The Roller Coaster Ride aka The Stock Market

I used to really love roller coasters when I was younger. I worked at Great America when I was a teenager and really loved going on the coasters there. Over time as I got older I started to enjoy them less and less. I’d get off them and not have a real good sense of balance for a couple of hours. So I’ve stopped riding them.

The way the stock market is acting these days reminds me of being on a roller coaster again. I was going to say it looked like things had sort of settled down but along came today and a drop of 419 points. They don’t seem to be all that settled.

The headline stocks plunge on worries of global slow down. Of course the fact that the market is going down reinforces that impression. You have to wonder at what point does it become a self fulfilling prophecy. The market goes down because of worries of a slow down and then the market goes down again because the market went down the day before and so on and so on.

The funny thing is that the “analysts” try to make out there is some sort of logical reason for all this happening. The debt in Greece, concern about Italy, concern about France. concern about the number of people filling for unemployment. Or is the real reason that Wall Street and other markets have woken up to the fact that the recession is still on for a great number of people.

Analysts also keep telling the small investor, the average guy on the street to remain calm and not move out of the market. You just need to ride it out. After all there really aren’t many places to put your money besides the stock market.

They need to start telling this to some of the larger players. Last week the markets in Europe went down based on a rumor that a big bank in France might be in trouble. Not on the fact it was in trouble but the rumor that it might be. When this can cause the market to tank, it shows all logic and reason has gone out the window. The markets are sort of like a manic depressive/bi-polar person that’s off their medication. Wild mood swings. Big rallies. Big drops. Near hysteria in the financial markets.

I think we have to be really happy tomorrow is Friday. Perhaps over the weekend the markets can get a refill on their prescriptions.