La fine del commesso viaggiatore

Morte di un commesso viaggiatore è il testo più conosciuto dell'opera drammaturgica di Arthur Miller. Il dramma, considerato uno dei più importanti del teatro contemporaneo statunitense, affronta i temi del conflitto familiare, della critica al sogno americano e della responsabilità morale dell'individuo.

Da quell’opera abbiamo preso spunto per il titolo di questo Post.

Perché abbiamo letto, in un articolo che vi riproponiamo qui in lettura, due utilissimi riferimento alla realtà di oggi, ed in particolare alla realtà di tutti voi che seguite il Blog ma siete rimasti indietro, e vi affidate ancora alle strutture di 30 anni fa, al Private Banking, ai promotori finanziari, ai Familiy Bankers, oppure come va oggi di moda dire ai Wealth Managers, con o senza supporto tecnico … del robot, che ragiona in un modo che è anche più vecchio del wealth manager, come già vi abbiamo documentato qui nel Blog.

Termini gonfiati, stiracchiati, distorti, sviliti e anche umiliati da una pratica, quella di piazzare polizze Unit Linked, quella di piazzare Certificati, quella di piazzare quote di Fondi Comuni, che mai in 30 anni hanno arricchito il Cliente che investe ma che hanno arricchito, in un modo francamente imbarazzante, struttiure di pura vendita come Fideuram, Mediolanum, Banca Generali, Allianz, FINECO, e poi Azimut e tutte le altre Reti di promozione finanziaria. (incluse UBS e Credit Suisse, che oggi sono niente altro che questo) ed attraverso loro, ovviamente, anche Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, e tutte le altre banche globali di investimento, quelle che creano i prodotti (ad altissimo margine) da piazzare al poveretto che è loro Cliente.

Al nostro lettore, noi suggeriamo di leggere con la massima attenzione questo articolo: fate però attenzione non tanto all’argomento dell’articolo, sul quale ovviamente ognuno la vede come vuole, ma ai due accenni al ruolo dei “consulenti”-

Nell’articolo, la definizione utilizzata è quella più appropriata “salesman”, ovvero promotore, venditore, piazzista. Il titolo a cui abbiamo fatto riferimento in apretura è proprio “Death of A Salesman”.

Vi saranno utilissimi, questi due veloci passaggi, per rendervi (finalmente) conto di come siete e siete sempre stati trattati dalla vostra Rete di vendita. Che vi tratta, letteralmente, come dei fessacchiotti ai quali fare credere che “più una cosa è aumentata di prezzo in passato, più aumenterà di prezzo in futuro”.

Quando in questo articolo si citano i “salesman” amici lettori si parla proprio di voi, della vostra esperienza, e di come fino ad oggi avete deciso di impiegare i vostri risparmi.

Esponendovi così a rischi che voi, oggi neppure avete capito. Per questo, potrete fare un significativo passo avanti, verso la protezione dei vostri soldi, leggendo questo articolo che noi qui vi proproniamo.

Riflettete in particolare sulla frase conclusiva: chi vi racconta che il futuro sarà simile al passato dice qualcosa che è sentito … dalle vostre stesse esperienze di vita. Applicate questa utile conclusione anche alla valutazione di come è composto, oggi, il vostro portafoglio in titoli, e ne guadagnerete in serenità (e nel rendimento).

A voi investitori, il “salesman”, il “commesso viaggiatore”, il “maitre di sala” del ristorante, non serve a nulla: lo pagate caro, e per nulla. Non sarà lui a decidere che cosa trovate nel piatto.

Potete, e dovete, andare direttamente a parlare con il gestore, con chi fa le scelte sul vostro denaro, con chi determina i vostri risultati. Potete parlare di ciò che trovate nel vostro piatto direttamente con lo Chef.

Ad esempio, potete parlare direttam,ente, e molto facilmente, con noi.

A huge collapse is coming,” warns longtime market prognosticator Harry Dent. He adds, “This thing will be hell,” it could be “the biggest crash ever,” and the start of “the next big economic downturn.”

When? By the end of June, if not sooner, it seems.

That’s less than 10 weeks away. Oh, well.

Dent’s forecast seems to have struck some kind of chord. For about a week or longer, the article was the most popular article at ThinkAdvisor.com. But although he may be unique in setting a deadline, he’s not the only guru predicting disaster.

Just this week I got a note from Jonathan Ruffer, an eminent money manager in London, with this dire warning: “I take it pretty much for granted that the 40 year bull market is ending, and that it will be replaced by hard investment times.” And Jeremy Grantham (also born in England, but long based in the U.S.) recently concluded that stocks, bonds and real estate are all in a bubble and may well collapse together in the next year or two. Longstanding gloomster John Hussman estimates the S&P 500  could end up losing us all money over the next 20 years even before you deduct inflation, and suspects a quick 25-30% market slump may be ahead.

