One of the small pleasures of visiting London is the traditional English breakfast. There is something wonderful about a leisurely start to the day, knowing New York isn’t set to open for four to five hours yet.

As I perused the papers this morning with my tea and toast, I was struck by the dark and dreary tone. The various financial rags seemed determined to outdo each other in terms of who could be more down in the mouth.

The over-the-top nature of the commentary reminded me of the Monty Python cheese shop sketch. In my mind’s eye, I could see a weary investor walking into an opinion shop, John Cleese behind the counter.

“I’d like to purchase an unconventional opinion, please. Preferably something a tad optimistic.”

“Nope, nope, sorry old chap -- nothing like that on hand today. All pitch black and exactly the same I’m afraid. How about giving this window ledge duster a go?”

The financial media is deeply susceptible to fashionable opinions and flavor-of-the-month type thinking. The current flavor du jour can be summed up in the phrase “decoupling is dead.”

Now that the markets have gotten whacked, every Tom, Dick and Harry with a press pass is trying to prove his brute bearishness -- and the whipping boy of choice is emerging markets.

Because emerging indexes got hit in the panic, the thinking seems to go, the whole 21st century has been called off. The doyens at Davos are deeply depressed, so you should be too. Everyone’s got to go down the drain with the Good Ship U.S.A., and anyone who can’t see that… well, they’re just blind, aren’t they?

The WSJ had a particularly roomy hit piece today titled “Emerging World Can’t Shake US.” No fewer than half a dozen journalists took more than 2,000 words to remind us that, while emerging markets are “far less fragile than they were a decade ago,” they still aren’t “strong enough to escape the pain” of an imploding U.S. economy.

“Far less fragile than a decade ago,” eh? Gosh, let’s see. Around this time a decade back, we had just seen Asia crumple up and hit the mat -- broke, busted and crippled by a mountain of dollar-denominated loans they couldn’t pay. We were also on the cusp of a massive Russian default, again thanks to loans it couldn’t pay. The ‘90s were about Uncle Sam bailing out the poor, battered victims of hot money finance.

Now fast-forward 10 years on to today. What’s different? Oh, not much -- except that Asia, Russia, Brazil and the like have trillions of dollars in their collective bank accounts and that they are now the ones bailing out Uncle Sam! (Sovereign wealth funds, the investment arms of various emerging market governments, have pumped more than $20 billion in emergency cash into Wall Street so far.)

Yes, ladies and gents, you could perhaps say these emerging markets are “far less fragile.” You could also say they are filthy stinking rich in cold, hard cash terms, have greater prospects for growth then at any previous point in history and, in fact, have completely turned the tables on the traditional rich world powers now drowning in their own orgy of debt… but all that would just get in the way of the oh-so-fashionable gloom and the idea that “decoupling is dead.” Don’t confuse ‘em with the facts, hey? Optimism is just so last year, don’t you know.

Sorry for getting a bit snarky there. The whole thing is just so shortsighted it makes me snicker. There is a difference between pessimism and realism, and both are supposed to serve a purpose. After-the-fact moaning and tisk-tisking (especially when unconnected to a logical outlook and a plan) doesn’t help anything.

In their newfound zeal for righteous sobriety and the fashion-forward urge to pile on the decoupling thesis because of a little bit of index pain, the financial media is attempting to bury a patient that isn’t dead.

In fact, this wooly-headed outburst of schlock reminds me of another classic Monty Python skit. See if you can catch the gist.

Cart Master: Bring out your dead! [CLANG] Bring out your dead! [CLANG]

Customer: Here’s one.

Cart Master: Ninepence.

Dead Person: I’m not dead!

Cart Master: What?

Customer: Nothing. Here’s your ninepence.

Cart Master: 'Ere. He says he's not dead!

Customer: Yes he is.

Dead Person: I’m not!

Cart Master: He isn’t?

Customer: Well, he will be soon. He’s very ill.

Dead Person: I’m getting better!

Customer: No you’re not. You’ll be stone dead in a moment.

Cart Master: Oh, I can’t take him like that. It’s against regulations.

Dead Person: I don’t want to go on the cart!

Customer: Oh, don’t be such a baby.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that the media is wrong to point out that the waters are rough for emerging markets right now -- that’s obviously a given -- or to otherwise report on the doom and gloom. What I am saying, to borrow some British slang, is that the way they’re going about things is bloody useless.

You’re either an investor or a trader, right? (Some of us are both.) If you’re a trader, you have no time for moaning about what just happened. You’re too busy shucking and jiving. Traders worth their salt can be long, then short, then long again in a very tight time frame. They are reacting and anticipating immediate events, without showing loyalty to any specific position or point of view.

If you’re an investor, though, you have no time for moaning about what just happened either, because you are consistently focused on what’s going to happen next.

For the investor with any type of long-term time horizon whatsoever, the operative question isn’t how conditions will look tomorrow or the day after, or even next week or next month; it’s how things will look three months, six months, a year, two years from now. It’s about the big sweeping trends. And it’s about identifying divergences between conventional opinion and boots-on-the-ground reality. The bigger those divergences, the greater the opportunity there is to be had.

The great investing legends have a tendency to be mavericks. This is more than just a random coincidence; it’s rooted in the fact that mavericks like to buck the crowd. Bucking the crowd is how fortunes are made.

Right now, all this belly-aching and moaning about how “decoupling is dead” is a good sign, in my humble opinion. I love being on the other side of a popular argument -- especially when that argument is mostly superficial, shortsighted slop. These jokers are congratulating themselves on getting in step with what happened five minutes ago, but they remain oblivious to how things will be five months or five years from now.

When it comes to emerging markets the press is “not even wrong,” to use a derogatory physics phrase, in the sense that they aren’t tracking the most important aspect of the argument. How will things play out in terms of the big picture? In terms of the true long term?

Perhaps emerging markets do, in fact, suffer for the next month… or two, or three or four. But so what? If you are a trader, you play both sides and spread the middle to boot. If you are an investor, a few months is just a blip on your radar screen; it’s not what’s important. (Except in respect to temporary low prices giving you better entry points! So where is the value add in taking your cues from some hand-wringing airbag at Davos? The knee-jerk journalists are deeply wrong, I believe, in the sense that really matters. They’re not in the right ballpark.)

Okay, rant over for now. Whew! I was getting a little worked up there. Heh.

Let me add, though, that if you want to find out exactly why I remain ferociously long-term bullish on emerging markets -- and not just myself, but other members of the Taipan team -- then you should really watch the emergency Taipan Video Summit set to air tonight (January 24) at 7.

It makes the case, step by step, for “what’s next” in terms of emerging markets, and the dynamics of today’s situation that are different than anything we’ve seen before.

Warm Regards,

JL