Markets with Bertie: Don’t just do something, stand there

At a quarter to one last Sunday, Bertie found himself having lunch alone at the FatCats Club. This is a significant departure from our man’s routine, wherein most Sundays are spent devouring a home-cooked meal and enjoying an afternoon siesta. But Bertie is a man of habit, and last Sunday, two of his habits collided. One was the aforesaid routine of food and nap, while the other was listening to the Union budget in the office. For over two decades, Bertie has been in office on budget day, multi-tasking between the TV, the Bloomberg screen and the trading terminal, while either whooping with joy at some announcement or hurling profanities at another. A calmer man would argue that on most budget days the markets had produced more heat than light, but the adrenaline rush that the heat produces – that is what Bertie craved.

Thus, Bertie decided to forgo his weekly routine, and despite the budget falling on a Sunday, decided on keeping up with his annual one. Bertie’s brain was like a cocked pistol when he arrived at the office at eleven in the morning. A steaming cup of tea, his trusted Casio calculator, the blinking screen and the Income-tax Act stood ready on his desk, eager to be pressed into service. The budget speech began, a few minutes passed, then an hour and then the speech ended. The sheer anti-climax of it made Bertie feel cheated, and with an exasperated “Bah!” he trotted to the FatCats Club for an earlier-than-planned lunch.

After topping off the food with a double scoop of ice-cream, a sedate Bertie walked back to the office. With the thrill-seeking part of his brain subdued, Bertie now read the budget documents at ease. Reluctantly, he had to admit that he actually liked most of what he saw. The budget numbers were credible, if not outright conservative; the tilt of the spending was towards creating national assets and not distributing freebies, despite electoral compulsions and, in a world where rapid accumulation of public debt is the global norm, the finance minister had laid out a path for reducing it. The budget seemed like a prospective son-in-law whom the father of the girl would readily approve, but the girl herself would dismiss as bland.

Bertie now turned on the TV to hear some expert commentary, and sure enough, there were complaints about all the things that the budget lacked. Bertie’s favourite budget analogy is a scene from the movie Bruce Almighty, starring Jim Carrey. In the movie, Bruce has been bestowed with divine powers to grant people’s wishes. The sheer volume of people’s wants overwhelms him, and so he approves everyone’s prayers in one go, with disastrous results; like all sports games ending in ties and millions of people winning the lottery, which ends up causing riots. If such disasters are to be avoided, some, if not most, ‘wish-lists’ have to be ignored, and therefore, no budget can hope to satisfy all the constituencies.

Stability and continuity have their merits. Bertie was happy that he did not have to recompute his personal taxation nor did he have to dramatically reallocate his investment portfolio to reduce the tax incidence. After writing one of his shortest post-budget notes for clients, Bertie was back home before teatime. An expectant missus asked him, “How was it?” to which he said, “All good”. “That’s it?” she asked, and Bertie just smiled and nodded. It’s on days like this that Bertie is reminded of a line from Alice in Wonderland “Don’t just do something, stand there.”

Bertie is a Mumbai-based fund manager whose compliance department wishes him to cough twice before speaking and then decide not to say it after all.