Masters and Johnson Q&A

Sex is a three-letter word that has rarely appeared in an Investment Outlook until now. I may be risqué and delve into the forbidden territory of politics and religion, but “SEX”? – Never. But here goes! Actually, my own personal history of sexual edification was probably like many of yours. My mother asked me at age 14 if I knew where little kittens came from and when I answered “the pet store”, I never got an additional query or piece of information on the subject. I suspect she had written me off as hopeless long before.

When it came time for me to be a father, I vowed never to repeat anything as stupid as that kitten trick to my kids, and I wound up not saying anything at all about sex to my older ones, Jeff & Jennifer, who are now in their 40s and safely beyond my parental foibles. The Nineties, however, ushered in a new sensitivity and a requirement to come clean with your child at an early age. And so, when Nick was born in 1988, Sue and I knew that we’d have to explain his “conception” at some point before we turned over the car keys and started four-digit checks for insurance. It’s not like Nick was adopted or anything, but he was, in fact, one of California’s first “test tube babies” which made him sort of unique and special – at least to us – and we felt he deserved knowing about it. Actually, it was a godsend as far as the sex education goes. At 8 or 9, when he asked about “babies”, we both sat down and told him how he had been conceived: a doctor took some of Dad’s sperm and a few of Mom’s eggs, mixed em’ up in a test tube and “voila” – you’ve got a baby. He seemed to buy the story pretty well and we got to avoid all of the gushy “male/female” stuff.

Our biggest challenge came years later when Nick got his hands on one of those trashy “Victoria’s Secret” advertising mailers. As a service to me, Sue always does her best to dispose of them in the garbage can as quickly as possible, but this time Nick had gotten his hands on it and was intrigued not only by the pictures of those plain and unattractive models, but by the name itself. “Dad”, he asked, “what is Victoria’s Secret?” Well now, I quickly thought, does he mean what is Victoria’s Secret or what is Victoria’s Secret? If it was the former, it could be just an innocent question about the mailer itself. If the latter, well, it was a path down which I wasn’t willing to travel. “I am not sure”, I replied, taking the brochure from his hands and depositing it in the trash, like Sue usually does. As a diversion though, I answered his question with one of my own. “Do you know where kittens come from?” I asked. “The pet store”, he said, and with that I breathed a sigh of relief, content in his normalcy and satisfied I was fulfilling my role as a parent in the sensitive Nineties.

There are equally important questions in today’s economy and financial markets, so I thought I’d condense a few of them to hopefully explain our current situation, perhaps a little more honestly than my “kittens in a pet store” ruse or what “Victoria’s Secret” really was. They are as follows: