The target nobody lowered

The first-quarter target is being signed off about now, against the first quarter just gone, and the two quarters are not the same shape.

Ramadan began this year on the first of March across most of the region. January and February were clean trading months, the fasting month took the whole of March, and Eid landed in the last days of the quarter, so the Eid spend and the reset after it fell into April, under a different target.

Ramadan moves about eleven days earlier each year. If the sighting lands where it is expected, it will begin around the middle of February this time. Then the quarter is a month and a half of clean trading, a fasting month that kills the mornings, an Eid somewhere in the second half of March, and the reset after it, all inside the same ninety days.

The same quarter on paper. A different quarter in the market.

I have watched this in more than one room. Somebody knows. They can see the shape. And they say nothing, because the sentence they would have to say is "I want to lower the number because of the moon", and nobody wants to be the person who said that to a finance director in December.

The fear is specific. Lowering a target for a market is judgement. Lowering it for a calendar sounds like an excuse, even when it is arithmetic, because the people who sign the number do not keep the calendar it is about.

So the number stays. In April the shortfall gets a paragraph about consumer softness, which is a phrase, and the person who knew in December says nothing then either.

The target was never lowered for the moon. The moon lowers it anyway, in April, and by then it has a different name.