What a difference a month makes. Last month, we used the potential for a Bengals Super Bowl win as our backdrop; sadly, the orange and black fell just short. This month, we are writing as the world and, less importantly, markets, are focused on the blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag. This region is not new to conflict, having inspired one of history’s most famous martial poems, Tennyson’s The Charge of the Light Brigade.

There are two things we cannot ignore in this month’s recap. One, the historically dreadful January we have seen in stocks. Second, though, is the tremendous run the Cincinnati Bengals have made. Given that today (February 1) marks the beginning of the Lunar New Year and begins the Year of the Tiger, perhaps a fortuitous portent for the orange and black.

We are done with memes as a theme. The market, however, seemingly is not. Look no further than December 23, when a giant ape was delivered to oppose the famous Wall Street bull. A little too on the nose, as far as symbols go.

For those unfamiliar, this is Gene Wilder playing the title character in Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Over Thanksgiving, we watched the movie again, and it seems appropriate to use it as inspiration for our newsletter this month, given the market’s current state is as confusing as any we have seen, leaving us to pure imagination to try to decipher what might be next.

Puns: They are seldom funny. Neither are memes. However, we combine the two this quarter and hope, as we see in math, that two negatives make a positive. Our title pun combines reversion to the mean, a concept wherein a statistic unmoored from its historical average, i.e., its mean, tends to revert toward that level, with meme. For those who may not know, a meme is defined by Oxford as “a humorous image, video, piece of text, etc., that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by internet users.”

It was almost 20 years ago when the gang at South Park titled an episode “Simpsons Already Did It,” a quasi-homage to The Simpsons’ longevity and off-the-wall shenanigans. Given The Simpsons are still creating new episodes (some derivative of prior episodes), it is unsurprising we have reached the point where life is imitating art enough to inspire enough content for one of our newsletters. Our aim here is to educate and hopefully avoid the ire of Jeff Alberston (pictured below) by writing our worst newsletter ever: