Deer-hunting, uphill in the snow. I wonder how many hours have gone into writing and re-writing financial analysis, and political prognostication since January 2025’s launch of the months-long endzone dance one analyst casually referred to as “Season 2.” If you’ve ever tracked a deer up a hill in deep snow, you probably got the sense (as I did) that the ungulate was playing a cruel joke on you. Really? What? We’re all the way back here now?
Yet there are consistencies amidst change.
Early in my career I had a portfolio of mostly struggling commercial fishermen in Prince Rupert. It was heart-breaking watching that storied salmon fishery fizzle out, but the crab and halibut businesses were relatively strong. Crabbing had become dominated by Vietnamese immigrants, whose work habits and energy levels were nothing short of a storm. One of my clients was a busy young dad who apparently never slept. He worked janitorial contracts at night and ran his crab vessel whenever he could. Gifts of delicious fresh crab came with his visits every so often -- which was very generous and just modest enough to fit our gift policy at the time.
Then the gifts began to accelerate, and after a while the frequency of his kindness felt awkward, and it broke his heart when I asked him to stop -- a cultural clash possibly. But we all moved on and I’m sure his work ethic served him and his family very well over the decades since.
Then he gave me a massive Hollywood mansion for my birthday. It was nice – some say very nice.
WA Hayek and Starling Bacon Numbers
We refer to a murder of crows, a conspiracy of ravens, and a murmur of starlings. But with that latter, bigger group of smaller birds, more fascinatingly, we speak of starling murmuration. Murmuration, unlike murder, conspiracy, and even murmuring, it’ not about conflict, but a sort of instinctive mass dance.
How do they do it? Scientists have monitored these movements and simulated the effect with computers. It seems that each starling just needs to keep track of around 7 of their nearest neighbours in order to create this beautifully-ordered disorderly dance.
Hold that thought.
Nobel recipient WA Hayek might have referred to a group of clambering central planners as a “conceit.”
In his masterpiece, The Fatal Conceit, Hayek referred to the improbability of self-certain would-be leaders fine-tuning something so complex as the large, modern marketplace, from something like a central post office (the post office was comrade Lenin’s metaphor – I mean… had he ever been to Canada?)
More specifically, the conceit he refers to is in the planners’ overconfidence in how well they understand the complexities of million/billions of interacting players. It’s impossible – a conceit, oh ye squirrel herders! Central planning is often about as efficient as a Vancouver driver having to complete a 3-part government application for permission to turn on your windshield wipers in the rain.
Starling murmuration has no master. There’s no queen bird, no central committee, no president. More likely, I’d expect to see a bat-winged Mozart floating around up there, flailing his baton, orchestrating this cacophony into a random licorice swirl. But alas – there’s none of that. Each bird just needs to mind his nearest few pals – a sort of starling bacon number -- and the aggregating result is stunning, beautiful, majestic – and here’s the key – it’s more complex than any one bird or group of birds will ever know. It just… is. And it might be so deep that it’s in the DNA we share with those little birds with sunken eyes singing.
Spooky fact – starling murmurations can and sometimes do take down jet airplanes, and these flocks need to be carefully managed in and around airports. But this is science, not politics. As far as we know they aren’t planning anything today. They don’t plan stuff – they just… get up in the morning, and “…take these broken wings and learn to fly.” (Thank-you Sir Paul McCartney).
And any murmurs to the contrary are just rumors.
Probably.
(Photo (left) is FA Hayek.
Here’s RBC Wealth Management's latest investment newsletter
Long division
U.S. government borrowing costs on longer-maturity debt have risen more quickly than on shorter-maturity debt since so-called reciprocal tariffs were announced. We discuss what drove that reaction and why the difference is likely to persist.
Regional developments: Canadian labour market posted weaker-than-expected employment and unemployment rates; U.S. stock indexes reached two-month highs; Tariff front-running leads to an upside surprise in Q1 UK GDP; Investors cheer progress in U.S.-China trade negotiations.
Please take some time to review the Global Insight Weekly.
Feel free to contact me with any questions and/or to discuss investment ideas.
Enjoy your May long weekend!
Mark