From UFOs and APIs: Unidentified Financial Targets and Alien Portfolio Investors.
The past three years have been anything but ordinary for the financial markets, to say the least. We had the Covid slump, then the jump, then the war slump, then the jump and now we have UFOs in the sky.
Personally, I am in favor of foreign companies being listed on our stock exchanges. At least they can justify the P/E ratio by giving interstellar distances. It would also be great if the depths of the markets had a new category: APIs or Alien Portfolio Investors.
I wouldn’t mind diversifying into some Martian startups. Maybe their goal is to send a spaceship to Earth. Maybe they have their own version of Elon Musk. And more importantly, her own version of Elon Musk on Twitter. And it might be wise to have some off-planet tax havens on Jupiter. You pay money for the James Webb telescope not to look at you.
I think our boards could use some interstellar diversity and inclusion as well. Alien directors might offer perspectives such as: “You can argue about what color the conference logo should be, but I’m telling you right now that an asteroid the size of Hindenburg is headed for Indian stock markets. We have already short circuited the moon in anticipation.”
Likewise, the aliens could use some advisors on Earth who would tell them, “How to scale a trillion trillion dollar intergalactic enterprise before lunch.”
Given that the average lifespan of extraterrestrials would be 1,000 years, the biggest discussion about interspecies marriages would be alimony. And you would also have to insure yourself against being dismissed by your foreign parents-in-law.
On the other hand, the youth would appreciate the opportunity to have alien student exchange programs. So your project partner in the B school could be Mercury XR-778. I’ve heard they can be a little hot under the collar so I’d keep my distance.
Many would also relish the prospect of alien corporations coming to campus because literally anything is better than the current lot on Earth. FMCG – Fast Moving Cosmic Goods – companies are expected to do well over the next quarter century. Personally, I plan to take some short positions on the Martians and hedge my position by buying Elon Musk NFTs.
Now some are arguing that the whole space opera is literally a staged space opera to distract the US public from the Nord Stream explosion story. I argue, what if the US government knew we wouldn’t believe them? So they were like, “Fuck that. Let’s just go ahead and tell the public about the aliens. Tell them they are the true creators of cryptocurrency. See nobody is going to believe us and they will just keep making st*p*d memes. At Nord Stream we can just tell them the aliens did it.”
It will be a relief for governments around the world that instead of blaming each other for their own problems, they can now blame foreign governments. For example: “The chemical disaster in East Palestine was caused by West Neptunian separatists. Expect terrorist UFOs to crash into Trump Towers in Pune.”
But I hope we can develop a vibrant F&O segment where we can make quantum bets on the interstellar markets. These quantum products would finally allow business news anchors to make their statements like “Markets may go up when they don’t go down. Because gravity……hahaha”.
But as we ponder the nature of these unidentified financial objects, I can only hope that we don’t suddenly start spotting UFOs in the financial records of major institutions. Because when we start shooting them down, we have no idea what’s going to shoot back.
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Wikram Poddar is a former investment banker-turned-comedian. He tweets @BoredRoomComedy
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