If you have ever had one of those days when you step out of bed feeling a little under the weather, only to finish your day really sick, you know how fast things can change. It is a strange phenomenon, you have been feeling great for weeks, and then bam, your sick!
Frequently capital markets have very similar characteristics, as we slowly walk up the stairs, only to take the elevator down quickly, especially in certain higher risk areas.
Why does this happen?
No one knows for sure, but here are a few ideas:
- Time passes very slowly when your sick and often very quickly when things are going well, thereby magnifying the slow times, and minimizing the good.
- Even with all the fancy electronics, flashing numbers, graphs, and charts, there are human decision behind the financial transactions, and we tend to have heard instincts.
- Capital markets are not efficient, (thank goodness for us as investors) and tend to get too excited during good times, overshooting on the long climb up, only to get too depressed on the downside, again overshooting on the fast fall down.
- We see things extremely fast or even live today, for the better or worse. Just as most of us have seen military conflicts almost live, we now have easy access to instant data, which is great for our knowledge, but can be scary as well.
- Everyone leaves the party much faster than they arrived and the traffic jam happens much faster than the flow, basic logistics and fear add to the extremes.
Just as I can tame my 3-year-old for a few minutes, he is surely to be bouncing off the walls sooner or later; Capital markets have always had risk, and will continue to do so, even if they have been quiet for a while.
We are not calling for a doom and gloom situation, or any terrible event, we only want to remind ourselves, and our readers, often times certain areas of the Capital markets can go up like a balloon only to fall like a rock. Staying diversified, disciplined, and aware, should help us all ward off the negative headlines or thoughts.
Have a Great Day and Super Weekend!
JK
“What is going on with the Markets?”
“Why is the market crashing?”….”What is going on in the Markets?”….”Why are we going down so much?”
ln the latest few days, I have been asked by several friends and family members the prior questions. Little did they know the ammunition they were giving me for a post.
None of these comments were from clients, but just in case you were wondering, I thought it might be a good idea to give you an update on our thoughts and publicly discuss my answers.
Crash is a very harsh term, don’t get us wrong we hate every day that the markets go down, but we understand it is part of the process and it gives us opportunity to review our allocations and take advantage of sale prices at certain times.
While the markets may seem like a roller coaster lately, we have, for the moment only gone down about 7% and are still positive for the year, according to our favorite domestic index, the S&P 500. We would not be surprised to see the capital markets go down further, as again this is part of the process.
Taking a look at the following chart from one of our charting services, TC 2000, we can see a very similar pattern from last year, except one item!
S&P 500 2010 to 6-15-11
During the year, 2010 we were under our mythodical 10% growth line, which you may recall we discussed numerous times, and wrote about in every 2010 newsletter, however, this year we are above our growth line and falling back to it, which makes it feel as if we are really faltering.
Is there a possibility the economy could slow more? Absolutely and it may!
Using a patient analysis, we as a country/world have just gotten over pneumonia and are still weak, so we must be careful, however we have an awful lot of strong medication in our system to help with the recovery.
Have a Great Day !
JK
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Posted in Investing/Financial Planning, Market Comments
Tagged Capital Markets, Sick Markets, Stock Market