The market ended on a high note this Friday, which was also the close of the financial year. One wonders who the April fool's joke will be on next April, the bulls or the bears?
Looking back, it's clear there has been no shortage of fools this year. Especially those who invested in FTX tokens. Sam Bankman-Fried fooled us all into thinking FTX was the next big thing only to reveal at the end that it stood for jk ftw - just kidding, f*** the world.
The government also pulled a fast one on debt mutual fund investors knowing very well Indians only invest to save tax and are even willing to take notional losses out of spite. Inflation made fools of all of us the whole year so as you upgraded from iPhone 13 to 14, the real value of your money slipped all the way to iPod Mini.
Hindenburg took the bull by the horns and slammed it on the Ambuja Cement concrete screaming "April Fool!" in January. Silicon Valley Bank, of course, fooled everyone into thinking it is a bank though to be fair Credit Suisse managed to fool us for over 100 years. In the same spirit, the Supari Exchange Board of India continues to fool us into believing it is not just a fan regulator. Meanwhile Elon Musk kept fooling the markets about his intentions for Twitter. But yesterday he released the source code for Twitter so we will finally know how many fools have been hiding under blue ticks and spam bots.
Michael Burry first fooled the markets by screaming “Sell in January” and now one wonders if he is fooling the markets all over again by saying “I was wrong to say Sell” after the recent bull run. One expects him to pull an April fool in June saying “I was wrong to say Sell. I should have said DUMP! GET OUT! RUN FOR THE EXITS! HALP!!”.
Putin and Xi continue to fool the Americans who continue to fool the Europeans as the sequel to “No one killed Jessica” is “No one blew up the Nordstream pipeline. It just died of anxiety and ADHD”.
For a brief while the White House tried to focus on UFOs or Unidentified Foolish Objects to distract from the Nordstream allegations. But the joke ran too far and now nobody is fooled except the aliens themselves.
Jerome Powell and financial markets have of course being playing each other for a fool for the whole of last year. Powell has to constantly tell them: “Dammit I am not playing the fool! I am going to raise interest rates higher than Andrew Tate’s follower base after being released from prison”. But financial markets think he is an episode of Practical Jokers. Somewhere the sequel for Sam Bankman-Fried is waiting to be shot (no pun intended).
Perhaps the biggest joke being played out in America is the indictment of Donald Trump. Some critics allege this will actually help him to win the election next year. Which means the biggest fool of them all will be the American voter in the US elections next year. As nuclear war looms, let’s hope they elect the right kind of fool. Because no matter what time of the year America does something foolish, it is the rest of the world who becomes an April fool.
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