3. L.Bear-Gold-Bug

L.Bear-Gold-Bug                             (by Andrew Guthrie-Dow) 

Little-Bear is at-heart a gold-bug. A true gold-bug; not obsessed by owning gold for its own sake, but driven by the “security” Bear perceives it provides. I suppose this is a bi-product of being a bear – the ancestral memories of feast-and-famine, summer-and-winter, both driving the accumulation of assets for the inevitable rainy-day that has blighted the bear community for millennia, until now that-is. Gold is the king of safe-assets – cash and T-Notes are just pieces of paper, crypto needs a computer, and nothing else is as portable. Not only that, but gold has been a safe asset for thousands of years. Yes, gold has it all.

Being a gold-bug does not exclude other investment strategies, and this was also true for Bear, especially in the early-days. He had done his research and knew that to make money it had to go-through an investment cycle. Invest in something, a business, a commodity or whatever, wait for that to mature or even maximize, then sell it and convert a part of it to safe-assets, such as gold. There was risk of course. You might invest in a turkey (not literally unless you are a poultry nerd), but something that with hindsight was stupid. But being ultra-self-confident of his own abilities, Bear knew this did not apply to him.

Building on this reality that you had to invest in something, leads inevitably to the question “what then?”. Value investment was all well-and-good, but it did seem like a lot of hard-work – going through company-accounts etc. And looking at some of its proponents such as Warren-Buffet and Charlie-Munger it did seem that you had to wait around for years to make a profit. Bear’s answer was currencies – trade them until the coffers were full, then convert the profit to gold; a very solid strategy. He just needed to know a little more on what to buy-and-sell, and this is where Bear’s online presence was key. He’d ask around, make some friends, feel-the-vibe, and with his exceptional judgement-and-abilities, make his millions.

Now this is where things started to get interesting. Bear’s unshakeable confidence in his own judgement was almost genetic, and completely wrong. However, his ability to make friends and influence people was also almost genetic, and completely right. As things developed, he started to name-drop some of his new online friends – for instance the girls-and-guys at the investment-bankers Golden-Shares and Bear-Stocks. As the months went by, he and his new-friends had fully-developed a joint-position; which was that gold was overvalued and should be used to buy currencies. Remember, this was around the turn-of-the-century and seemed to make sense in those benign-times of long-ago.

It was also around this time we started to hear one of his new friends more-and-more. It was Gordon, and we assumed he was from one of the banks Bear had infiltrated. We paid little attention to it as Bear had lots of online friends, and this Gordon was probably just one of those. However, we did ask if he had a second name and Bear replied it was some colour or other; Gordon-Beige, or possibly Gordon-Blue, or was it Gordon-Black? – something like that. Apparently, he was not quite convinced this was the right time to buy currencies, but Bear and the Banks set-out on a inform-and-convince campaign, something Bear was brilliant at. Things were going well.

Their patience paid off. Gordon started to sell gold and Bear and the banks praised him for his deep understanding of the market. Bear asked the banks whether he should also sell his gold in-line with Gordon, but they said it was best not to as they thought Gordon should be seen as acting according to his own perceptions; not beholden to the thoughts and influences of others. They advised Bear there would be plenty of opportunities to fall-into-line later, or if God-forbid market-sentiment changed, could just sit-this-one-out, or reluctantly have to buy gold under market-pressure. This seemed sensible to Bear – just keep on encouraging Gordon he was doing the right-thing under the current-circumstances.

Time passed and Gordon finished-off his gold selling, so now Bear could enter the market. What he and the banks saw was that gold seemed rather cheap, things in the world were getting more complex, and perhaps now was not the right time to buy Albanian-Leks. So, Bear and the banks started buying-up the gold which Gordon had flooded the market with. This proved to be one of the best buying-strategies ever, providing record-breaking returns for everyone, except I suppose Gordon, but that’s life.

Unfortunately, the amount of profit made forced some to ask if this was some kind of push-scam perpetrated on Gordon by “malign-players”. Bear didn’t want to be seen as a malign-player so asked us for advice. It was plain to us that our much-loved animal had been manipulated alongside Gordon, the banks exploiting his friendship with Gordon and them. We told Bear he was a victim, not a perpetrator, and could hold-his-head high in being an open-and-believing creature. Bear seemed to like this characterization; it was not his fault that he’d accumulated so much money. Bear even affected a victim-face; slightly sad with blank, staring eyes, not like our usual bear at all.

We asked him how much money he had made, and in a flash went to his calculator to find the answer. There was no more victim-face, just a frenzied psychotic blur as number were crunched and the answer arrived at. What had we seen in these seconds? Who was manipulating who. Was our Bear as guilty as the banks in all of this, or perhaps worse? Had he persuaded them not the other way round, and as “icing-on-the-cake” come-out of the whole affair not only considerably richer, but also as being seen as a victim? As a five-figure sum emerged his victim-face returned. This would have been too sneaky for even our bear, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it?