The jovial jamboree in July jostled everything from teacup-sized townsquare credit unions to the hulking behemoths of silicone circuits.
So there we were, on a sizzling summer day in July. As the mercury in the proverbial thermometer rose, so did spirits, and everything else. That little old credit union in Nowheresville, you ask? Yep, it swelled as if Granny had baked her double-crust chicken pot pie (the secret ingredient is loving care… and a smidgeon of butter!). Nifty Nan’s Savings and Loan made quite the splash, even earning a zealous thumbs-up from the notoriously grumpy Gertrude, the town’s self-appointed chief of banking standards.
Existing placidly to the east of Nowheresville is the rather onomatopoeic town of Bumblebee. Its local Squirrelsavers Bank had previously been revered for its calmness, its dull stability providing a comforting hum in the background of daily life. But that monotonous hum turned into a deafening roar on this particular knuckle-whitening July day, as Squirrelsavers’ shares took off like an indignant cat launched out of a newly sprung jack-in-the-box.
In the midst of all this jubilation, let’s not forget about the giants that dwell among us. Those digital, bytes-and-bits behemoths that we know, love, and occasionally vilify. Yes, BigTechyThingamajig Corp and its band of merry silicone sidekicks didn’t just sit on the sidelines, twiddling their digital thumbs. No, they surged forward like a teenager after the last slice of pizza, ascending in a lunge that left the teacup-sized banks marking their ascent like tiny chalk lines on a cliff face.
The mighty SiliconeMighty Corp also caught our attention, inflating its chest in an exhibitionist display that would have left even a peacock feeling inferior. Its story is similar to all those of the time; a simple-minded entity propelled into eminence by July’s surprise jamboree, a tale of success penned down by invisible hands in binary code.
And so, we close this tale of unexpected financial bravado with the setting of the sun, the settling of the dust, and the ripple of chuckles across the global market. Let’s just hope these chuckles don’t turn into hollow laughter come August. After all, as the wise old lady at the end of the bar often says – in the market or in life, nothing goes up forever. Not even hot air balloons.
