My back-to-work morning train WFH reads:

• ‘A Day of Love’: How Trump Inverted the Violent History of Jan. 6: The president-elect and his allies have spent four years reinventing the Capitol attack — spreading conspiracy theories and weaving a tale of martyrdom to their ultimate political gain. (NYT)

• Sharing Lessons: The Stock Market Has Been One of My Life’s Enduring Interests: Indeed, I remain convinced that the best strategy is to sit patiently with a globally diversified portfolio of index funds—an approach that requires no crystal ball and very little trading. That said, on top of this know-nothing approach, I’ve layered four key ideas about the stock market. (Humble Dollar)

• The Roaring 2020s: The 2020s are already halfway over. It’s hard to believe we’re five years removed from the start of the pandemic. We’ve lived through a wild half-decade in the markets in that time. Every year in the 2020s has seen a big move. Here’s a look at the year-end returns along with intra-year drawdowns this decade: (Wealth of Common Sense)

• It’s Called a Premortem—and It’s the Most Productive Thing You’ll Do All Year: Forget about making a New Year’s resolution. Have you tried imagining your deathbed? (WSJ)

• Business leaders bow to anti-DEI activists — except at Costco: That brings us to Costco. Almost uniquely among major public companies, Costco’s board has explicitly rejected the anti-DEI backlash. (Los Angeles Times)

• The Business of History Is Booming: Books and podcasts about the past are surging in popularity, making them increasingly profitable. (Bloomberg)

• How to calm your mind with breathing, according to science: Breathwork practices and slowing our breath can alleviate stress and improve mood.  (Washington Post)

• Jimmy Carter’s Hidden Legacy: Carter’s post-presidency was transformative. And while he’s well-known for his contributions to democracy, he deserves immense credit for his incredible successes with global public health. (The Garden of Forking Paths) see also Jimmy Carter Wasn’t a Liberal: The late former president paved the way for Ronald Reagan. (Politico)

• How the Democrats Lost the Working Class: The theory seemed sound: Stabilize financial markets, support the poor and promote a more secure, integrated world. But blue-collar workers were left behind. (NYT)

• How Jimmy O. Yang Became a Main Character: The actor spent years stuck in small, clichéd roles. Now, starring in Interior Chinatown, he’s figuring out who he wants to be. (The Atlantic)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Sunaina Sinha, Global Head of Private Capital Advisory at Raymond James. She was named one of the 50 Most Influential People in Private Equity for 2 years in a row by Dow Jones Private Equity News, and earned a spot as one of the Twenty Trailblazing Women in Private Equity in 2023.

 

Ozempic economics: How GLP-1s will disrupt the economy in 2025

Source: Washington Post

 

Sign up for our reads-only mailing list here.

 

The post 10 Monday AM Reads appeared first on The Big Picture.

 

 

A hit record is something that someone hears once, maybe twice, and can’t get out of their head.

Or as Ahmet Ertegun said… A hit record is something you hear on late-night radio that causes you to get out of bed, get dressed, and go to the all-night record shop to buy.

A hit record can be a chart success, but not necessarily.

The Dave Matthews Band’s first hit record was “Ants Marching,” which showed up nowhere on the hit parade, but when you played it for someone, they wanted to play it themselves and then turned everybody they knew onto it.

Going back further we’ve got “Sunshine of Your Love” by Cream, with its indelible riff. Part of “Disraeli Gears,” Cream not only had not had a Top 40 hit previously but underground FM radio, which played the track, was still only in a few cities. But the track was so undeniable that it ultimately crossed over.

And then you’ve got “Purple Haze,” released even earlier. Top 40 was not ready, but that was the track you played to turn people on to Hendrix.

As for this century, we’ve got Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy,” which didn’t even have to finish for me to love it, to immediately go home and download it.

But sans context “Crazy” was just a single. There’s a business in singles, but it’s a hard one. What you want is a culture, a whole belief system, surrounding music, so that someone can be involved in the song.

Culture… Think about it. I write that Billy Strings hasn’t written a hit song, but he does have culture. If he wrote a hit, he’d no longer be underground, but everywhere (you can be underground and play arenas today, that’s how narrow the niches can be).

As for writing hit songs…

Maybe work with Dan Wilson, who doesn’t compromise your culture in order for you to have a hit. Your hit must be “on brand,” must sound like you.

A great example is “Whole Lotta Love.” The first Led Zeppelin album as amazing, it penetrated society for nearly a year, and then came “Whole Lotta Love,” which AM radio embraced and the rest is history.

As for “Stairway to Heaven”… It was never a single. But it was the number one rock track for decades in the Memorial 500 of AOR stations, and still would be if any of those stations were still active.

Oh, let’s comb the past once more. Def Leppard was not new, but you only had to hear half of “Photograph” to love it.

Today everybody has it backward. They think that the hit comes first. But that is very rare. It worked for the Eagles and Sam Smith, but when all you have is the hit…you’re screwed, few are coming to your shows, you have no career.

Now just because you’re a fan of a band, that does not mean they have a hit. You love them, you’ve seen them multiple times, you stream their music, but the act’s base doesn’t grow, because there’s not that instant track.

Acts need that instant track.

I loved Dawes’s second album. But they could never come up with a hit and ultimately band members left, they were sick of the grind.

How do you write a hit?

It’s best if it’s organic, within your oeuvre.

Traffic had written hits covered by others, but the band broke through with “Low Spark of High Heeled Boys,” which sounded like them, sounded like a stretch, but sounded like nothing else.

That’s what we’re missing. Acts that go on their own hejira, are not me-too, that when ultimately embraced become legendary.

That was the paradigm in the late sixties and seventies, until me-too corporate rock and disco killed it. MTV made stars, they rocketed you to the moon, but many of those acts immediately fell back to earth, because there was no culture.

Same today. A track is embraced and after it fades…nothing.

Today’s paradigm is akin to the movie business, which wants only blockbusters, and therefore relies on sequels and superhero flicks. All the innovation is on streaming television, that’s where risks are taken, supported by subscriber revenue.

And, in truth, the major labels are supported by subscriber revenue, they call it “catalog.” Endless income with almost no costs. Allowing the labels to…

Put out me-too wannabe blockbuster product.

That’s why the scene is moribund. There’s no there there. No innovation. Either you’ve got dreck just like the previous dreck, or left field stuff sans the essential building blocks of success…instrumental dexterity, melody, changes and a good voice. You can play in today’s music business, you can put your music up on Spotify, but you won’t truly go anywhere unless you have a hit.

And then there are bands that do boffo at the b.o. who can’t write a hit. Tedeschi Trucks… Doesn’t anybody in that act know the formula?

It’s like it’s a lost art. Acts have no idea what a hit is.

As for acts that have one big hit and go on a big tour and are given hosannas by the press… There are 100 million more people in America than in the seventies. Oftentimes it’s a large niche with no trailing effect.

So…

It’s actually easy. Play your music for someone, if they don’t want to tell everybody about it, if they just say they like it, it’s not a hit.

And a hit can take many forms. And it doesn’t need to be on the chart.

But hits are the heart and soul of this business.

There’s example after example. Metallica was big before “Enter Sandman,” after the track they were legendary, can sell out stadiums to this day.

We’ve got too many acts with too few knowing how the game truly works, never mind not many having talent. Everybody’s got their heads in the clouds, detached from reality.

The truth is the public is hungry for new music. But you’ve got to make it easy for them, you’ve got to write a hit.

That’s your assignment.

 

~~~

Visit the archive:   http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/

@Lefsetz  http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
–
If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter

~~~

Originally published by Bob Lefsetz in the 12/30/2024 at the Leftsetz Letter

 

The post Hit Records appeared first on The Big Picture.

Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:

• The Truth About Musk, From His Biographer: A viral Bluesky thread introduced tens of thousands around the world to a first glimpse of a forthcoming biography of Elon Musk. Here—in a single essay—is some of what the world just learned. (Proof)

• The California Job-Killer That Wasn’t: The state raised the minimum wage for fast-food workers—and employment kept rising. So why has the law been proclaimed a failure? (The Atlantic) see also The Minimum Wage Claims You Keep Hearing Are Totally Fake. We Can Prove It. In September 2023, California passed a law to bring fast food workers’ minimum wage up from $16 to $20 an hour. A flurry of reports predictably followed from the likes of The Wall Street Journal, Employment Policies Institute, and the Hoover Institution claiming that restaurants and other businesses were already laying off workers based on the new law. This December, Ohanian retracted his claim; Hoover retracted 8 additional Ohanian claims.  (Drop Site)

• America’s Health Insurance Grinches: A Scathing Indictment of “Market” Economics: The country’s flawed insurance model, driven by greed, leads to inefficiency, inequality, and denied care – a colossal scam that has sparked fury across the nation. (Institute for New Economic Thinking)

• Insurance and Taxes Now Cost More Than Mortgages for Many Homeowners: Ballooning expenses rewrite the math of homeownership. (Wall Street Journal) see also Migration Into America’s Most Flood-Prone Areas Has More Than Doubled Since the Start of the Pandemic: Nearly 400,000 more people moved into than out of the most flood-prone counties in 2021 and 2022—a 103% increase from the prior two years. The counties most vulnerable to wildfires and heat have also seen more people move in than out as the housing affordability crisis pushes Americans into disaster-prone areas. (Redfin)

• She Blew Her Life Savings. How Tech Is Turning Casual Spenders Into Binge Shoppers. The rise of affiliate links, Buy Now buttons, and other technology has made it easier than ever to binge, often with dire consequences. (Barron’s)

• Substack Has a Nazi Problem: The newsletter platform’s lax content moderation creates an opening for white nationalists eager to get their message out. (The Atlantic) see also Antisemitism, False Information and Hate Speech Find a Home on Substack: Platforms with more lenient content moderation policies, like Substack, provide fertile ground for the spread of hateful rhetoric and false information – a known catalyst for offline harm and violence. (ADL)

• How Syria’s rebels overcame years of a bloody stalemate to topple Assad: The Syrian regime’s collapse came more quickly than the rebels had dreamed — the circumstances were both serendipitous and part of a larger global realignment. (Washington Post)

•  Is There Something More Radical than MAGA? JD Vance Is Dreaming It. In a candid series of conversations, Vance revealed an ominous philosophy behind his first year in office. (Politico)

• How America Created the Enemy It Feared Most: The United States killed its own allies, sabotaging itself in a part of Afghanistan where it never needed to be. (New York Times)

• Legalization of online sports betting generates an 8% increase in credit card debt among sports betters. The poor are disproportionately affected: low income households spend 32% more on betting than high income households. (“Gambling Away Stability: Sports Betting’s Impact on Vulnerable Households“) (SSRN)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Sunaina Sinha, Global Head of Private Capital Advisory at Raymond James. She was named one of the 50 Most Influential People in Private Equity for 2 years in a row by Dow Jones Private Equity News, and earned a spot as one of the Twenty Trailblazing Women in Private Equity in 2023.

 

U.S. Wealth Inequality: Gaps Remain Despite Widespread Wealth Gains

Source: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

 

