Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

– “The Second Coming,” William Butler Yeats

Rain is coming down this morning. Buckets of it. The Carolinas are getting walloped by Hurricane Florence. Here in Ireland, another tropical storm, Helene, is said to be on its way. It is raining hard already.

Yesterday, we went up to the coast to see a village that has been preserved more or less as it was 100 years ago. The cottages were just as you might have imagined, whitewashed stone with thatched roofs.

On the coast, the winds blow so violently that the thatch must be lashed down with ropes to keep it from blowing off. Inside, each cottage had a little peat fire and just a few pieces of simple furniture.

These were tiny homes – barely as large as the typical American living room. But they were cute, cozy, and – as long as the fire was burning – fairly comfortable.

Meanwhile…

Bull Market Revival

In an unusually stark separation, the smart money and the dumb money seem to be taking leave of one another.

This week, the news seemed especially felicitous. Stocks moved higher on a wave of positive jobs data and opinion surveys.

The Dow now stands within 500 points of a new all-time high – which would signal a revival of the bull market that began in March 2009… or August 1982, depending on how far back you want to trace it.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…