Sunday, October 4th, 2026
Laramie, Wyoming
Late in the history of the Soviet Empire, in a clandestine effort to destroy the entire civilian populations of the United States and its allies in Europe, it’s alleged scientists engineered a novel plague virus. Once deployed, the virus would wipe out everyone but leave the infrastructure of civilization intact. The mutant germ was based on the Yersinia Pestis bacterium which causes plague (there are three versions of plague: bubonic, septicemic, and pneumonic).
And the demon part?
The Soviets used recombinant DNA—splicing together genes from two separate organisms—to tweak the plague virus. The tweak caused someone who’d been infected by the airborne virus to feel euphoric for 24 or 48 hours, before feeling and exhibiting plague symptons. The euphoria feeling induced the infected carrier to be social, going out in public to spread the virus to even more people.
Pure evil. Annie Jacobonsen discussed it in detail in her book from this summer Biological War: A Scenario. The scenario begins with a lab leak from a Russian facility in Siberia. The weaponized plague virus goes global…and the fabric of civilization is torn apart thread by thread.
Great Sunday reading, right? Well, the news since Friday is that there’s been a pneumonic plague outbreak at a Russian lab in Sibera. The lab, at least 200 people, and three hospitals are now under quarantine, according to media reports. Very concerning. As is the chart below…
One long-term measure of investor sentiment is the Baker-Wurgler Index. It’s based on several variables that measure investor sentiment (rather than just surveys about how people are feeling at any one moment). The chart above shows the ‘euphoria zones,’ most recently in 2001 and 2022. And now?
Well, it’s a lagging indicator. And some of the data on which its based only come out once a year. So as a market timing indicator, it’s not especially useful. What it DOES tell you is that a bear market starts after the sentiment index peaks. We should get the latest reading on the index…next spring.
Of course by then, we’ll know if OpenAI and Anthropic have gone public and at what valuations (assuming their LLMs have not destroyed humanity). IPO issues and returns are both components of the index. And we’ll also know if the world has been swept up in a new pandemic. In fact, we’ll probably know THAT a lot sooner. In the meantime, please enjoy the summary below of BPR’s work this week.
Until tomorrow,
Dan
P.S. Odds are the sun will come up in the East and set in the West tomorrow. And you’ll still have to figure out what to make of the investment world. Just a reminder that you can still register for the Phoenician League event organized by our friend Joe Withrow. Joe has lined up 16 different interviews with analysts and experts, including yours truly and BPR’s Investment Director Tom Dyson. If you already signed up yesterday, Joe says you can upgrade to VIP status if you like (which guarantees on-demand access to all the event’s content). You can do that here.