Sign up for our reads-only mailing list here.

~~~

To learn how these reads are assembled each day, please see this.

The post 10 Sunday Reads appeared first on The Big Picture.

The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of Colombia Tolima Los Brasiles Peaberry Organic coffee, grab a seat outside, and get ready for our longer-form weekend reads:

• AI Wants More Data. More Chips. More Real Estate. More Power. More Water. More Everything: Businesses, investors and society brace for a demand shock from artificial intelligence. (Bloomberg)

• It’s the Most Indispensable Machine in the World—and It Depends on This Woman: I got a rare look at the one tool responsible for all the tech in your life. It’s made by a company you’ve never heard of. And it’s maintained by hidden figures like her. (Wall Street Journal)

• 200 Years of Market Concentration: Is this trend an anomaly or part of an ongoing pattern in the stock market? To answer this question, we have collected data on the concentration of the US stock market over the past 235 years, from 1790 until the present. Figure 1 shows the market capitalization of the largest company, the five largest companies and the ten largest companies in the United States between 1790 and the present as a share of the entire stock market. Based upon Figure 1 and Figure 3, we have broken down the market concentration of the United States during the past 235 years into seven periods. (Global Financial Data)

• Vanguard 2025 economic and market outlook: The global monetary easing cycle will be in full swing in 2025, with inflation in most developed economies now within touching distance of central banks’ targets. The good fortune of high productivity growth and a surge in available labor has propelled the U.S. economy, while other economies have been less lucky. (Vanguard) see also Apollo/Torsten Slok’s Outlook for Private Markets 2025: Interest rates higher for longer has important implications for private markets. (Apollo)

• Big Gods and the Origin of Human Cooperation: Did the watchful gaze of moralizing gods produce the rise of complex civilizations? (The Garden of Forking Paths)

• Indian immigration is great for America This isn’t ambiguous. The debates over high-skilled immigration, Indian immigration specifically, and programs like H-1b are closely related — increasingly so, in fact. Most H-1b workers are Indian, and Indians make up a plurality of foreign-born STEM workers. Indian workers have become far more important than Chinese workers to America’s strategic high-tech industries…(Noahpinion)

• 52 Things I Learned in 2024: Every culture has a word for black and white. If a culture has a third word for a color, it is always red. If it has a fourth word, it is either yellow or green (Kent Hendricks) but see 52 things I learned in 2024: To highlight tax evasion, South Korea introduced ugly neon green number plates for company cars worth more than $58,000. Luxury car sales fell 27%. (Medium)

• Cutting Government Is Easy… If You Go After McKinsey: Elon Musk engineered a panic over government spending, thwarting major PBM reform and bans on junk fees. But cutting government spending is easy, if you take on power. And therein lies the rub. (BIG by Matt Stoller)

• Why probability probably doesn’t exist (but it is useful to act like it does) All of statistics and much of science depends on probability — an astonishing achievement, considering no one’s really sure what it is. (Nature)

• Inside Zildjian, a 400-year-old cymbal-making company in Massachusetts: From symphonies to rock music, marching bands and advertising jingles — we hear Zildjian cymbals everywhere. Drummers across the globe know that name because it’s emblazoned on every gleaming disc. What’s less known is the Zildjian family has been making their famous cymbals — with a secret process — for more than 400 years. (Vermont Public)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Sunaina Sinha, Global Head of Private Capital Advisory at Raymond James. She was named one of the 50 Most Influential People in Private Equity for 2 years in a row by Dow Jones Private Equity News, and earned a spot as one of the Twenty Trailblazing Women in Private Equity in 2023.

 

Visualizing Bitcoin’s Wild Ride in the Last Decade

Source: How Much

 

Sign up for our reads-only mailing list here.

~~~

To learn how these reads are assembled each day, please see this.

The post 10 Weekend Reads appeared first on The Big Picture.

 

This week, we speak with Sunaina Sinha, Global Head of Private Capital Advisory at Raymond James. Prior to joining Raymond James, Sunaina founded Cebile Capital, which was acquired by Raymond James in 2021. She was named one of the 50 Most Influential People in Private Equity for 2 years in a row by Dow Jones Private Equity News. She also earned a spot as one of the Twenty Trailblazing Women in Private Equity in 2023. Additionally, Sunaina serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors of SFC Energy AG and on the boards of the Stanford Institution for Economic Policy Research and the Stanford LEAD Council.

We discuss how she shifted her focus from Biotech to Start Upos and the capital raising for Private Equity.

A list of her favorite books is here; A transcript of our conversation is available here Tuesday.

