Happy Ides of March everyone! Or is it Saint Patrick’s Day? Or is it some weird mashup of both. It’s a weird convolution of all these days into one glorious green-festooned ritual stabbing in the back of and drinking of Caesars and other cocktails made famous by betrayal and the shepherding of snakes off an inhospitable island.
To honour the days in question and to be effective with my time, I am going to go out on a limb with a not very well thought out listicle of the 10 individuals of renown who I think will be either led off cliff by a dancing saint with a pan flute or stabbed (metaphorically more than likely) in the back by people they once trusted. And in the interests of time – these “dispatches” will need to happen before the end of the year.
10 – Justin Trudeau. See ya later fella.
That’s right. Justin’s time is done as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and as Prime Minister. The lineup of people who want him gone is long. The electorate clearly wants him gone. The general Canadian population wants him gone. His wife is already gone. His fellow MPs want him gone, even if they are still too chicken to say it on the record. Pierre Poilievre may or may not want him gone – sometimes it’s OK to campaign against someone whose net approval ratings are approaching Shaquille O’Neal’s foot size. The media wants him gone. The conservative party at large wants him gone. Danielle Smith has had as much as she can take! Jagmeet wants him gone because he can no longer handle being outflanked on the left by someone who is richer than he is. As soon as someone with the stroke to challenge him in the LPC comes along, the knives will be out. And the LPC will want to do it well ahead of a possible 2025 election.
Since he doesn’t know how to leave of his own volition, this will be a classic stab in the back, with Chrystia Freeland and Mark Carney leading the charge. See ya Justin – we hardly knew ya!
9 – Team MAGA
This isn’t going to go the way you think Team MAGA. The longer Trump stays in the Presidential race the less popular he becomes. The less popular he becomes the angrier and smaller the MAGA mob becomes. It’s weird and terrifying prospect that the less popular Donald Trump becomes the more likely we are to see violence from his most ardent and passionate supporters. Regardless, Donald Trump is the gift that keeps giving. You’ve heard the expression ETTD? Everything Trump Touches Dies? Well that is what is happening here. This is a snakes off the island moment – led off by the most unlikely of heroes, Donald J. Trump. Speaking of which…
8 – Donald Trump et al
They’ve been dominating the airwaves since 2015. They have been polluting the public discourse and running their unique grift on the American people since then, aided and abetted by a chickenshot and ratings addicted mainstream media and a sycophantic Fox News whose NOT EVN AMERICAN owner (Rupert Murdoch) would like nothing more than seeing his power consolidated and riches enhanced for the rest of his 90+ year old life (funny how he isn’t too old – might want to look into that one Sleepy Joe). No matter, this isn’t about Joe or Rupert. No, this is about the Trump clan and what will happen to them when they are done dragging the RNC and the Republican party down in flames in what should be, by all rights, the most decisive election loss in generations. Unless of course Americans decide that a senile orange walrus, propped up by sycophants and yes-men, espousing reproductive rights policies that will set women’s rights back to before the Nineteenth Amendment (right to vote), promoting a racist agenda of mass deportation of immigrants and the abandoning of the postwar world order on an isolationist scale worthy of the Hermit Kingdom (that’s Trump buddy Kim Jong Un’s homeland of North Korea) deserves to be dictator and gives him the keys to the kingdom.
I rather believe they won’t and also believe that this time, the backlash is going to be epic and he will find himself stabbed in the back by his erstwhile supporters in the political establishment once and for all in an act of political bloodletting and much-needed rebirth.
7 – Renewables in Alberta
This one isn’t anything new. We’ve all seen the results of the UCP mandated moratorium and Review of the renewables industry in Alberta. Given the choice between supporting a massive and rapidly growing industry that exclusively employs the prototypical Danielle Smith and UCP supporter, the government instead decided to sneak up behind it and stab it squarely in the back and push it off a cliff. There wasn’t much subtlety to it. Sacrifice for political purposes. And before you get too comfortable, I’d secure my flank Oil and gas. As we’ve seen, these things can turn quickly and come from nowhere.
