Wild Swings for Wall Street
That is the current headline on MarketWatch.com, which I’ve been looking at during the last fifteen minutes or so of stock trading each day.
I must shamefully admit that it is somewhat of a guilty thrill, a schadenfreude. It’s sort of like watching a collision spectacle such as the ones that happen on California’s central valley freeways when the thick, impenetrable fog huddles in the low spots along the road. A single accident turns into a 100 car pile-up.
Frankly, it’s exciting. If you are early on the scene, you can sometimes see cars still coming on at 70 or 80 miles an hour through the fog at the last moment before they crash into the ones that have already crashed. Sometimes there are cars actually flying through the air, just like in the movies. Although mostly you just hear the crashes, one after the other, in quick succession, for a long time. Too long a time.
The big rigs are the ones that do the real damage. It is totally amazing that even more people are not killed or severely injured during these events, which happen on an average of one or two a year.
But perhaps the big swings on the stock market are more appropriately compared to a top. You know, the ones you spin and they go very well at first, and then they start doing big gyrations back and forth, just before they wind down and stop.
I’m sure some people are making lots of money gambling on the current stock swings. I’m always tempted. But basically I don’t gamble… money, that is. I guess I take risks in more physical adrenaline-pumping ways instead. So I can’t point my finger and shake it at anyone. To each his own.
Bottom line on all this is that it seems everything possible is being done to increase the current fear factor. A downturn, even a huge drop, is a sobering event. But these wild fluctuations create an atmosphere of uncertainty that makes it feel like the very bottom is dropping out of a person’s reality. Exactly the perfect way to get people in the mood for a war that takes one’s minds off of all the other things in life. War is actually comforting in comparison.
Don’t think so? Look what happened right before the Second Gulf War. The first big stock shakeup in quite some time. People’s 401(k) accounts plummeted. So, very few questions asked when we went into Iraq. If we were really just after the oil, well, maybe that was okay, because it meant our stock accounts might go up again. Was that a managed crisis? Some people think so. I’ve talked with stock traders who have told me that they make their money by assuming the market is basically managed. Who am I to doubt them?
Bigger losses, bigger swings, bigger fear factor this time. I wonder what’s being planned in undisclosed locations… well, no, I don’t wonder. I have a pretty good guess. I hope it is wrong. I hope we can all live out our lives in peace and freedom .
But there are clouds on the horizon that have been gathering for at least two years. They may not give us any rain, but they are looking tumultuous and are casting deep shadows across the land. Maybe it would be a good idea to be prepared. Just in case.
