Canaries and U-Bends

Sometimes it’s great to be first. You make history.

Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon. Edmund Hillary was the first man to conquer Everest. Christopher Columbus discovered America (albeit a thousands years behind the Native Americans). Barack Obama was the first black president, while Margaret Thatcher was the first woman prime minister. And Thomas Crapper invented the U-bend in toilets.

Making history and finishing first in the sports world is vastly important, too.   

In sporting occasions, it’s the same. England won their first – and only - World Cup in 1966. Tom Brady became the first quarterback to reach 200 regular season wins, and the first quarterback to six Super Bowl victories. Wayne Gretzky was the first person to 1,851 points (assists and goals) in the NHL. Arsenal recorded the first-ever unbeaten season in the Premier League.

And for the winners, there’s the following and the adulation – even Mr Crapper, had a word derived from his name, where people either describe someone or a thing in a derogatory sense, or talk about a daily constitutional, or going to visit one, armed with a good book. Royalty loved his toilets. He even has some branded manhole covers in Westminster Abbey.

In sports, the adulation spreads to commerce. Tom Brady’s Patriots shirt is one of the best-bought in the NFL, and you can’t go around any place in the world without seeing a Barcelona or Argentina Lionel Messi shirt or a Portugal or Real Madrid/Juventus Cristiano Ronaldo one – people like to be seen to ‘support’ the best player in the world. He switches teams, they switch teams.  Damn, Michael Jordan is iconic that Nike still has a shoe brand named after him (‘Jordans’), and he’s been retired for Decades.

But where there is the joy of winning, there is the juxtaposition of tragedy, that sometimes people forget about.

Know who the first person who died in NASCAR race? That would be Larry Mann, who passed away in 1952 – 49 years before the more-famous death of Deal Earnhardt. Know who the first horse to die in the Grand National? That would be Dictator in 1839. People rightly talk about the Hillsborough disaster of 1989 and the injustices, but forget that the Ibrox disaster of 1902 was the first to take supporters to heaven when a Stand collapsed, killing 25 and injuring 500. William Cropper was the first person to die on a football/soccer field in 1889 by the way.

But while some people talk about the bad things (especially Hillsborough, where they are still waiting for full justice for the 96 that died) a lot, they are crowded out by the noise of people wanting to remain positive – even if it is to the detriment of reality.

The positivity is cottoned on to by the marketers too, who use the likes of Google and Facebook (who love your individuality so much that they group you into a herd with other individuals and farm them out to these marketers) and sell you ‘useful stuff’, which included insurance companies who will sell you ‘cover’, but woe betide you if you actually use it. If you use them too much, you’ll be dropped like, er, something in Thomas Crapper’s U-Bend.

And with the ‘happy vibes’ comes the boastfulness, too. In the same way that people (like me) talk positively about themselves on social media, investors will gladly tell you about the mega profits rather than mega losses. That’s why Warren Buffett is a cult leader (Editor’s Note: Our fund invests in Berkshire’s ‘B’ shares), the who discovered that the Financial Crisis was a sham and made fortunes from their shorts have had books and films made out of them, and the guys who cashed out during the dotcom boom despite selling investors the crap that goes into the crapper are still legends in a thirsty-for-icons Silicon Valley (remember, they ignored what a told piece of human waste Steve Jobs was because he marketed Apple really, really well).

If the people had bothered to think about the crappiness they were seeing during the mega-booms about the crappiness of what they were seeing investing-wise, they probably would have strayed away from investing in dotcoms – where most of them were a financial horror show. And people would shied away from Bernie Madoff. The political among you will probably talk about the election of a president, but Trump didn’t actually win the popular vote, and Mrs Clinton had her own share of accusations of dodginess, too.  

Remember, it’s not cool to be the canary in the coal mine. Unless you are loved by Facebook and Twitter, saying that a stadium might have ‘safety issues’ will be largely ignored. Remember: It took 80 horse deaths for the Grand National to lower its fences in 2011 (I mean, why change the world’s most exciting, bet-on horserace?). It took NASCAR to lose one of its biggest stars to really push safety-consciousness. And it took investigations into the deaths of former NFL players Mike Webster, Andre Waters and Terry Long to work out that maybe – just maybe – that smashing a helmet into another helmet for 12 years was probably going to hurt your head, and maybe the powers-that-be might want to do something about it.

And speaking of canaries, people still wantonly ignore the canaries to invest in stocks that are loaded up with debt. Uber’s pretty much back at its starting share price despite not changing any of its wording around more exotic ways of reporting (I would get into it but I don’t understand it!). People are convinced that Tesla’s worth $205 a share, despite Elon Musk’s poverty as a CEO, the company burning cash like wildfire, and the price of its bonds tumbling. And people don’t mind looking at EBITDA, which is like saying: “That boxer looked good going into the ring. Let’s forget about the fact that after six rounds his face was a pepperoni pizza. He still looks great.” We still don’t understand it.

And when the recession comes (and it will, people), everyone will be saying how they should have left the club earlier, and blame the analysts, the brokers and just about anyone else (and probably sue them)…..instead of looking in the mirror and pointing to themselves as the reason why it all went to crap.