Terminal Tuesday – 2013 Comes to an End

Will it be a happy new year?

Hard to imagine it being happier for the markets than 2013, with the indexes closing at record highs and investor optimism nearing 80% bullish – as good as it's been since October of 1929 – just day's before the crash.  Earnings were also looking great in 1929 and the gap between the top 1% and the bottom 99% had never been greater – until now.

That's another record we've shattered in this trickle-less rally, wealth disparity is at an all-time high.  The top 10% are partying like it's 1999, and why shouldn't they?  The top 10% control 83% of the country's financial wealth, 50% more than they did in 1929 and the next 10% have 12%, leaving 5% for the bottom 80% to share.  

There's no use complaining about it, these are the conditions we're living in (well, that's what we like to say to the bottom 80% – to keep them from revolting!).  If the prevailing social condition is slavery and the average white plantation owner has 200 slaves, then we should buy stock in the plantations, right?  

That's what we do when we play the markets, there was a brief fad of "social-conscience investment funds" but, of course, they underperformed and no one wanted them and they died a quick death.  There are, in fact, just 29M people in the World who have more than $1M and only another 344M people who have more than $100,000 in assets.  Between them, these 373M people, just 5% of the World's population, control 82.4% of the World's assets.  

That's US and, believe me, you do NOT want to be one of THEM.  You may think you can live fighting with the bottom 90% for your share of the remaining 17.6% but, essentially, it's like permanently moving to Survivor Island – and you've seen that experience break down even the strongest of people.  Even the poorest Americans are typically in the top half of the global wealth dung-heap and the poorest Europeans as well – the rest of the world suffers beneath us all.  

Ken Langone is one…

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