You may recall I had a little fun last month.
In the midst of our collective agony when the market went nuts, I suggestedwe amuse ourselves by keeping an ear out for buzzwords like "capitulation" and "derisking".
Now there's an entire song dedicated to such jargon.
Called "Make Money, Listen (Not Enough Wells)", the song is the brainchild of Marty Milner, a songwriter and investment advisor (now THAT is a combo). "Not Enough Wells" is a gracious shout out to yours truly—noting that when the market goes crazy, it's hard for a reporter 3,000 miles away from Wall Street to get on the air.
The song starts with a litany of ticker symbols. GLD, MCD, WMT, DZZ ("CAT I threw in for you!" Milner says). However, nothing tickles me more than his grasp of convoluted wordsmithery:
"The black swan is in confabulation.
The Real Problem you see is disinflation."
How great is that? BLACK SWAN and CONFABULATION in the same sentence!!
Milner wrote the song for Ricky Fermin, a young artist who goes by the name Fermionic who's been performing in Atlanta for the last decade and is now releasing his first CD, "Witnessing Time". Milner may have written the lyrics to "Make Money, Listen (Not Enough Wells)", but the Dominican-born Fermionic gave the song its Latin flair, a style he's dubbed "Lenguaje Pop".
The result? It makes the incomprehensible talk of Wall Street sound almost dreamy.
"Backwardise the USO,
'cause the UNG is in contango..."
How did songwriter and singer meet? Milner says Fermionic "sought me out when he wanted advice on his 401k and my thoughts on his music career...I am a venture capitalist and an old white guy." And a longtime CNBC viewer.
"Ignore the crowd and watch the the VIX
- try to hang with the Fast Money tricks."
"I had been working on the song piecing it to together for about 6 months- one phrase at a time," says Milner. "I wanted to use the CNBC money language/argot to describe our current situation in the economy. The symbols I chose were not random, neither were the concepts, although I did obviously have fun with them."
"The XBI is feeling healthy
but The MUB won't make you wealthy."
Milner says my blog last month about a market "drinking game" helped spur him to finish the song. "It is overlaid with the phraseology of watching tooo much CNBC and 'Not Enough Wells'," says my new BFF. "Ricky got what I was trying to say right away and could spot the difference between say, YOU, and, say, Meredith Whitney." Ah, yes, well, no one will ever mistake me for Meredith Whitney. Milner admits Fermionic was at first "baffled" by the lingo, but now the singer loves to watch CNBC and spot the buzzwords he's put to music.
"Head's up on quadruple witching
the volume on the options is twitching."
In the end, "Make Money, Listen" is a funny song with a fun beat, and while Milner may not be a fan of disinflation, he is a fan of Ricky Fermin. "He has heart and talent and believes he will succeed in America doing what he loves. Until then he is working hard." Which is a lot easier to appreciate and understand than what most analysts say about the market.
"Watch the FXI get FTPed
while the TBT pounds the TLT."
I don't even know what that means.
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