Are You A Perma-Bear? Take The Zero Hedge Test

This was originally published by Cassandra Does Tokyo on March 07, 2013. Enjoy 

Take The Zero-Hedge Test

Being permanently bearish on equities definitely pays.

Just ask Zero-Hedge. Unfortunately, for wool-dyed pessimists and the other overly-skeptical black sheep of the thundering herd, it pays apocalyptic newsletter writers’ paychecks, and Zero-Hedge/Tyler Durden’s Manhattan bar tabs rather than those who permanently position against market priapism. And it’s worse than zero-sum because those who are optimistically-challenged often pay for the bad advice – whether directly in subscriptions, inflated margins on retail bullion products, or indirectly via page-views and click-throughs AND then they get hosed by the market.

The first step to improving behaviour toxic to one’s own self interest is admit one has a problem. As an aid to help those who have difficulty in distinguishing “a bearish trade” from “the lead boots of anger and pessimism”, I’ve devised a little something I call the Zero-Hedge Test to determine more precisely whether readers objective realities are sufficiently  paranoid, pessimistic, anti-social and rantingly angry to warrant more serious help.

Instructions: Circle the letter that best describes the adjacent image:

a.  a glass of water
b. glass of water, half-empty
c. glass of water, half-full
d. glass of  errrr ummm , Grey Goose vodka? (NB: ed. choice)
e. The US Government must have stolen half of a glass of water.

a. First black elected (and first to be re-elected) President of the USA
b. Barack Hussein Obama
c. A Former Senator from Illinois
d. tall guy who used to like to sneak a cigarette now & then
e. Jezebel, dark Sith Lord Vader Emperor & Chief of the Plunge Protection Team. Odious non-American african muslim responsible for taking away our world-beating healthcare, encouraging the immigrants and foreigners who took our our jobs, and formulating a secret plan to put two-dads in every home .

a.  Something that still buys a 12oz can of Coca-Cola
b.  A greenback, worth a dollar, which, on average, an American is paid each 4 minutes of work
c.  A US Federal Reserve Banknote almost universally accepted in exchange for goods and services the world over
d.  A cocaine hoovering apparatus c.1978
e.  Worthless fiat toiletpaper, so useless that bric-a-brac, watches, baseball cards or bitcoin should be more preferred than this P.o.S. that forms part of the elders of Zion grand plan to steal your labour savings before eating your babies.

a. six would-be wedding bands
b. 1oz novelty of pure gold smelted by JM
c. Au = element #79 on Periodic Table
d. Reward for a 9.59 sec 100m
e. The solution to all our financial problems…changer of men from liberal faggot zionist atheist swine into god-fearing hardworking people of fortitude and rectitude…curer of cancer, balancer of budgets….purifier of all our precious bodily fluids and divinely-given laws….come, my preciousssss…

a. ummm Europe?
b. Site of the war which was believed to be the war to end all wars (excepting the worse one that immediately followed)
c. Continent with mix of culture, cuisine, history, engineering, and civilized living standards
d. A place for Brits to go on holiday
e. Socialist commie cesspit of looney bureaucrats, unworkable financial alliances, gulag-healthcare systems, leading the world in obstinate unions, lazy workers, regulatory morass and geographical epi-center of the soon-to-be-arriving disintegration of civilized life on earth.

a. a bull market
b. an uptrend
c. a squiggly line
d. reflection of long-term (nominal) growth
e. an accident waiting to happen caused by insane, stupid, or insanely stupid people, or conspirators doing insane and stupid things that will end very very badly with the dystopian destruction of the civilized economy as we know it and reversion to an economic life of warlords and barter using nuggets of gold and silver as portrayed in that film with Kevin Costner, “The Postman”….

a.  beginning of a 5-year bull market
b.  beginning of an uptrend
c.  a squiggly-line
d.  technical reversal of severely oversold position
e.  an obvious orchestrated short-squeeze caused by the elders of zion and their 0.1% lackeys controlling the Soros-Rubin-Banker-Fed-Axis pulling the levers at the Fed Plunge Protection Team for the sake of enriching their cabal whilst duping and hiding the truth of how the rich steal money from hardworking ordinary Americans

a.   a pooled investment in Gold
b.   a low-cost alternative to buying, holding, storing & insuring physical commodities
c.   an easy liquid way to bet on the price of gold
d.   useful asset allocation tool for diversification
e.  a conspiracy to defraud honest hard-working speculative investors who’ve put their hard-earned savings into physical bullion held at secure vaults outside the USA, who have been cheated by the depressing influence these instrument have on the physical gold price by diluting the buying power which would otherwise raise the price of Gold benefitting all the other paranoid gold-bugs and survivalists who’ve already bought physical bullion in the form of coins at significant premiums or for delivery in a secure vault outside the USA.

a  provider of goods for the shelves of Walmart
b. ambitious nation that has (for the moment) successfully lifted hundreds of milllions of her citizens out of poverty
c. future demographic bomb resulting from 1-child policy
d. one of the oldest civilizations who made fine silks when most Europeans were donning animal skins
e. yellow peril mercantilist currency manipulator who took our jobs (please watch -C.) who are taking the places of children of hard-working americans at our top universities and the trading rooms on Wall Street, and who are taking over ownership of our country

a. a man with a beard
b. Nobel-prive winning economist
c. Princeton Prof & contentious NYT columnist
d. Consistent proponent of the view that it is better to try to grow rather than austerity our way out of economic depression.
e. A liberal faggot anti-christ he-Devil, devoted to Keynes and insulting to the spirit of the greatest economist of all time: Ludvig von Mises causing vilifiers to wonder why the USA Govt can increase its credit card bill, when if they do it (individually), they just get mean letters from Capital One or the card-services department at their bank; just wants to take the money of hardworking Americans and give it to entitlement-cheats who make babies to collect welfare and food stamps so they can buy drugs and Fritos (in that order).

a. impractical fashion trend
b. An accessory when listening to late-night radio
c. a joke from ser. 6, ep. 6 of Big Bang Theory
d. art project c.1977 gone very wrong
e. an important tool in preventing aliens and the American government from influencing your thoughts and controlling your brain which is one of the best kept secrets along with the PPT, George Soros’ role as the leader of the conspiracy by the Elders of Zion to take over the world financial system and rule the world and keep the hard-working man dumb and stupid and rig the system against  hard-working Americans.
How to Score:

a=1pt; b=1pt; c=1pt; d=1pt; e=5pts

Interpreting the results:

0  – 11 –  Surely a grad from an effeminate liberal east-coast university
12 – 22 –  Got some financial redneck potential in you
23 – 33 –  Wishing you had a Kazcynski-cabin of your own?
34 – 44 –  Likely owner of guns, ammo, & survivalist subscriber
45 – 55 –  Honorary Fight Club Member; NB: The NSA is watching you…