Short Selling The World In 2012

The year is coming to an end, as fast as it always does when September rolls around. After school starts it’s Halloween, then Thanksgiving, then Christmas, then Jan. 1. Next year’s going to be something else, though. It’s 2012. And if the Mayans and the Hopis and the iChing and the Web Bot are right, this next year is going to be a doozy. (Whatever that means.)

If 1999 came in with that Prince & the Revolution song of the same title, 2012 will probably be rung in with that R.E.M. song from the late 80s: It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine).

As an investor, it’s probably time to buy SPX and SPY put options. Put option buyers are bearish, of course, and owning a put gives the holder the right to sell high when the market is trading low. It’s insurance against a raging bear market, if we survive.

Americans love the end times. Maybe because we’re pretty good at surviving them. Not only in fiction, but in real life. Wasn’t the end supposed to happen on May 21, 2011? We survived it. Weren’t the Islamofascists supposed to kill us all in a suitcase nuke? We’ve survived the war on terrorism.

But next year is different. Next year isn’t about predictions from right wing pundits or left wingers or general wing nuts. Next year is about predictions from three ancient cultures and one modern day algorithm program that says 2012 will be a year to forget.

Last night, I found myself hooked on History’s latest reality docudrama Decoded. Intermittent with watching the Red Sox lose to the Orioles, I was reminded by author Brad Meltzer and his lay trio of jaw dropping conspiracy investigators that the world as we know it somehow radically changes on Dec. 21, 2012. Maybe it’s climate change. Maybe it’s a meteor storm. Maybe it’s a nuclear war or an alien invasion. Something better happen, or we might all be disappointed.

On the show, Meltzer had someone from the Web Bot project who forecast for the second time on History that after Dec. 2012, there is simply no data to be found on the program; just a black hole of information, until sometime in the spring of 2013. But what happens in 2013? What’s the chatter? They don’t say. It could be Aquarius for all we know.

Dec. 2012 may very well end up being another Y2K “crisis”. The future is unknowable, after all. But what is knowable is that millions of Americans believe the world will suffer some type of catastrophe next year. What is knowable is that in early 2012, the national narrative will be on the U.S. presidential race. By the summer, we will be bombarded with documentaries and mainstream media asking us how we are preparing for the end, as if the end really is coming. (And if it is, why are we spending it watching the Today Show?)

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