Thursday, March 22, 2018

"Calm Down, Turkey’s Not Going To Invade The Balkans"

That's why the market is trading down, right?
From Oriental Review, March 21:
President Erdogan’s regular addresses to the Muslim and Turkish people of the Balkans are a soft power tactic that isn’t any functionally different from the transnational outreach attempts that other forces engage in elsewhere across the world and on different ideological-identity pretexts.
The Alt-Media Community has once again been thrown into hysteria after one of President Erdogan’s latest speeches where he addressed his fellow Muslim co-confessionalists and ethnic Turkish kin in the Balkans on the eve of what ended up being his country’s monumental military victory in the northwestern Syrian town of Afrin. His words were reported on widely in the press and ominously framed in such a way as to imply that a similar operation might be commenced in Southeastern Europe one of these days as well, though nothing could be further from the case. The Balkan people are psychologically scarred by the centuries of Turkish occupation and have a reason to fear Ankara’s aggression against them, but their historical experiences over the previous centuries might be blinding them to how much the world has changed since then....MUCH MORE
Over the years we've only linked to Oriental Review a couple times as their bias is readily apparent from a quick look at their headlines. That said, O-R's response to the linked EurActiv story:
Bulgaria reacts to disturbing statement by Turkey’s Erdogan
seems measured and correct. Erdoğan isn't moving west, rather his follow-up to invading Syria appears to be:

—Middle East Eye, March 20
See? No worries.

Recently:
Real Estate: It Doesn't Look Like Turkey Will Be Leaving Syria Any Time Soon 

Now about that U.S. stock market...
March 1
Uh Oh: "When To Sell In a Bull Market" Revisited
 
https://finviz.com/fut_chart.ashx?t=YM&cot=124601,124603&p=d1&rev=636573331453897635
January 25, again just before the first leg down:

In 2016 We Had the #1 Stock In the S&P 500, In 2017 We Had the Top-Performing Commodity, In 2018 We've Got....
Nuthin'.
So here's a little victory dance 'til we figure something out.
And after that, a pretty good Warren Buffett story....