You can stream and download our full conversation, including any podcast extras, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and Bloomberg. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here.

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Brian Hurst founder and CIO of ClearAlpha, a multi strategy hedge fund managing $1 billion in client assets. Hurst was Cliff Asness’ first hire in the Quantitative Research Group at Goldman Sachs Asset Mgmt, where he built the portfolio management and trading technology for the Global Alpha Fund. After GSAM, Hurst was the first non-Founding Partner at AQR Capital Management, where for 21 years he served variously as PM and head of trading for the firm and designed and built AQR’s trading platform.

 

 

Favorite Books

 

 

 

The post MiB: Sunaina Sinha, Global Head of Private Capital with Raymond James appeared first on The Big Picture.

 

 

A regular theme around these parts is “Nobody Knows Anything.”

Specifically, nobody knows what will happen in the future. This is true about equity and bond markets, specific company stocks, and economic data series. We do not know which geopolitical hot spot will erupt in turmoil; we have no idea where or when the next natural disaster will hit. We remain clueless as to what sports teams will win it all or who will be the MVP for any league. The best films, books, and music releases are unknown in advance.

This should not be a radical or contrarian outlier position, yet it feels that way. We hardly know anything about next week, even less about next month, and practically nothing about next year.

It is especially true for strategists and forecasters at large brokers and banks. Consider this December 29, 2024, year-end review in Bloomberg:

“By this time last year, the stock market’s rally had blown past even the most optimistic targets, and Wall Street forecasters were convinced it couldn’t keep up the dizzying pace.

So as strategists at Bank of America Corp., Deutsche Bank AG, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and other big firms sent out their calls for 2024, a consensus took shape: After surging more than 20% as artificial intelligence breakthroughs unleashed a tech-stock boom and the economy kept defying the doomsayers, the S&P 500 Index would likely scratch out only a modest gain. As the Federal Reserve shifted to cutting interest rates, Treasuries were seen as ripe to give equities a run for their money.”

As the chart above shows, all the major Wall Street brokerage and bank strategists failed to anticipate how well the market would do in 2024 (Bloomberg’s chart below). Strategists don’t do these forecasts exceptionally well, but this year, they were extra-terrible:

 

Only part of the problem is that these folks are bad at this; the bigger issue is that they do it all. Its kinda like Phrenology,  the pseudoscience feeling bumps on people’s skull to predict their personality traits. It’s not that there are better or worse phrenologists, but rather, why was anyone doing phrenology?

Similarly, there are numerous problems with forecasting. I’ll discuss why biases and cognitive errors lead to prediction errors in an upcoming post. For today, let’s just focus on how variable the future is. Random events can and will completely derail the best laid plans we may make. Even the most well-ordered, thoughtful forecasts turn to mush when randomness strikes. And randomness is served up daily.

Professor Philip Tetlock explained how to make better forecasts by urging us to use what we do know to color our decision-making process. My colleague Ben Carlson put this to use recently. He explained one of the inherent errors in the stock price prediction process by noting the annual average is completely misleading. Merely guessing it will be the annual average practically guarantees you will be wrong.

Instead, think about a two step process: Will it be an up or a down year? Once you have determined if it’s going to be a positive or negative year (!), then make your best guess:

“Double-digit moves in both directions are the norm. In fact, in 70 of the past 97 years, the U.S. stock market has finished the year with double-digit gains (57x) or double-digit losses (13x).”

Here is what that looks like over the past 95 years:

 

My advice is to skip the forecasting altogether — but if you must make a guess, then try the two step process. Sure, it adds another way to get it wrong, but it also means you have a better chance of getting it right.