6 – Nvidia Shareholders
It’s everyone’s favourite stock. The one with the P/E higher than Pierre Poilievre’s potential seat count and a market cap that approaches the GDP of a third world country (Canada). It’s the unsustainable, momentum driven, AI-riding market super-darling that, I suspect, will be as much a symbol for this markets eventual unwinding as tulips were back in their day dotcoms were back in their day or natural gas is on any random Tuesday. And all these shareholders are being led off to their eventual doom by a complicit media and investing ecosystem than is all momentum and value be damned. Am I mad I missed the boat? Sure. Do I wish an epic call from grace? No. Will I say I told you so when it happens? You bet.
5 – Canadian Homeowners
OK, here is what I have to say to Canadian homeowners and wannabe homeowners. If you thought that relatively higher (we call them normal) interest rates were going to slow down the economy and deliver some house price relief, I have some Monkey NFT’s to sell you. Home prices will continue their relentless rise until the wheels fall completely off the economy. This is because we are so far behind in home supply that we think we are ahead and new homebuyers enter the market every single day. Eventually rates will start to creep lower, raising prices and also eventually, someone in charge will succumb to the 30-year mortgage urge and all bets will be off. Stabbed in the back and led off a cliff. Ugh
4 – New York Jets Fans
It must be hard to be a New York Jets fan. You are in the most dynamic media market in the world, your owner has a bazillion dollars and year after year you just can’t seem to pull it together whether it’s atrocious draft pick and head scratching wasted pick to injuries to lousy coaches to Tom Brady dominance replaced by Buffalo climbing the mountain top. It doesn’t matter. You just can’t pull it together. The last year, finally, a beacon of light. One of the greats, Aaron Rodgers on your team. Super Bowl aspirations! It was finally going to happen and it did. For all of four plays and then the Achilles tore and the season was over before it began. Whomp whomp. But, there is always next year right? Hope springs eternal! Wait, what’s that I hear? Long shot independent candidate and America’s favourite kooky vaccine denier Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announcing that he is considering Aaron to be his vice-presidential running mate in this year’s White House run? Then it comes out that Rodgers is actually interested and, as a fellow vaccine denier, has a few conspiracy theory whopper beliefs of his own such as believing the Sandy Hook mass shooting was staged. This last part may or may not be true, I’ll give the deep thinker the benefit of the doubt. What doesn’t get that benefit is the Jets chances, yet again. The circus has come to town and it has derailed the Jets season before free agency is over and the draft began. Stabbed in the back. By Fate? By Aaron Rodgers? Does it even matter?
3 – Maple Leafs Fans
Egged on by the Toronto-centric media, Maple Leafs Fans have been conditioned to believe that this, this is the year they will finally ascend to the mountain top and win the Stanley Cup. Well, you have been tricked. Tricked by a tricky little leprechaun trickster. There are 1967 reasons why Toronto won’t win. Sorry, you have been led off the island. It is the curse of Harold Ballard.
2 – Energy Investors
It’s been a bullish few week for energy investors broadly and oil investors more narrowly. This is mainly because investing in natural gas is the equivalent of going all in on a Maple Leafs Cup and Jets Super Bowl parlay bet. But oil? Oil is where it’s at. It’s March. Tunaround season is over. Prices are rising. OPEC is withholding. Prices are rising. International tensions are tighter. Prices are rising. Pipelines are opening. Prices are rising. The Permian is slowing. Prices are rising. Demand is growing. Prices are rising. Suddenly, energy investors are self-proclaimed geniuses. This, combined with the soon to comeuppance for the Nvidia crowd will lead many to believe that the path is up, up, up. What could possibly go wrong? I’ll tell you what. Plenty. Everything. As soon as you grow complacent about the energy market it will stab you in the back. Et tu OPEC?
So to all you energy investing geniuses? Herein lieth the lesson.
The period between the Ides of March and Mayday is called the hold period. Then, sell in May. And go away.
1 – Elon and X
Yeah, guess what is going to happen to Elon this year… Whoops, joke’s on us. We are the crowd. Elon, a thin-skinned billionaire like Trump (except he has real money, not Trump bucks), is the pipe-playing St Patrick leading us all obliviously into an ocean of chaos by unleashing his vile cesspool of fake free-speech and raging right wing platforming “village square” X on an unsuspecting public. Eager to play and be entertained, we soon find ourselves all in the water. He will personally stab each and everyone of us in the back, unless we sign up for a blue check.
