Why buy stock based on Chicken little?
July 5 2021
I recently saw a commercial about a pizza delivery person who was stuck inside the pizza store because there were bears roaring outside. It made me ask this question, “how can any person deliver the goods when they are afraid”?
In a “bear” market, the value of stocks are decreasing or getting less and less. If this pizza commercial represented the stock market, even though the pizza (stock) has its own inherent value (who does not love pizza), the longer the person who is supposed to “deliver the goods”(pizza) is afraid to venture out, the colder the pizza gets, and the more the value assigned to it DECREASES.
Yes, you then have a roaring bear market like the TV ad… (are you going for the reverse psychology theory with this commercial lol)
But, in contrast to the humorous TV commercial, I know that there is not any REAL bear market roaring to attack us as we venture out and enjoy our pizza. It does not have that power.
In CONTRASTING analogy to the bear market, there is the term the bull market, and my analogy is “the bull pen” in baseball. Like the bull market, it is called the bull pen because individual player efforts are BELIEVED to BE GOOD, and, like the bull market, ensure an “increasing” value, as opposed to a bear market of decreasing value.
That is why they call it “the bull pen” and not “the bear pen” =). The bull pen represents talent that is improving and increasing and able to deliver inherent value, without fear of putting that value into play. You won’t see real ball players huddled up inside a pizza building, afraid to deliver what they know is good. And they ain’t banging on trash cans either (it’s sanitation workers btw)
A real bull pen is able to “deliver the goods”, or, in the pizza commercial, take the keep the pizza hot and serve it up in one good pitch. I am pretty sure that the pitchers I know can keep it in the box where it belongs as well.
Do you remember the story about chicken little and how he thought “the sky was falling”. In an extremely isolated incident, something fell on an overexcited chicken little’s head and he erroneously decided with his catastrophic thinking, that the sky was indeed falling. Chicken Little, instead of rationally trusting the good that he had experienced most of his life, literally ran scared and was “chicken” because of one isolated incident.
The sky AIN’T FALLING and chicken little, like other “experts”, gets attention with words that are false, without verification and without regret for the chaos caused.
In baseball, we would call this “fowl play” (haha or a play on words).
I think this story is a great illustration of how our ability to deliver “VALUE” is determined by what it is we believe to be true about ourselves and others. If we believe, like chicken little, that when something challenges us, it is going to destroy us, the way chicken little believed that the random chunk that hit him on the head was the sky falling, then we have effectively initiated a bear market.
The bear market happens, like the pizza commercial, and like the story of chicken little, when a happy farm full of valuable chickens, is thought to be doomed all because of the belief of one silly bird. It was never true.
Jesus was able to deliver the good better than any other human being alive. Jesus was also unafraid. Jesus understood that the value to be delivered was ALREADY THERE. He knew this in spite of every thing that happened to make him think any person or situation was doomed.
Jesus did not have to GIVE something to others in order for them to have value, he understood that the value existed independent of what was happening on the surface.
That value transcended human beliefs. If Jesus had been in the coop with the chickens in that story of chicken little, He would see that the sky was intact and not falling because Jesus saw and understood the bigger picture which was always good.
Jesus understood that SEEING GOOD and believing in good, brings it into our experience, the same way that believing in the bull pen allows players to excel and demonstrate increasing competence in the game. Believing in the good allows it to be realized.
In business, a company does not increase in value with the people it lets go, (decreasing ie. bear market) rather it increases in value with the people it retains (to keep is to grow, bull market) who are not afraid to deliver the goods. A company who believes in its people and retains them is going to be more valuable than a company who does not believe in its people, and lets them go.
A baby is not valuable because of what we give it in the form of toys, clothes or food; a child has value inherently and that value can be delivered when we “invest” love, compassion, trust and understanding to the children in our lives.
Believing a child does not have value, does not hurt the child, it only hurts the person who believes there is no value in children. Those who say their is no value in humanity, especially children, have been listening too long to the howling bears. Fear, or False Evidence Appearing Real, has stymied their thinking.
In baseball, if the coach, kept using just one pitcher, and was afraid to trust the good of other players, or develop their talents, then he would be like the pizza delivery man who never leaves the building, and the value of the team would start deteriorating. The pitcher might be “holding on to the goods” of real value, but that good only gets delivered when fear is destroyed and the pitch is made.
How does a person learn to “value” the “bullpen” of society? It is a daily and even minute by minute conscious choice to UNDERSTAND that each person we interact with ALREADY has value and we just have to discover what that value is and see that it gets “delivered”.
Think about it, the players in baseball would not be on the team if they did not believe the coach would value them and play them in the game, and the coach would not have players on the team if he did not believe that they were of value.
Jesus “delivered” us. That pitch has already happened and the game is already won and the howling bears have no power to change that so we do not have to listen to them. Bye bye pizza commercial, bye bye chicken little. Jesus did so because he UNDERSTOOD the value in humanity and he cherished people, knowing each one of us possesses inherent and unique value.
We are Gods bull pen and it is time we stop being afraid of what “chicken little” is screaming because we do not have to tolerate “foul plays”. We can know that good is right here right now, and get busy helping to deliver it.
It may require going out of our comfort zone, like the pizza guy who, ventures out and is not deterred by the mirage of howling bears, because he knows that evil only has power if he believes what it is saying is true. But evil is never truth, and the bullpen is ready. Game on.