I Can’t Take My Eyes Off The Dow…

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The Dow Jones Industrials are widely regarded as a pretty poor indicator of where the overall equity markets stand, let alone the real economy. As one hedge fund manager suggested, “equity markets are a zit next to the bond markets.” And let’s not even mention the vast trillions in the derivative markets which have damaged the global economy so profoundly.

And yet at the end of every radio newscast, on every Yahoo home page, on the ticker on every cable network, thereis the DJI, it’s not so shiny brand dancing around at the whim of some very silly people playing monopoly with other people’s money. It’s going up, it’s going down, it’s barely moved. Blah, blah, blah.

The truth is we’re worshipping a zit.

The Inherent Wisdom of Sheep

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“I have no idea”, said one JP Morgan Chase economist today when asked by the New York Times why the Dow shot up over 550 points on the same day yet more recession indicators piled on. That seems to be the best response under the circumstances, but it belies a more serious problem. For years, we’ve been told to trust the market, to listen to the market. We were told that the market has an inherent wisdom.

The inherent wisdom of sheep more like.

Someone decided that the rally was due and bought. Someone else said “things are bottoming out”, and he told his mates. His mates told their mates, and they all got back in to earn some bucks with someone elses tired, downtrodden money. The herd mentality is not a signifier of great intelligence – quite the opposite. And this level of absurd, illogical, delusional volatility is a signal of worse to come. So please, for once and for all, let’s stop listening to the market – oh, and enough of those images of Wall Street traders watching the screens with panic and despair on their faces.

If I could earn a Euro for every time one of those…

Why Does Anyone Still Care About Wall Street?

Wall Street is now totally disconnected from economic reality. Every day there’s more bad news, and half the time Wall Street is “rallying”. The reason is simple. It’s a closed market. It doesn’t have much to do with you and me, and now with the world crumbling, there’s less incentive than ever to pay attention to the indicators. Why not just buy and sell with other people’s money, going short or picking up bargains as the recession deepens. And yet the press dutifully trots out the Dow Jones and Nasdaq averages as if they actually mean something. But the truth is they’re getting to be as irrelevant as the latest Box Office Top Ten.