The Tub Helps Me Relax, And It's

There Are No Easy Choices. Easy Choices Are Long Gone.

History Demonstrates That Participants In Financial Markets Are Susceptible To Waves Of Optimism. Excessive Optimism Shows The Seeds Of Its Own Reversal In The Form Of Imbalances That Tend To Grow Over Time.

At The Risk Of Some Oversimplification, If The Skill Composition Of Our Work Force Meshed Fully With The Needs Of Our Increasingly Complex Capital-stock, Wage-skill Differentials Would Be Stable, And The Percentage Changes In Wage Rates Would Be The Same For All Job Grades.

Clearly, Sustained Low Inflation Implies Less Uncertainty About The Future, And Lower Risk Premiums Imply Higher Prices Of Stocks And Other Earning Assets. We Can See That In The Inverse Relationship Exhibited By Price/earnings Ratios And The Rate Of Inflation In The Past. But How Do We Know When Irrational Exuberance Has Unduly Escalated Asset Values, Which Then Become Subject To Unexpected And Prolonged Contractions As They Have In Japan Over The Past Decade?

No Matter How Skillful The Trading Scheme, Over The Long Haul, Abnormal Returns Are Sustained Only Through Abnormal Exposure To Risk.