I’m not quite old enough to remember when the surfer movie Big Wednesday was in the cinemas. I think it might have been in 1978, when I was still in primary school.
I did see it in the last week of school in 1982, where study for the year ceased and the teachers offered us various activities to amuse us, including showing various recently released films in the high school theatre (from memory, aside from Big Wednesday, they included First Blood, Amityville 2, Stir Crazy, Flying High 2, and Every Which Way But Loose).
Big Wednesday was about a group of surfer dudes trying to negotiate life and waves during the Vietnam War, including where most of them attempt to dodge the draft (in a very funny scene which would now be considered very non-PC, one pretends rather convincingly that he is gay, and is rejected by the US Army only to be diverted into the Marines).
The main protagonist, played by William Katt before he destroyed his career by starring in the TV superhero comedy The Greatest American Hero, doesn’t shirk his duty and goes off to serve in the Army.
He returns at the start of the closing act of the film, revealing he is wearing the chevrons of a sergeant.
Then all our surfer dudes reunite to surf in 1974 on what they will remember forever as Big Wednesday, a day when the waves are up higher than ever before in their memories.
It was not a great success at the time, and to be quite honest, I find it hard to see the point of the film, even though I do like a lot of John Milius’ other work (you can imagine why I like such films as Conan The Barbarian and Red Dawn).
So does a film about surfing have to do with the share market?
Well, I subscribe to a few share market commentary newsletters, although these have not given me great fiscal joy over the years. The parent company for these newsletters has the annoying habit of frequently spruiking their other products, including newsletters which are considerably more expensive (or is the more accurate word to use: ‘premium’?).
Their spruiking usually consists of promoting a rather verbose and lengthy and somewhat sensationalist ‘must see’ video, which explains part of what their reasoning is, and then ends with the hook as to why you should subscribe now.
The current product they are spruiking is some particular premium newsletter which is predicting major falls and high volatility in the share market, as early as this week, but definitely before July.
The narrative hook they are using is ‘Big Wednesday’, drawing an analogy between the surfer film and the kind of big waves which share market investors could face in the next few months. With the guidance of their hand picked experts, a canny investor can surf these waves and trade their way to a handsome profit….
It makes for a nice story.
The problem for me is that I have been subscribing to newsletters from this particular office for at least twelve years, and this is not the first time that they have used ‘Big Wednesday’ as the hook for this sort of extreme volatility narrative.
I suppose it is better than the alternative, to borrow Henny Penny and her ‘sky is falling’ stampede.
But as I do have a long memory, I cannot help but get a little skeptical about this current announcement that the share market is about to crash. Particularly, as they are recycling the same phrase they used a few years ago.
After all, in various of the stellar tips which I have taken up over the years from this stable of commentators, I have lost small sums investing in some highly speculative companies which they were very convincing about, and some rather larger sums on other companies which could be considered blue chip. I’ve never yet had some tip go stratospheric on me.
But we are all asking the question as to whether the share market is going to crash, and how much volatility are we about to see if it does?
I would dearly love to know.
But what I am going to do is to sit tight. My portfolio is mostly EFTs, LICs, REITs and conglomerates. It is highly diversified. The only exemptions to that are Treasury Wine (the motives for which I hold this company I regularly discuss in this blog) and Brightstar Resources, a highly speculative gold mining stock into which I punted $500 in December (on the advice from one of those aforementioned share market newsletters).
If we go down, and bounce, then I will do more harm to my finances by trying to pick the waves than by sitting tight and waiting for things to straighten out. After all, my main assets are the roof over my head and a defined benefit retirement fund. My share portfolio itself is only there as a bonus, not as a basis, for my wealth.
Lost For Words! 