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"Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose, there is no reason not to follow your heart."
Steve Jobs, 1955 - 2011
Last night as I drank a glass of wine and thought about the day's events and checked the TV lineup on the Internet I saw a news update that Steve Jobs had died. I was stunned. Steve Jobs was the center of a cultural and business world that I interacted with on a regular basis.
When I first became an editor at a small weekly newspaper, in the 1990's, one of the first things I did was replace all of our dozen or so old, Apple computers with cheap PCs. The PCs were cheaper than new Apple computers, and most everybody else had PCs so it seemed it would be the easiest thing to do, since there were compatibility issues with other documents and we received outside submissions all the time. Within the year I had completely changed course and re-replaced all of our computers with new Macs.
The troubles caused with networking the PCs were continuos. The graphics department went and did their work on their personal Macs and emailed the work back to the office. We often received emailed article submissions from readers who wrote on a Mac and converting the text wasn't a problem. And, furthermore, as editors and reporters, we in the staff personally found the cheap, generic, PCs to be very clunky. Overall, My penny-pinching, short-term thinking that lead me to buy the cheap PCs gave way to my concern about the quality of our product. Considering the small budget I had to work with it looked like I had spent a fortune. But everybody in the staff was happier and more productive and, for various reasons, the quality of the product improved.
The next computer I bought for my house was also a Mac. Now, 15 years latter, I type this article on my Mac laptop. Over the years I have come to respect Steve Jobs, and to love Apple products.
After working at the newspaper I had moved into finance and became licensed as a commodities broker. In the commodities office they only had clunky PCs that only showed numbers flashing red and green. There was no art, or photos, or web surfing. Just number crunching. And no talk about the spirit or soul of the machines we worked on. When the compliance officer returned from a required continuing education class on ethics most in the office laughed when he said, "That was a wasted morning, there are no ethics in finance."
I didn't last long at that office. But I remained interested in finance and between my day to day obligations I still dabble. I currently have some bets on AAPL, bets that Apple stock will go up from its recent deep decline.
And so, after the first shock that Steve Jobs had died, and the grace and beauty and intelligence that was gone with him, the second shock that hit me was that I was going to lose money. There are no ethics in finance, and everything is about short-term, penny-pinching actions. It doesn't matter that Apple has hoards of cash. It doesn't matter if Apple has a deep pipeline of products. It doesn't matter that the ideas of Steve Jobs live on within the staff of Apple. There is no soul, in finance, either. There is no thought of tomorrow in finance. And I've worked with those folks and there is no soul in most of those brokers. Just the flashing red and green numbers on the screen.
The knee-jerk reaction on Wall Street will be to sell AAPL. They will drive it down into the dirt. Piss on the long=term potential of AAPL. Piss on the storehouse of ideas at Apple. Piss on the smooth working organization that Steve Jobs nurtured. I knew the reaction of the mass consciousness of all of the individual traders would be to dump Apple stock.
So when Steve Jobs passed away I was shocked by the loss of an artist and a visionary.
Then I was dismayed that I would lose money on my AAPL bet.
And now I come full circle in thinking about the callousness and short-sightedness of our world. As I said, Apple stock is beat up, as is the whole market, and was in need of a bounce. AAPL is far under-valued based on many factors. And, in reality, anybody who sells their stock today is probably, consciously deciding to lose money, but they can rationalize it by saying every other schmuck was selling too...
So now as I write this, with the market futures up and nearly every stock trading in the green in the pre-market as the market continues to bounce from severely oversold levels, one stock stands out as a flashing red number: AAPL.
Wall Street says piss on potential. Wall Street says piss on ideas. Wall Street says piss on the future. Wall Street says piss on the memory of Steve Jobs.
And that is what is wrong with Wall Street: they have no soul, they don't care about tomorrow, they don't even really care about profits. As my grandmother used to say, "They would cut off their nose to spite their face." Selling Apple stock right now, is a short-sighted, stupid move, and obviously I won't be doing that.
But seeing that that is the collective reaction, the plurality reaction, of humanity, saddens me for our future. In the whole, humanity has no soul, no vision, no ethics, no love.
EDIT: I am, obviously, pleasantly surprised (given my resolve to "hold") that the early weakness in AAPL has been reversed, and that my jaded, cynical fears have proved to be wrong. I feel slightly better about humanity.
