Apple 1 – Romance 0

I’m not one of those people who wants everything to be ‘like it was’. We should be heading eagerly into the future and making the most of it. Most people are resistant to change whereas I’ve always been an early adopter. Not everything changes for the best though, which simply means it needs changing again.

You’d think that one thing which never changes is people. And that’s broadly true. Read Plautus’ Captivi and you’ll recognise the characters although they’re a couple of thousand years old. They have the same basic hopes and dreams that we do today. They have the same vanity and fears, the same pride and regrets. People haven’t changed. The world around us has though. Cities made us more insular than village life. But there’s something more difficult to overcome afoot now.

I am not shy in social situations, quite able to speak to strangers in any situation, not afraid of making a quip, nor am I afraid to try and do it in a foreign language (if required). I’ve got a story for almost any situation and know music from many corners of the world. But there’s a curve ball that’s been released by Apple and all the other companies that make things you use ear buds with. I suppose Sony would have been the first with the Walkman, but few could afford the batteries (or could carry enough of them) to keep those puppies switched on all the time. The admonishment of the age being “no, you fool, don’t rewind!”

The main social victim is dating. I remember meeting former girlfriends on trains, and in places where now I think of a comment and, instead of swooping in with a line it’s hard not to smile at, notice the wires hanging down like a flapper’s pearl necklace. A pearl necklace isn’t anywhere on the menu if you can’t actually talk to someone for starters. Now it’s all online dating. I’ve done it of course. But it’s a bit hapless. And feels rather like doing your shopping online. We’ve gone from carbon dating to electronic dating. Apple is killing romance.

So since dating isn’t going away I’ve had a look at online dating companies. Like many sectors it’s quite hard to find a way into something so specific. IAC/InterActive Corp [NASDAQ: IACI] is one at least. They own match.com which is a big player. Other large players like eHarmony.com are privately owned it seems. Smaller companies have certainly been consolidating but we’ve not seen the IPOs to buy into and so perhaps we should look at peripheral products. Barry White downloads? Oysters? Spanx is privately owned so no Bridget Jones themed portfolio today. What about pepper sprays? Well MACE is now OTC and the company seem to have pepper sprayed themselves, judging by the share price once over $25 and presently 36c.

So I wondered about the so-called Special relationship between the US and the UK. The FTSE 100 is certainly not in the same shape as the Dow. Although they are both up from the falls of a couple of months ago, the Dow is knocking at the comparable key level I’ve marked on both charts. The FTSE 100 is well below it. Ok it’s above the cloud but not in good shape at all. It’s got about 10% to gain to reach the ATH again, like the Dow, but the Dow has little or no resistance to get there. The FTSE has a huge historic resistance at the line marked in blue. Assuming it meets that resistance and the Dow meanwhile motors on then we’ll see more differentiation between the two indices as I expected.