Summer's End

The investment world is on vacation mode.  The time between now and Labor Day will find the denizens of Wall Street focused on anything besides the markets.  The desks in New York, Boston and London will be largely manned by the "B" team as the bosses head to whatever watering holes they like to bide their summer time.  

There should be very little economic or corporate news in the next two weeks.  Yes there is the meeting of central bankers from around the world at Jackson Hole this weekend and there will be much discussion of economic policy going forward.  But the short term direction of things has been telegraphed before these meetings and the long range implications coming out of the conference can be worried about in a few weeks.  

Markets turned on a dime from their correction mode a few weeks ago and for the most part now are flirting with all time highs.  They have bled higher this week on little news.  This may not hold especially if events abroad deteriorate.  We saw how quickly markets went into "risk off" mode last Friday when the Ukrainians shelled a Russian military convoy.  For now though overseas have taken a back seat and seem far away in the summer winds.  Let us pray that they do not seem far away like they did in the waining summer days of 1939.  For the world is a mess.  It is perhaps in its grandest state of chaos and flux in any time since the end of the Cold War and our political leaders here seem to have checked out.  For now though at least in the short term things seem to be at least in a holding pattern.  The advances of ISIS in Iraq seem to have at least been stopped.  The Russians and the Ukrainians for the moment seem to at least pretend to talk, Gaza has a cease-fire etc.  This is the one area that could ignite itself out of the blue, causing problems for markets along the way.  But for now those problems seem far away, best monitored over a cold beverage by the lake, beach or pool.  

Yet as Shakespeare noted so accurately "Summers lease hath all to short a date".  Summer, at least the traditional Memorial Day to Labor Day season burned into every person's memory who grew up in another era, has now become a more compact time.  Schools in many parts of the country that used to start after Labor Day now start in August.  Our schools here start Monday.  The Catholic school at the end of my street started yesterday.  In many parts of the south and lower Midwest, school has been in session for a few weeks.  Blame football for that.  The Irish have a game next week as do many other college teams.  

Speaking of college I will be busy the next few days reopening the Lumen Capital Management branches at Butler University and St. Louis University so I will be a bit out of pocket.  I'm also doing a bit of traveling and taking a few days off over the holiday next weekend.  Posting schedule will be Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday next week and the same schedule the week after.  I have some interesting things to discuss when September roles around so stay tuned.  Enjoy these last few weeks of summer if you can.  Fall is not far around the bend now and we know what comes after that.  Summer for the most part in this neck of the woods has been moderate and I'm afraid we could see a repeat of last year's December-May pattern.  To quote a certain television series, "Winter is coming".