We don't know how many have noticed, but March 20 is International Happiness Day. It has been celebrated every year since 2012 under the patronage of the United Nations. 193 countries established it with resolutions 65/309 and 66/281 and it has a website (happinessday.org), a logo, a Board of Directors and a Board of Trustees. It offers career opportunities, as the site says, and is currently looking for interns to train as social media experts and copywriters.
In addition to bureaucratic happiness, there are philosophical, economic, medical, biological and sociological happiness. We'll talk about the markets later. In the history of reflection on this theme, one begins by flying high. Greek philosophy betrays its aristocratic sociocultural origin and preaches happiness as self-control, self-realization (Aristotle), pursuit of virtue (Plato) and detachment from material pleasures to be free to set higher goals. It is clearly a philosophy for the elites, while the masses seek happiness in magical and Dionysian rites and find understanding only in Aristippus of Cyrene, who is not studied in high school and who theorizes enjoying the present in any way because the present, well see, is our only reality.
The Middle Ages flies even higher. Earthly happiness becomes a secondary goal (Thomas even reevaluates sadness, which makes us more alert, creative and motivated), while authentic bliss is mystically achieved in Bonaventure's itinerary mentis in Deum and in the vision of God that Dante describes in last canto of Paradise.
Then there is the collapse. The moderns, from Montaigne onwards, begin with a deregulation of the question. To be happy everyone organizes himself as he can. Happiness becomes subjective and the Declaration of Independence written by Jefferson in 1776 guarantees everyone the right to pursue it, each as they see fit. We return to an elitist vision with Robespierre and Lenin (the avant-gardes give happiness to the masses even against their will) but after the failures of the twentieth century we start to fly as low as possible.
Theories are shattered, with the New Age Gnostic visions are back in vogue, purification as an antechamber of enlightenment and bliss becomes (with all due respect) yoga and beauty farm, while not one, but five studies conducted independently of each other others in Korea, Iran, Chile, America and England demonstrate the strong correlation between happiness and fruit and vegetable consumption.
Economists are returning to an objective and even measurable vision of happiness, who in recent years, with their usual grace and levity, have increasingly produced a series of indicators such as Gross National Happiness (a metric officially adopted in Bhutan ), the Gross National Welfare, the Human Development Index, the Green and Happiness Index (adopted by Thailand), the OECD Better Life Index and many others.
Among the most considered indicators of happiness there are usually the duration of life (from which it can be deduced that the older you are, the happier you are), the duration of your studies (those that made Leopardi happy) and income inequality (those that in Europe they are thought to have made Trump win even though Trump has never once mentioned it in his life). Spiritual happiness is also measured in Bhutan and with this measure the United Nations classified it in 2016 as the happiest country in the world.
However, sociologists, geneticists, psychologists and behavioral economists note that the correlation between wealth, income and happiness is dubious and perhaps does not exist at all. If you ask people how they feel in life, the rich proclaim themselves more satisfied than the poor, but if you try to ask how they feel at that precise moment, whether it's morning, afternoon or evening, you never find any difference.
Mood, doctors say, is a function of homeostasis (we're fine if we've slept enough and if we're not hungry or thirsty or itchy). The geneticists of the National Institute of Health note that not only structural well-being but also perceived well-being have a genetic basis and for this purpose they investigate the serotonin transporter gene, 5 -HTTLPR. The father of behavioral economics David Kahneman states for his part that the growth of happiness stops at an income of 75 dollars and that it is almost useless to get busy above it (the Keynesian Skidelsky shares the same view in his recent How Much Is Enough, different Bezos, Buffett, Gates, Page and Brin, who however have more ambitious goals than just money).
Stock market happiness is a rare occurrence and we seem to have seen it, after a long time, between November and today. Stock market happiness shouldn't be confused with the stock market rise. In fact, for three quarters of the time, the upside scales, as they say, a wall of concern. Of course, those inside make money, but at the cost of restless nights and fears of all kinds (the double-dip in 2009-2010, Europe in 2011-2012, the fiscal cliff and the taper tantrum in 2013, the rise of rates and then China between 2014 and 2016).
Whoever manages money finds himself in these phases dealing with nervous and worried customers even if the results are good and he is nervous himself. After three, five, seven years of nervousness, the rises take different paths. Sometimes they are interrupted by dramatic crashes, as in 1987. Other times they begin to wither into moodiness, as in 2007. Still other times they undergo a genetic mutation and from shy and hesitant they become aggressive, violent and uncontrollable, as in 1999 for the stock exchanges and 2007 for houses.
In these phases, the markets are possessed (enthusiasm, etymologically, means being possessed by the divine) and they are not happy, but, psychiatrists would say, manic. Whoever is inside becomes greedy, loses all inhibitions and instead of rejoicing thinking about the money he is making, he macerates by calculating how much more he could make if he were drafted. Whoever is outside is consumed by envy, by the suspicion of being infinitely stupid and by the fear of losing the opportunity of life. Everyone is excited, nobody is happy. None of this was visible in the big rally following the US election in November. No one suffered, not even the shorts who, agile and careful as always, soon realized that the wind wasn't blowing their way and capsized or closed anyway. The others, the bulk, bought in moderation and limited themselves to not selling. The result is that the moneymaker doesn't complain that he could have earned more by taking more risks.
Those who remained outside, for their part, do not regret too much. After all, the global economy is going well for him too, employment is growing, no bond defaults and those who make money on the stock market have the good taste not to flaunt it. At the basis of this feeling of well-being there is a rather simple reasoning. We come from years of anxiety in which politics has asked for taxes, regulations, austerity and fines. Now all this seems behind us.
We do not know whether the promised reforms will actually take place, but even if nothing happens, we have the reasonable certainty that we need not fear anything negative. And if something good happens, so much the better. This feeling of lightness, having produced a significant upside, is now accompanied by a feeling of contentment. Some profits are made here and there, but without worry.
The big announcements of reforms are over and are now in prices, but their realization is not yet in prices. The process of American reforms will be laborious, while the European electoral cycle has yet to begin, but it is difficult to think that nothing at all will come out of Congress just as today it is more difficult than yesterday to think that the dissolution of the euro will result from the French elections. Sure, the Fed will hike rates once every three months throughout this year, but next year, the Fed will be politically aligned with the executive and legislative branches and will hike only as needed.
Of course, many things can still go wrong. Disagreements among Republicans over health care and tax reform may prove irresolvable. Trump can make some serious mistakes or make none at all but prove ineffective. North Korea is having a great time provoking the world while the world has no idea how to deal with it. Terrorism could shift electoral results in Europe. More real surprises, those that we are not even able to imagine. Even with these warnings, a reasonable exposure to the stock exchanges (where reasonable means commensurate with a mature economic cycle, even if not senile) still seems to us to be the right choice. The dollar also continues to offer something of interest.
As it stands, it is balanced, but provides a free policy with respect to French elections and Korean extravaganzas, while incorporating an equally free call in the event of US tax reform including border adjustment. Certain, if Macron wins the election the euro will be able to strengthen, but what will eventually be lost on the dollar will be less than what will be gained on the European stock exchanges.
