It's happened again. Stock market investors have proven that they are ignorant treasonous schmucks who are doing more damage to the American economy than al-Qaeda could ever dream of inflicting. Stock prices have plummeted today and have wiped out most or all gains for the year. The Dow fell 1.24% and dropped below the 10,000 level for the first time in two months. The NASDAQ fared even worse, dropping 2.91% to a six-month low.
Today got off to a bright start as first-quarter GDP figures showed strong 5.8% growth. While that figure's somewhat misleading, as it included some unsustainable inventory drawdowns, it nonetheless showed that the economy is well on its way to recovery. The recovery is likely to be fairly slow, but it's there and it's steady.
Unfortunately, today's good start went foul when the University of Michigan's consumer-sentiment survey came out one-half hour after the opening of trading, and showed a decline in April sentiment. Much of this decline was likely attributable to factors that were known already, particularly the tensions in the Middle East and rising gasoline prices. Add to that a couple of earnings warnings from idiotic companies such as JDS Uniphase and VeriSign (Typical investor: oh, but they're technology companies, their people are a lot smarter than I am, engineering and programmers and so on, so they must be real good companies!), and the stage was set for a horrible day.
What we saw today is another example in a very disturbing patterns. Ignorant, cowardly investors focus on any bad news no matter how insignificant and pay as little attention to good news as possible. Things have to be perfect before anyone will buy stocks, despite all the terrific bargains in the market. And it should go without saying that falling stock prices cause job losses, as people cut back spending and corporations slash staff in an attempt to please investors. A downward, self-reinforcing spiral results. And I, for one, am god-damned sick and tired of this cowardice!

Im glad I didn't take that equatities trader job, shady company.

People no longer understand investing, they are only interested in immediate gains

Jeremy

well if you knew how to invest, you wouldn't have to worry about this.

anyway, your blame is in the wrong place.

PROSA, my stock to a 5% beating, but I was a good boy and sat on it.  

I notice JetBlue had a terrific first day, but not much since.

The recovery may not be steady at all.American households' debt is pretty high still so this may hamper a recovery.

PROSA, my stock took a 5% beating, but I was a good boy and sat on it.
I notice JetBlue had a terrific first day, but not much since.

I know what you mean, my 401K balance has gone in one direction the past couple of years, and it ain't up. Not that it matters, my investment horizon is more than two weeks long, which of course is not true for most schmuck investors.
JetBlue's stock performance is not at all uncommon for IPO's. At least it hasn't fallen, which is good news.

Look at how unstable our markets are right now! The explosion in New York City sent the markets down 100+ points in such a short period of time. When news came out it was NOT a terrorist attack, the markets went up and ended with a 4-point gain (I think).


I don't think our markets will be stable for a while. On the other hand, I do think that if a war between U.S. and some foreign country, I.E.: Iraq, defense companies will be boss for a while.

-174th

Look at how unstable our markets are right now! The explosion in New York City sent the markets down 100+ points in such a short period of time. When news came out it was NOT a terrorist attack, the markets went up and ended with a 4-point gain (I think).

That was pure idiocy. A chemical drum explodes in the basement of a sign company and wipes out (temporarily) millions of dollars in stock holdings.

This just goes to show that for all the fancy economic formulas and theories there's just one thing that ultimately drives the markets: psychology; more specifically crowd psychology.

- Neil Harrison

Personally, I'm glad the stock market is in a downturn. I have an IRA account, and I want my mutual fund share price to be as low as possible so I can buy more shares for less money. I got over 40 years before retirement, so I can afford it. I'm going to be a millionare once I retire!

PROSA...

Pity the ignorant investor. But never before has there been a time when the Street has been caught with it's greedy hand so deeply ensconced in the cookie jar.

Respected brokerage firms putting their eggs in the baskets of "analysts" who were taking payoffs to hype stocks....Respected accounting firms cooking books to up their "consultant fees"....an entire cable-financial tv fired furnace of pure bullsh*t.

Who's the culprit....dumb investors? Or an industry that seems to have en masse decided to leave ethics back in the 20th Century?

This just goes to show that for all the fancy economic formulas and theories there's just one thing that ultimately drives the markets: psychology; more specifically crowd psychology.

"Herd" psychology is more accurate.
It is terrifying to think of what would have happened if Charles Bishop's Tampa escapade had taken place when U.S. equity markets were open. Terrorism wasn't ruled out quite so quickly as had been the case with the Milan crash. For a couple hours, at least, it could have looked like the Wall Street crash of '29 redux, and it's not impossible to imagine that the U.S. economy could have been pitched back into recession.
Something we have to fear going forward is a clever prankster or hacker planting a false news story about a terrorist attack. Grave damage could be done before the prank was exposed as such. As we have seen, stock indexes can fall at the rate of 1% every couple of minutes, maybe even faster if the "story" is scary enough.