One last reminder: All forecasts are marketing. Or, as John Kenneth Galbraith observed, “The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.”

~~~

Public Enemy’s 13th album was titled “Man Plans, God Laughs.” The title is based on a Yiddish proverb: “Der mentsh trakht un got lakht.” It’s a blunt observation about our inability to forsee the future.

In “How Not To Invest” (coming March 18!) I spill a lot of ink discussing the many silly things people do, including relying on forecasts and predictions. This is especially true for those made by analysts who are not working to provide you with good investing advice but rather are hoping to drum up business for secondaries and IPOs. Not only do many investors pay attention to this guesswork, but some change their portfolios in response to them. This has proven to be an unproductive strategy.

As much as I want you to buy HNTI, I’ll save some of you the $29 bucks with this summary: “Have a financial plan, stay with it, manage your behavior, practice good information hygiene, and let the markets work for you over time.”

If you want to read more of the fun details, well, than order the book. I promise you will find it both entertaining and informative.

 

 

 

Source:
S&P 500’s 2024 Rally Shocked Forecasters Expecting It to Fizzle
By Alexandra Semenova and Sagarika Jaisinghani
Bloomberg, December 29, 2024

See also:
My Year-End Stock Market Forecast (December 10, 2024)

All those 2025 mortgage rates forecasts are now wrong
By Mike Simonsen
Housing Wire, December 19, 2024

 

Previously:
Coming March 18: “How Not To Invest” (November 18, 2024)

Nobody Knows Anything, The Beatles edition (September 26, 2024)

Some Thoughts About Forecasting and Why We Stink at It (November 1, 2017)

Say it with me: “Nobody Knows Anything” (May 5, 2016)

Market forecasters should admit the errors of their ways (Washington Post, January 18, 2015)

Nobody Knows Anything (Full archive)

 

~~~

 

If you want to learn more about how the book was made, any related media appearances or background, get unique bonus material, or just ask a question, you can sign up here: HNTI -at-RitholtzWealth.com.

 

 

 

Please pre-order a copy today!

The post “Nobody Knows Anything,” Wall Street Strategist Edition appeared first on The Big Picture.

Happy New Years! Grab a few Advils, pour yourself a mug of coffee, and get ready to start the new year right!

• AI Needs So Much Power, It’s Making Yours Worse Technology: AI data centers are multiplying across the US and sucking up huge amounts of power. New evidence shows they may also be distorting the normal flow of electricity for millions of Americans, threatening billions in damage to home appliances and power equipment. 75% of highly-distorted power readings across the country are within 50 miles of significant data center activity. (Bloomberg)

• 9 Evergreen Investor Lessons from 2024: Plus a charted review of the macro crosscurrents (Sam Ro) see also 7 Investing Lessons From 2024. Non-obvious lessons from 2024 (Bilello Blog)

• Guide for the perplexed – Google is no longer the best search engine. Perplexity offers several advantages over Google as a search engine, making it a compelling alternative for many. (The Register)

• 12 Things That Probably Won’t Happen in 2025: Predicting the future is hard and forecasting is not our forte. Instead, here is a list of things that probably won’t happen this coming year. (A Wealth of Common Sense)

• Our Zestimate obsession: Zillow’s price estimates are screwing up homebuying — but Americans love them. (Business Insider)

• 11 Best Things of 2024: My favourite book, film, podcast, quote, meme, purchase and more for the year (SatPost by Trung Phan) see also 77 Facts That Blew Our Minds in 2024: Chewing gum, space capsules, and minivans are just a few of the things we see differently after a year of reporting. (The Atlantic)

• Teens, Social Media and Technology 2024: YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat remain widely used among U.S. teens; some say they’re on these sites almost constantly. (Pew Research)

• 9 Ways to Embrace Winter—Even if You Think You Hate It. Embrace Winter—Even if You Think You Hate It (Time)

• GOP’s top priority for 2025: Repeal the laws of arithmetic Republicans are reinventing math to justify extending pricey Trump tax policies. (Washington Post)

• Our Universe has more galaxies than Carl Sagan ever imagined: Forget billions and billions. When it comes to the number of galaxies in the Universe, both theorists’ and observers’ estimates are too low. (Big Think)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Toto Wolff, Principal and CEO of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula-1 Team, and 33% owner of the team.

