Shorting Cargo Pants
The pundits warned us that it would be prudent to be cautious about black-swan market events in August, but none could have imagined the shock to the system we'd experience in the first week of the month: Bill Gross writing in detail about his own sexual edification.
Gross is famous for managing unconstrained bond funds, first at Pimco and now at Janus, but he's probably equally famous for his unconstrained monthly market commentary. As Gadfly's self-appointed official literary critic of Gross commentary, I like to grade his work on two primary factors: First, the quality of the wacky anecdotes, and second, how well he segues from the anecdotes into the inevitable pitch for his bond fund.
He gets an A for his sexy anecdotes in this month's outlook (not going to spoil the fun with too many details in case you haven't read it yet, but it's ready right here for you whenever you are, ahem, in the mood. I will say I will never, ever, see "sex kitten" in the same way ever again). However, I'm afraid I have to give him a C- for the segue from sex to bondage. You'll see what I mean.
Elsewhere in the most important news of the week, we were reminded that there is, obviously, a big culture clash going on in our nation that is impossible to ignore. It has huge ramifications for everything from the economy to domestic peace. I'm talking, of course, about cargo shorts. The Wall Street Journal's Nicole Hong touched the third rail of men's fashion on Monday with a hard-hitting Page 1 piece exploring the controversy surrounding six-pocket shorts.
My only critique of this article is that it's at least a year or two late. For example, I was a big enthusiast of cargo shorts for a long time but stopped wearing them last year at the request of my wife. Apparently, a married man wearing cargo shorts in a public setting that is not in the 1990s is considered a sign of an epic failure of a wife, surpassed only by a husband wearing a fanny pack in public. As far as I can tell, the only men who haven't gotten the message are the very men of the Wall Street Journal itself, who came to work on Friday with enough excess cargo capacity in their shorts to send the Baltic Dry Index to a five-week low: