“So this is how it all ends, not with a bang, but with a status update.”
That was the great comment tweeted by Joe Weisanthal this morning as Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi wrote on his facebook page: “The rumors of my resignation are groundless.”
You know, screw this whole EU crisis thing, I’m just fascinated with what’s become of society as we enter what I call the Post-Information Age – the point at which there is now so much information in the World that people don’t want to think anymore so we now rely on media personalities who can sum complex political issues up in 140 characters or less.
Of course Twitter itself is just a rip-off of Haiku, which has limited poets to 17 syllables for centuries. Unfortunately, most tweets are not so clever and make little use of seasons, which hard-core Haiku fans consider essential.
Still, we get the occasional gems from Twitter or Facebook and I find it hysterical that Silvio writes on his wall “Le voci di mie dimissioni sono destituite di fondamento” and 510 people like his comment and 465 people make comments and 178 people share it – all in 15 minutes or less and $100Tn worth of Global equities jump up and down 1%, giving Berlusconi the record writing rate of $110Bn per word!
The Post-Information Age has rumors driving the stock market as we prove the old newspaper adage that “a rumor can run around the World before the truth can get its boots on.” Faster information gives us faster rumors but not faster Truth – truth takes time but most market participants, egged on by the MSM, would rather be first than right and that’s why we’ve had 3 months of wildly swinging markets in which we actually just finished right back where we began.
That’s why I pointed out to Members last week that the best way to play this market is to day-trade the ranges or simply ignore all the BS and just keep selling premium outside the range to the endless supply of suckers who think this time will be different (see Stock World Weekly for a full summary of last week’s positions and a view of the week ahead).
We went long in early morning Member Chat on the rumor that Berlusconi was resigning and…
