Phil Grossfield's Blog

Full of Myself In January of this year I wrote a post about my daughter trying to understand discrimination. I like that post. In fact, I like it so much I’m going to cut and paste it for you right here:

1/21/2013 www.PhilGrossfield.com

Gloriously oblivious. We watched Martin Luther King’s I have a Dream speech with the kids Saturday morning. “What is he talking about?” asked the 7-year old. I tried to explain, “you see honey, there was a time when people weren’t treated equally, in fact, people still aren’t treated equally, and Martin Luther King stood up for those people and motivated all the people you see on the computer and people all around the country to stand up for people who were not being treated fairly.” Not bad, eh? “Why weren’t they being treated equally Daddy?” I stammered on this one…my wife looked at me puzzled as well. How do you tell a 7-year old girl, whose concept of bigotry and baseless hatred is as foreign as the workings of the Large Hadron Collider? How do I explain to a girl whose second grade class is made up of 20+ different cultures that there was a time when we enslaved people based on the color of their skin? More importantly, do I want to explain it? My wife tried and stuttered an explanation to no avail…my daughter didn’t get it, and that’s just fine by me. Gloriously oblivious.

I have a dream that little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

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My Market Watch: War Is Bad; Bonds Up & Down – But Pricing Is Worse. The 30-year Fannie Mae bond was trading lower this morning after positive economic reports came in, specifically the jobless claims. As a result, traders put money into stocks and pulled money out of bonds. When that happens, pricing gets worse. But the unrest in Syria has traders on the edge of their seats.

War is bad. But war is not necessarily bad for bonds. I know, I know, but it’s true. War gives stock traders the cringes because it usually results in market instability around the world. For example, if the U.S. launches missiles on Syria, it’s expected that Syria will launch missiles on Israel. Of course, Israel will retaliate and when they do they are usually pretty darn effective. Simply put, it’s just a safer investment to put money into bonds rather than stocks when people are trying to blow each other up. That said, please don’t pray for war, but when the U.S. launches an assault in Syria, it’s a pretty good bet the stock market will flail and bonds will pick up some steam. If so, pricing should improve…. In fact, I feel like pricing might even improve today. If my Mom asked me for advice, I’d tell her to float this morning and wait to see if a pricing improvement comes this afternoon…and I love my Mom.

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