I have a guilty secret. I’m a sucker for these warnings (OK, maybe not for Dent’s). They often make for compelling reading. The most bearish stock market forecasters are generally more intelligent, more freethinking, and more interesting than the average Wall Street salesman. They usually write much better, too. Hussman’s math and logic are almost unarguable. Why, asked John Wesley, does the devil have the best tunes? (I am not comparing these people to a religious devil, of course, only to the Wall Street equivalent: Sinners who may interfere with the business.)

And their arguments make plenty of sense. Maybe not those predicting a market collapse in time for Wimbledon, but those warning us of grim years ahead. The U.S. stock market is almost 90% above the level where the “Warren Buffett Rule” is supposed to trigger red flashing lights and deafening warning sounds. The so-called “Shiller” or cyclically adjusted price to earnings ratio ], the Tobin’s Q — all sorts of measures are telling us some version of Alien’s “Danger! The emergency destruct system is now activated! The ship will detonate in T minutes 10 minutes.” Run, don’t walk, to the escape pod. Don’t forget the cat.

And most of the most bullish forecasts we hear from Wall Street involve the simple fallacy of double-counting: The more stocks rise the better their “historic returns,” which a salesman then cheerfully extrapolates into the future.

Ergo, the more expensive stocks are, the more attractive they are.

The bears have had plenty of logic and math on their side. But most of them have been predicting various reruns of the Great Depression for most of the past 20 years. Not just in 2000 and 2007, which were good times to get out of stocks, but also the rest of the time, which weren’t.

Over the past 20 years, a simple U.S. stock-market index fund such as the SPDR S&P 500 ETF  or Vanguard Total Stock Market Index fund has quintupled your money.

These forecasts are always guaranteed to generate a lot of attention. More important, fears of a market crash have kept vast numbers of ordinary people out of stocks completely. In my day to day conversations I’m struck by how many otherwise sensible people think, not simply that the stock market is risky, but that you can, and possibly will, “lose everything.”

Why is this? And why do I (like many others) find myself peeking at the latest iceberg warning? It’s hard wired into us, psychologist Sarah Newcomb tells me. Warnings trigger our body’s stress, flight-or-fight responses, she says. “The story that there may be a market boom may move us slightly, but the story that they may be a market crash moves us more,” she says.

Newcomb, who has a Ph.D. in behavioral economics, is the director of behavioral science at financial research company Morningstar.

I guess it goes back to all those eons when our ancestors were roaming the savannas of Africa. At the first sign any sign of danger they learned to run first and ask questions later.

The early humans who treated every rustle in the grass as a lion lived to pass on their genes.

Those who didn’t … well, they ended up lunch for a big cat.

The ‘prospect theory’ guys, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, also found that we feel more pain from a dollar we lose than we feel joy from a dollar we gain. So we’re more attuned to any story telling us there might be about to lose money than to any story telling us we’re more likely to gain.

It’s not that the bull market salesmen are clearly right. Actually, math and cold hard logic should give anyone cause for concern, especially about the most euphoric U.S. stocks.

But even if these skeptics turn out to be right, when is it going to happen? Will the market go up another 10% or 20% or 50% before it turns? Will it happen in June this year — or June in 2025?

I always figure that the day I finally decide to tune these guys out altogether will be the moment the Titanic hits the iceberg.

But there are options instead of trying to guess on Boom and Doom. We can just let the market decide for us instead. Money manager Meb Faber worked out years ago that pretty much every stock market crash or bear market in history has been signaled in advance. If you just cashed out when the market index first fell below its 200-day moving average, you avoided nearly all the carnage. (OK, in the sudden 1987 one-day crash you got all of a single day’s notice.)

Even if you didn’t end up making more money in the long-term than a buy-and-hold investor, he found, you made pretty much the same amount … and with far less “volatility“ (and sleepless nights).

Last year this trigger got you out of the S&P 500 on March 2, just before the main implosion. The market rose above the 200-day moving average again, triggering it was time to get back in, on June 1.

Most people will use the S&P 500 index as their trigger, but Faber found it worked for other assets such as REITs as well. Global investors may prefer the MSCI All-Country World Index.

Is this system guaranteed to work? Of course not. But nor is anything else. That includes all those bullish predictions that stocks will earn you inflation plus 6% a year.

And those bearish predictions that once the market reaches a certain valuation triggers it’s heading for disaster.

All rules are rely on some assumption that the future will resemble the past.