I’ve been obsessing over bananas recently, in spite of the fact that I do not eat them. Low carbs and all, I don’t eat them. But did you know the varietal we eat today in America, the Cavendish, was considered to be a “junk banana” back in the day — mainly because it sucked?
The way I are across this fact is curious, after reading this passage from F. Scott Fitzgerald about the market crash.
Now once more the belt is tight and we summon the proper expression of horror as we look back at our wasted youth. Sometimes, though, there is a ghostly rumble among the drums, an asthmatic whisper in the trombones that swings me back into the early twenties when we drank wood alcohol and every day in every way grew better and better, and there was a first abortive shortening of the skirts, and girls all looked alike in sweater dresses, and people you didn’t want to know said “Yes, we have no bananas,” and it seemed only a question of a few years before the older people would step aside and let the world be run by those who saw things as they were–and it all seems rosy and romantic to us who were young then, because we will never feel quite so intensely about our surroundings any more.
That line stood out as nonsensical, so I chalked it up to some recency bias he had, some cultural event that caused him to write it. I was correct.
So then I looked into why such a song was made and lo and behold there was a banana shortage in the 1920s, which really came to a head by the 1950s, leading to the extinction of the Gros Michel banana in the Americas thanks to the Panama disease, a blight that destroyed the wonderful banana as we know it. So then BIG BANANA switched to the shitty Cavendish and that’s the horrible banana you eat today. In certain asian countries you can get the Gros Michel. You can even order it online. From what I understand, it tastes much better with less starch.
Why is this important? It really isn’t at all.
I’ve been reading about Churchill too. What an absolute moron he was with his money. Also, he smoked 12 cigars per day. Who does that?
On the news front, the Coronavirus is getting so much worse. Read my twitter feed for the up to date news. NNVC is soaring the pre-market, as well as LLIT and several others. They might pose as great trades today. I have to see them trade first. Plus, it’s a Friday and the news is bound to get worse before it gets better. My knee-jerk reaction is to not believe “this time is different.” But what if it is?!
https://www.biancoresearch.com/coronavirus-growth-rates-and-market-reactions-2/
Summary
“The growth in coronavirus infections has continued along a geometric progression for the last 12 days. Should it continue along this path, infection cases could approach 100,000 in a week.”
This ain’t the end of the world but I think Mr. Virus is going to hang around a lot longer than he’s welcome. It will cause some reshuffling of the global economy. China has proven its a hygenic and economic basket case and we need all the jobs back.
Price discovery in process: Timmbbeeerrrrr!!!!
Tried to make this post short and more exciting, like my market positioning.
For some of you, these charts should mean a hell of a lot:
https://futures.tradingcharts.com/chart/HG_/W?anticache=1580487216
https://www.investing.com/currencies/usd-jpy-advanced-chart
https://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=VIX
https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/bond/tmubmusd30y?countrycode=bx
For the rest of you, long AMZN, NFLX, TSLA, etc.
It’s called ‘time horizon’. Those with a proper one welcome lower purchase prices whenever the opportunity exists.
My first time back to America in five years I saw a bunch of bananas on my friend’s counter. They looked like fucking plastic; no way I would eat one of those shit sticks.
When I lived in Thailand, we would get “baby” bananas that were awesome as fuck. Damn things would be 75% black on the peel, but open the fucker up and it was still as good as anything.
Their mandarin oranges in December / January were also bad ass, but nothing would beat peak mango season around March / April. Fuck America’s patriotic fruit farmers. They fucking suck and should be ashamed of the absolute shite they produce.