For my inaugural blog post, I thought I’d analogize this week’s market battle near $SPX 1420 to the La charge à Eylau in 1807, where the Grand Armée of Napoleon ran headlong into its first damaging resistance, namely the Russian army, on the wintry plains of Doji’s lost ancestry in East Prussia. The piece below is from the compelling 1994 French movie “Le Colonel Chabert,” based on a a gripping character study novel by Balzac. The movie features Colonel Chabert (Gerard Depardieu), as one of Napoleon’s greatest officers, who was considered dead following La charge à Eylau in 1807. The battle of Preußisch Eylau was a multi-day affair and one of the more bloody battles of the Napoleonic Wars, at one point featuring over 14 hours of continuous combat. In the movie, although badly wounded at Eylau, the good colonel does not die, which sets the stage for his return to France where he finds his wife remarried, his fortune and social standing lost in an Obamaesque post-empire world. Noone believes he is really alive as he has been declared killed in battle. The movie becomes a captivating account of the colonel and his lawyer’s struggle to reclaim something of his life from various miscreants. This scene, where no words are spoken (and none are needed), could only be produced outside of Hollywood. It is worth turning up the volume to fully experience the raw power, nobility, and thunderous fury of the French horse mounted cavalry charge directly into the Russian lines.
The charge reminds one of the pitched battle equities have fought for most of this week, gapping up directly into a killing field of resistance. As in the real life battle, the market results have been inconclusive, but not without significant casualties. It remains to be seen whether the Bulls can breach the defensive lines of the $SPX 1420 region and achieve a breakout and encirclement of the burlap clad bear army or whether a tactical withdrawl to previous support is necessary. Personally, when I sense resistance as a trader, i try to remember one of Sun Tzu’s dictums regarding an enemy “When strong, avoid them.”
As an aside, the real life battle of Eylau took place in the vicinity of Preußisch-Eylau which post 1945 is the hideous Bagrationovsk in the Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia, along the Baltic coast. In a parallel universe somewhere, WWII never happened and the Doji spends most of his time in the drawing room of his family’s Junker compound outside of Preußisch-Eylau composing music and developing plans for new conquests while opining on the issues of the day to an audience of scandalous French women. Have a good weekend.
