Down in the morning, up in the afternoon. Or is it the other way around? The topsy-turvy stock market is tough to read.
In the last year, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has briefly been over 13,000 and below 8,000. The past month has felt like the Cyclone roller coaster on Brooklyn's Coney Island -- lots of ups and downs, the whole rickety thing feeling like it's going to crash at any minute.
Great investors are taught to listen to the market. Each tick of the
tape has something to say about expectations for growth, inflation,
policy changes and looming recessions. The stock market is like a giant
mass of pulsing plasma doing price discovery and a game of hot potato,
getting stocks into the correct hands with the right risk profile. It's
way too big for any one person to manipulate, let alone touch directly.
Instead, millions of us provide input with our buying and selling
decisions.
When it's at its most efficient, with buyers and sellers neatly matched up at the right price, it's a pretty good predictor. The Crash of 1929 announced a recession, and the wake-up call unheeded might have caused many of the bad policies leading to the Great Depression. The Crash of 1987? Not so much.
Continue reading "WSJ: Ignore the Stock Market (until February)" »
