Word For The Day: Brod-Ding-Nagian -- Or -- Brob-Di-Nagian -- January 10, 2021

I like "brob-di-nagian." Not that difficult. 

From The WSJ today: What is the Brobdingnagian base?

For investors: chart analysis suggesting something particularly bullish.

Coined in the early 2000s by John Roque, now a technical analyst at Wolfe Research in New York, the term combines two words: one from the world of letters (Brobdingnagian) and the other from the realm of finance (base).

In Jonathan Swift’s classic novel “Gulliver’s Travels,” Brobdingnagian describes the people who live in the fictional country of Brobdingnag, a land inhabited by giants. Base, meanwhile, refers to a bullish chart pattern where the price of a security or other asset has moved sideways within a defined price range for a period. 

The longer the sideways price action has gone on, the bigger a subsequent rally is expected to be, according to technical analysts, also known as chartists, who analyze stock-price patterns, among other things, to forecast where prices are headed. So-called Brobdingnagian bases are those that have lasted for many years and thus are pointing to the potential for a gigantic rally.

This kind of price pattern can arise in two ways, says Jonathan Krinsky, chief market technician at New York-based broker-dealer Bay Crest Partners. It can be a sideways consolidation of an asset price in a rising trend, or it can be due to the reversal of a bear-market trend. Investors tend to be wary of assets that have failed to perform for a long period, Mr. Krinsky says, and that caution is seen as a bullish signal, or sign that the asset price will rally.

Quick, name one possible example yet to be seen. I have one. But if I post it, I have to also post my disclaimer and I'm not in the mood to do that right. If I remember, I will post a possible Brobdingnagian stock later. 

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Tailgate Parties
Mult-Flex vs MultiPro

Back on January 28, 2019, I blogged about tailgate parties. Or more, specifically, tailgates. 

I was reminded of that when I saw television commercial today focused specifically on that: the "new" tailgate seen on the GMC Sierra. 

It turns there is more to it than I realized. From "2022 Ford" over at YouTube:

This is all new to me. Fascinating. 

See this story, also.  

Chevrolet's rolling out a reskinned version of GMC's MultiPro tailgate in early 2021, and that's got to make Chevy Silverado owners happy. When the current-generation GMC Sierra debuted with its unique Swiss-army-knife-style tailgate for 2019, owners of the new Silverado were most likely saddened at the prospect of never being able to enjoy such fancy tech on their own truck. After all, who doesn't want a tailgate that can fold, flop, flip up, and transform into a step? 

For Chevy, the tailgate has been dubbed Multi-Flex, and it will retain all the features of its GMC counterpart. In addition to going up and down—the latter of which can be done from the key fob—the versatile tailgate also has a secondary section that spans most of the width of the tailgate and extends to just above the bow-tie badge. That section can fold down while the tailgate is in an upright position to allow longer objects to be more easily accommodated and properly secured. An additional flap can be deployed on this inner gate to act as a load stop, too. When the tailgate and inner gate are both folded down, the inner gate can act as a step up into the bed or make for a good place to set and rest your feet. 

The tea leaves suggest the next two decades will be all about pickup trucks, SUVs, and minivans for the automakers. The minivans, of course, for delivery services, not soccer moms. In the post-pandemic era, soccer moms will be so yesterday.