How can saving Europe save us from dog food?

Had to chortle at the quick about-face shown by the Wall Street Journal website marketwatch.com in the wee hours of the European dawn on Thursday.

"Saved! EU gets deal" within minutes became "Saved? EU gets deal".

The headline writers need not have worried, since the exclamation mark proved apt for the blistering rally in stocks across the board later that day.

But it did betray nipping levels of anxiety, mainly because nobody quite knew what they were celebrating. As we have become accustomed, details of the supposed deal will only be disclosed at a later date: with a bit of luck in November or ... like, whenever, dude.

What we do know is that the size of the eurozone bailout kitty is getting slightly ridiculous: give or takeà1-trillion, which sure as heck is not going to be funded by real-life stuff like tax receipts.

Just more debt. With Merkel and Sarkozy holding out their begging bowls to China and other states that have managed through brute mercantilist economic policy to maintain positive trade accounts.

Them, and even less savoury types who have hoarded their windfall gains in extra-fiscal sovereign wealth funds.

Like Libya (and that's not a joke - just check the scrambling going down right now, post-Gaddafi, to see who reckons who's owed what).

A trillion euros.

Anyway, let's leave that la-la land figure floating in the ether. What really matters right now is how common rabble like us are going to profit.

Many times in the last three years or so I've said that conventional notions of "value" have disappeared. Yes, for sure, the old-school guys still send out newsletters saying retail is this and resources are that, but frankly, the South African stock and bond markets are being driven entirely by the whims of foreign speculators.

Just for fun on Thursday I posted a mail to colleagues showing the correlation between London's FTSE100 index and the JSE Top 40. Couldn't separate the two.

The quicker we realise how heavily our dual-listed counters weigh in Britain, the sooner we'll realise how little the hot air breathed by local commentators actually means.

There are what the global fund managers call "macro themes" billowing out there, and they'll blow you away.

Take the bond market. Pull up a chart of the R157 bond, SA's benchmark government paper, and run it against the US index of blue chips, the S&P500.

Cry "eek", if you like. Truth is, American markets go down; the price of the R157 goes up.

Another one: the US S&P500 falls, the rand weakens. And vice versa. Check the charts.

Makes you want to forget the Saturday night Lotto, eh?

Meh. There is money to be made out of this nonsense, but legions of failed spare-bedroom traders will grudgingly recommend we leave it to the experts. The real fun damagers.

John Clemmow has long been my favourite guy. He regularly steps out of his suit to drop a few nuggets on the trading website page88.co.za.

Lately he's stamped his pretty foot to reiterate that macro themes dominate the investment universe. Not the PE ratios of Mr Price or City Lodge, but how our supposed saviours - howzit China - are really twisting the universe.

Clemmow is now the main fortune teller at Barclays, having left United Bank of Switzerland for unnamed reasons. He lists on his online CV his specialties as "chicken killing, the importance of wearing natural fibres in explosive situations, Africa, and advanced child rearing".

I do not want this person anywhere near my natural fibres. But I have a worrying feeling Clemmow, despite sounding like something out of an Alex cartoon, is who we're all going to depend on to stop us from eating dog food.