What has the power to turn a right of way into a rite of passage?
Might it be that the mighty hand of time plays a role? Any buffed historian worth their weight in tapas will tell you the most glorious bull run of all time is grounded not in pageantry, but rather pragmatism and perseverance. Nestled on northern Spain’s Basque seashore bordering France, the heat of summer brings with it the promise that Pamplona will once again host its famed San Fermin Festival, so named for its patron saint.
History has it that Middle Age cattle herders and butchers would venture out into the night to guide bulls from their barges to bovine barricades. And while legend suggests the tradition dates back to the 13th century, from whence the mid-night marches morphed into the festivities that today are called the Running of the Bulls, its true beginning remains an unknown. The locals claim October 1776 marked the transformation to today’s annual adrenaline-rushed race through the cobblestone streets. But who establishes anything in unpredictable October? And 1776? In any event, the festival has since been moved to reliable July and aside from a few deaths (15 in all since 1924, when record keeping began) the running continues to run smoothly.
The same can be said of the modern-day bull run the world both celebrates and derides, trading day in and trading day out – it runs like silk on steroids. But unlike the practical birth of its Pamplonan predecessor, there was an overabundance of pomp associated with the grave circumstances that marked the advent of the current stock market run born in March 2009 from the beneficence of commandeered central bankers.
Being as it is, the second-longest artificially-turbo-charged bull market in modern market history, the rally has garnered more than its fair share of detractors. These wall-of-worry scalers suffer from a post-traumatic-stress-disorder that only the twin architects Greenspan and Bernanke could conceive. They simply refuse to be thrice burned. And who with a straight face can blame them? And yet these stalwart prudes have nevertheless been engulfed in the flames of shame of the roaring rally that’s left them behind. In some cases, once again.
Have these unrequited bears lost money in the process? It is said, even insisted, that is the case. But all they’ve really done is lost face, not money. The bears have sat bitterly idle while their full-bull counterparts have racked up massive paper gains. As sure as salt finds an open wound, some of their professional peers will even be nimble enough to monetize their handsome profits and go off, as it were, into the wild blue yonder, or at least the Hamptons, which is a lot closer.