 

Big 5 personality traits strongly predict

Source: The Nature-Nurture-Nietzsche Newsletter

 

Sign up for our reads-only mailing list here.

~~~

To learn how these reads are assembled each day, please see this.

The post 10 New Year’s Day Reads appeared first on The Big Picture.

I dug up this post from Cashin’s Comments dated December 31, 2014

 

‘Tis the day before New Year’s
and despite what you’re hopin’
The folks in the Boardroom say
“the full day we’re open”

So we’ll buy and we’ll sell
as the tape crawls along
And though “Bubbly’s” verboten
we may still sing a song

Two Thousand Fourteen
was okay, not really a wow
Till a Santa Claus rally
took us through Eighteen Thou

We lost special people
as we seem to each year
It just makes us treasure
each one that’s still here

Robin Williams, so manic
snuffed out his own light
Mickey Rooney’s gone also
into Dylan’s Good Night

Joan Rivers departed
when a doctor slipped up
And Sid Caesar now sips
from a heavenly cup

James Garner, “Bret Maverick”
has played his last hand
Polly Bergen now sings
in an Angelic band

Eli Wallach needs no badges
he’s got wings, I’ve a hunch
Elaine Stritch found a new place
now with cherubs she’ll lunch

Hurricane Carter
has thrown his last punch
Ann B. Davis as “Alice”
no longer waits on the “Bunch”

Bacall, who could whistle
took her last curtain call
Philip Seymour Hoffman
is now just down the hall

Casey Kasem’s now listing
Top 40 harp songs
Mayor Barry departed
moving on past his wrongs

Mike Nichols graduated t
o Mrs. Robinson’s place
Ruby Dee now also
fills heaven with grace

Ben Bradlee followed Nixon
for one final time
Maya Angelou tells St. Peter
her favorite new rhyme

Oscar De La Renta
designed his last gown
“Adam Smith” (Jerry Goodman)
he has also left town

The threat of Ebola
made everyone fear
‘So Time made health workers
their Man of the Year

Kim K bared her assets
glossed up till they shone
But most folks on the net shrugged
and left the whole thing alone

Some guy near the White House
hopped up over the wall
And since the door was unlocked
he just strolled down the hall

The ice bucket challenge
made some hairdos a mess
But it raised lots of money
to help fight ALS

In their Little League Series
one kid pitched a pearl
As a young lady showed us
how to “throw like a girl”

Polar Vortex froze business
The year started out rough
But when we got defrosted
things seemed to go well enough

There were shootings, then lootings
things kept turning bizarre
Until a mad man came North
to shoot two cops in a car

We saw ISIS beheadings
and car bombs galore
Sadly, three different airliners
got half way but no more

Brad wed Angelina
and George Clooney – Amal
But some folks like Don Sterling
could not find any pal

There were midterm elections
The GOP did quite well
Will that help them to govern?
It’s way too early to tell

Sony thought it terrific
and they’d have lots of fun
If they made a joke movie
in which they killed Kim Jung Un

Derek Jeter retired
one game at a time
In most states, gay marriage
is no longer a crime

The NFL fumbled
on domestic abuse
We didn’t see the whole tape
was their only excuse

Rolling Stone ran a story
that they later withdrew
And more women blamed Cosby
saying the press really knew

Gwyneth Paltrow “decoupled”
Taylor Swift told streamers “No!”
In the kid’s movie Frozen
Elsa sang “Let it go”

Let not this year’s memories
of sadness or sleaze
Disturb you this day
just give your heart ease

Have faith that this New Year
will bring a new sign
And believe in yourself
it will all work out fine

Just lift up your spirits
and some fruit of the vine
And kiss ye a loved one
and sing Auld Lange Syne

And late in the evening
as you watch the ball fall
Wish yourself all the best
Happy New Year to All!!

 

 

Previously:
Remembering Art Cashin (December 5, 2024)

 

The post Tis the Day Before New Year’s by Art Cashin appeared first on The Big Picture.