Thursday, February 07, 2008

Managing the Market




So I follow a daily routine that I’m sure many Americans take part in. During a brief moment at work I will peruse a couple of sports sites and then check and see how the stock market is performing. The market will naturally be up or down and there will always be a headline that seeks to simplify the entire movement of the market into one event.
Now I’m all about executive summaries and cutting to the chase but I have a hard time believing that all of the hundreds and thousands of independent decisions made regarding individually unique companies and industries can roll up into a nice one sentence headline day in and day out.
Now I’m willing to concede that big macro decisions like rate cuts or jobs reports might create ripples throughout the entire market. I’m also the first to tell you that I am not anything of an expert and that I probably don’t fully understand the weight that huge financial institutions carry when they make decisions that are a hundred times more impactful than the decision of Joe Smith living on 123 Anywhere Street to buy a few extra shares of GE.
But c’mon. Every day the performance of the market is tied together with a neat and brief summary like the one mentioned above. “Market rebounds after strong employment report”, “Overseas trading down, market plunges”, “Chairman Bernanke’s daughter has Bat Mitzvah, Market celebrates by gaining 300 points.”

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