Ablogalypse Redux or The Case for Optimism

Saw something on Instagram:  a sign that read "Smile, tomorrow will be worse."

I even read an article about how civilization as we know it may coming to a crashing end in the next couple of decades.  A perfect storm of food scarcity, water shortage, fossil fuel depletion, population explosion, class warfare and climate change may cause "the sudden destruction of complicated societal structures."  Or basically, the end of the world as we know it.  Wasn't it supposed to end in 2012?

Finally, another stat I learned today:  every 8 years your chance of dying doubles.

Now all this can be depressing.  But wait, science will save us.  That same article, however, disputes this claim stating that gains in technology only reinforces current strained conditions and dooms us further.  Sounds bearish.  But the bears would be gone as well.

But I don't buy into the doom and gloom.  Ignore the naysayers.  Financier J.P. Morgan, once when giving a tour of the city to a friend, stated, "Funny thing about these skyscrapers...not a single one was built by a bear."  

Now, as a trader, I buy and sell.  I can be long or short - even though some say its unAmerican to short a company.  I'm just trading intraday.  Over the long run, buy and hold still wins out.  (As long as you are diversified and have a low cost fund.)  If you stand alone and buy the market when the rest of the world is selling, you'd do ok.  Ask Warren Buffet.  Read The Tontine (one of my fav's - both volumes).  Peter Lynch said of a market correction, "Sensible professionals wondered if they should take up hunting and fishing, because soon we’d all be living in the woods, gathering acorns. Then the moment of greatest pessimism, when 8 out of 10 swore we where heading into the 1930s the stock market rebounded with a vengeance and suddenly all was right with the world.”

Here's the kicker.  When I speak with my two darling children, I notice the way their minds work - with inquisitiveness and incite.  And though I tend to worry a lot (a coping mechanism that I inherited - the more I worry about something, the more likely it will work itself out), they give me great hope.

So, science alone may not be enough.  With science and human nature together, I like our chances.  Given the choice I choose optimism.  As Woody said (about old age), "It beats the alternative."  Off to the gym I go.