Thursday, August 21, 1997
Permanent News or
Traffic Jams in Abu Dhabi
by
TMF Runkle
In an earlier Fribble, I wrote about how I am out in the Arabian desert near Abu Dhabi. It's not bad. Modern conveniences are here; we have McDonald's, Burger King, Chi-Chi's, Coca-Cola, etc. When I was born 41 years ago, this was a very primitive society, mostly nomads, fisherman, and gold smugglers. Today, this area is comparable to Phoenix, Arizona. Nevertheless my access to news is sort of limited. At home I check out a host of different publications and web sites to find out what is happening to companies I'm invested in. I can go to the Carnegie Business Library to do more in-depth research. Here, my web access is painfully slow, and I only have access to the local English-language paper and CNN.
The result? I have access to nothing but Permanent News. What's that? In Washington, DC, Permanent News is the articles in the Washington Post about bad traffic on the Beltway. In Pittsburgh, it's articles about the troubles of the steel mills (the ones left open). Wherever you are in the world, it's the fights between the Protestants and Catholics in Ireland, the Israeli's and Palestinians in the Mideast. Locally, it's the bad traffic in Abu Dhabi and the rest of the Emirates.
You probably have Permanent News in your home town, too. It's stuff that happens endlessly, and can be used to fill up space when there is nothing else to write about. On CNN, they have to fill up 24 hours, so ethnic conflicts provide a good source of filler. Since they go on forever, they are easy to learn how to cover. On the less gruesome side, traffic here in Abu Dhabi, and any other modern city, annoys everybody, providing a good filler, too.
This brings me to investment Permanent News. My wife sent me some t-shirts and a coffee mug wrapped in the business section from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Wall Street Journal. What type of news was in there? There were articles about how different market experts were calling for a 20% correction. Other experts were bullish because the many experts that were predicting a decline were a contrarian indicator. One article was about an expert who correctly predicted something, and gets $10,000 a month from subscribers to his advisory service. Nice work if you can get it. I get paid a very very small fraction of that to burn up here in the desert. My Magic 8-ball probably predicts as well as his does, but I digress.
What I find interesting is that these articles would have been current if they were four years old, ten years old, or published yesterday. There have been experts predicting moves on the market for years. Sometimes they are right; sometimes they are wrong. It doesn't matter; they always end up in the paper. If they didn't exist, the Wall Street Journal would be much thinner, or would have to cover traffic conditions here in Abu Dhabi.
There will always be Permanent News with us. I hope that the ethnic conflicts around the world are only semi-permanent, and pass into history. Behind those endless stories is real human suffering. The Permanent News about traffic will always be with us, and relatively meaningless and mostly harmless. As far as the Permanent News about the Market Gooroos and Seers, it's just as meaningless as the traffic jams on the Wilson Bridge are to a person living here in the Emirates. Well, maybe not. A friend of mine from Sharjah has been offered a transfer to Washington, DC. At least he knows he'll feel right at home. If you listen to all the Gooroos and Seers on the Market, the results for you may not be so harmless.
That reminds me; I missed another Permanent News item, stories about people who lose phenomenal amounts of money by mindlessly following investment "Experts." What if you had pulled all of your money out of the Market in 1994, when a number of "Experts" predicted a severe correction? Or, let's say you tried to time the market on what the Gooroos quoted in the media said, and put a load of money in prior to the great correction in 1987? Trying to time the market can be very expensive, yet in the Permanent News, the Swamis say it is possible, and they know how.
If you really want to be part of the Permanent News, leave from Northern Virginia to Ocean City, Maryland at 5 PM on the Friday before Labor Day weekend. The 10 hours it takes you to make the 150 mile trip will certainly be in the paper. It won't cost you more than a tank full of gas. Mindlessly following one of the market "experts" could cost you a lot more than that. Wrapping this up, I was watching NBC Nightly News at 5 AM this morning (remember my time difference), and guess what the special report was? Heavy traffic in Boston. There's no escaping Permanent News. .