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02:12 AM
Bikram Vohra
JournalismPakistan.com
November 6, 2015
My friend the finance whizz is worried because the markets are currently volatile. That’s the nice thing about not having money. You don’t care if the markets sizzle, sink or swim. For all I care they could do the Viennese waltz and it wouldn’t matter. The only market I care about is where we buy fruit and veggies. And there are no bulls and bears there. For me these animals indicate the market conditions as confusingly as port and starboard do for left and right to naval captains.
My idea of a stock is that little cube you put in the soup to give it taste and share is what you do with some delicious morsel of gossip.
I love those little arrows going up and down in business section graphics even though I haven’t a clue what they mean and I have to confess that for years I thought Nasdaq was the car race and footsies was what you engaged in when flirting under the table.
Rich people get into a tizzy over property values. They say profound things like inflation is on the cards, and I think, oh the balloon man is coming. The other day the same friend said he believed that with a possible mini-depression in days would hit us (speak for yourself, mate, I am bright as a button) a lot of people would become victim to debt collection. And the only contribution I could make was to say talking of collections wish they would collect all the heaps of garbage in the capital.
This was met with stony silence.
People I know have bonds, gilt edged and blue chipped, and my bonds are foolscap sheets for the printer. You discuss debentures and my mind immediately drifts to the dentist’s.
But I look at the bright side. If the Mutual Funds fluctuate like a disloyal girlfriend, so be it. They can flutter, slide, slip and stay immature, how does it bother me. Go ahead, knock yourself out, have a recession, see if it upsets me… you cannot be hit by a recession if you have nothing to recess. Folks speak of assets and how they are going to liquidate them. When your assets are a six year old car and a projector TV nobody wants the only liquidation you are familiar is wiping out bad guys in the spy movies.
If there is a run on bank they are not going to get very far with your money, a kilometer or two. And let me say this, you can never be accused of insider trading because you’ll never be inside, just on the outside looking in.
Perhaps the only thing that I miss in my genteel poverty is that if I had the moolah my bank manager would see me to the car.
Now that would be a capital investment.
(The writer is a Senior Editorial Advisor of Khaleej Times and the paper’s former Editor. He has also been the Editor of Gulf News, Gulf Today, Emirates Today and Bahrain Tribune)
If my call is so important to them, why don’t they answer it for 22 minutes?
How come when I want to, but something specific online is the only item out of stock.
When I get into a queue or lane going fast, the moment I get in, it becomes the slowest and refuses to budge.
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