With the stock market collapsing more today, this is a great day for me with respect to my investments. As I have written previously, I have been aggressively taking out short positions for over a year in anticipating a severe economic depression. I am absolutely sure all financial assets are going to plummet. While my investing approach may seem extreme, I feel completely safe with it. I am already ahead almost 50% for the year.
So, where do I get my confidence? I know for a fact that human beings do not just behave like herd animals. Human beings actually are herd animals. From birth we are all trained to be members of herds and sub herds. All through school, children are encouraged to establish all sorts of arbitrary loyalties. By the time kids are grown, individual thought is all but extinguished. None of this is done consciously. It is all instinctive behavior. Humans both deny acting on instinct and are unaware they are doing so. Only a handful of others and I have enough awareness to see that society is governed by herd dynamics and not individuals reasoning individually. Am I happy knowing that I am a herd animal? No, but I am not going to let that stand in the way of my making a profit.
Other analysts believe policy decisions are made using reason and intellect. I correctly study human behavior in terms if herd dynamics. For example, I know when the Federal Reserve makes a decision; it is always based on compulsions that are dictated by herd instinct.
Lonestar Card Lonestar Card is a song I wrote and recorded as Curbside Jimmy a number of years back with the Curbside Jug Band. If you listen very carefully to the bass, you will discover that it is a Jug. The jug was played by the late Gator Ron Ramey, who was the probably best jug player who ever lived. The the jug is prominent at the very end of the song. Lonestar Card celebrates the welfare system in Texas of which so many Texans are very proud.

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