Do not welsh on Ben’s bet

BOTHERATION and all, well the blighters can’t keep it up, can they? Don’t worry, chaps, everything will turn out okay, it is just a passing local difficulty. I wish those were my words; they are those of Frank Keating, the fine sports writer who passed away in January.

Frank was being sarcastic about English cricket (giving away 600 runs and getting bowled out twice), but his vexation can well be applied to today’s markets. I mean, really, Ben Bernanke? The old saying goes: “Don’t fight the Fed.” But every time Ben dithers, markets go berserk. First, the panic that he might stop buying US bonds and so force up the price of long-term borrowing. Then the bumbling while he tried to say the bleeding obvious: interest rates will not rise in the US (and therefore anywhere else in the civilised world) until he reckons the economy is fixed.

It isn’t fixed; it’s fkd. Any fool knows this. The US is slowly whirling down the lavvy.

So of course the markets freak out like excited dogs, expecting more Bernanke bones. Ridiculous, really.

Last Friday was a case in point. Traders were slavering for “good” news and it eventually came in the form of the monthly jobs report. The S&P 500 jumped because employment numbers in the US rose in June. But what kind of jobs were created? McEconomy jobs, that’s what. Zerohedge.com nailed it: “Even as manufacturing jobs continue to collapse, posting their fourth consecutive monthly drop to 11.964 million jobs, minimum-wage waiters and bartenders have never been happier. In June restaurant and bar

The old saying goes: ‘Don’t fight the Fed.’ But every time Ben dithers, markets go berserk

employees just hit a new all-time high of 10 339 800 workers, increasing by a whopping 51 700 in one month.”

If this is an economic recovery, then no wonder Bernanke wants to keep the liquidity taps open for a while longer.

Now, of course, it leaves the rest of us monkeys wondering what the heck to do with our money. How long does an economic cycle last? Elliott Wave says it comes in impulsive spurts, sideways dribbles and exhausted slumps, all based on the greater global mood. It is impossible to predict at the best of times.

At first sight it seems cash is flushing out of bonds into stocks. But what stocks?

All fund managers say they keep a tight eye on “the mean”. Over time, prices tend to revert to long-term trends — investors take profits in one sector and swivel into another. The latest South African unittrust performance data may provide some hints as to what happens next.

Property has had a fabulous run over the past five years; resources have not. Industrials have boomed over the past three years; resources have tanked. Global equity has creamed it in the past 12 months; resources have quite frankly embarrassed me, my late father, my grandfather and who knows how many other half-breed Taffies who still hold a torch for stuff you dig out of the ground.

The worm will turn, boyo. Blwdi brilliant, it will be. Blue-dee buh-real-ee-unt!