget deficit (we are probably too late into the business cycle to cut much without forcing a recession)
- Institutions have become very powerful and very erratic investors. They are quick to dump stocks on any bad news for fear of showing them in their portfolios. I suspect that many portfolios are being run by computers telling them when buy or sell depending on the parameters that were fed into the machine.”
The posturing of the economy, stock market, and our federal government gives flashes of the 80s. Need I remind you the 80s housed one of the worst days in stock market history – Black Monday. My intention for writing today is not to provoke fear or cause uncertainty – it is purely to call attention to similarities across time. History repeats itself, an idiom worth remembering. Today, interest rates are declining, inflation is leveling, and investors cannot stay away from the market for any length of time (fear of missing out). Our federal government has a tremendous budget deficit (surprise, surprise) and institutions have incredible power. These were facts in 1984 and are facts again today. It is sometimes pertinent to zoom out from the minutia and look at the big picture. Some of you might feel as if you have seen this motion picture already…maybe three or four times.
This Connection does have a happy ending, I would not leave with you doom and gloom! In 1998, he wrote that his youngest grandson would one day look back and say, “Wow, remember when the Dow was only 9000.” I must hand it to you, Pop, you hit that nail on the head. Pinned on my wall is an article from the Wall Street Journal titled, “Dow Climbs Above 38000 for First Time.” That was published January 23, 2024. Can you believe it?!
To follow in my Pop’s pen strokes, one day those at the helm of OmniStar will look back and think, “Wow, remember when the Dow was only 40000?”
I look forward to serving you for the next 40 years or the next 40000. Whichever comes first, these pages will be inked to stamp our place and remind us of the many “changes” that sometimes stay the same. We are happy to have you alongside.
Be well,
Spell Carr
