Poisoning Pigeons In The Park

By Nance

Monday scares me.  I'm one of the little people who doesn't understand the Stock Market, who has no business involved with it, but who finds her financial future, and thus the quality of her old age, bound up with and terrorized by that fickle, convoluted, unnatural, hair-trigger, Frankenstein creation of our infatuation with the promise that money makes money.

Monday might be a second chance to make a wise move with what I now pitifully still refer to as my portfolio; I was too paralyzed by fear in the summer of 2008 to know whether to hold 'em or fold 'em.  The pressure is on to be a little smarter this time around, following the past week's sharp declines and Thursday's petrifying plunge...except that being smarter seems even less possible, even more past hope now.  The only economic constants I've detected in recent years are that some folks will make money in wild market fluctuations and that I will probably be among their dupes.  I don't feel one bit smarter or better able to decide whether to stay in or get out.

I've assumed that somebody knows what happened last Thursday and what is likely to happen on Wall Street next week, but reading up on it today has just made an ass out of u and me.  Theories abound:  it's Greece and the bail-out implications for the EU; it was sabotage by _______ (fill in the blank with your favorite conspirator, party, lobby, or disgruntled fan of Blankfein); it was the bad news about unemployment rates hidden under the good news about job creation; or, most detached and cruel of all, a fat finger.  In the online money journals and news sources, I've encountered psychotic word salads that only leave me more confounded.  Take this example from The LATimes:

"We were in the midst of a pullback, we needed one, we got one," said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at New York-based brokerage house Avalon Partners Inc. Cardillo said the choppy trading after such a drastic decline likely signals the market trying to find a bottom.

Stocks have been on a nearly uninterrupted upward path since March of last year, when indexes hit 12-year lows. Analysts have been predicting a correction for months, only to see the market bounce back after brief periods of decline.

Long-term market watchers actually welcome occasional pullbacks in stocks, saying that gives investors opportunities to pick up shares at bargain prices.

"We had the earthquake, we're now in the midst of getting the aftershocks," said Steven Goldman, chief market strategist for Weeden & Co. in Greenwich, Conn. "When the market's so close to new highs, it's difficult to have rallies. But when you're down 10 or 12 percent from recent highs, we can deal with uncertainty better."

Did Cardillo and Goldman say here that they welcomed this week's dizzying descent because it lets those in the know feel in control? I am too far down the Rabbit Hole, now; I'm having the same kind of vertigo I get when I try to read a prospectus. I'd just begun to think that the prognosticators who pointed to the DOW line graph as proof that the bad times were behind us might be right. That'll learn me. Again.

In a conversation I had sometime in July or August of '08 with an acquaintance who professed financial smarts, I declared that I was so disheartened by the market's unrelenting drop, I didn't think I could bear to stay invested.  His response was, "Well, what do you think you're going to do with it, put it in a jar under the bed?"  That was ridicule, in case you missed it.  Another wag told me, "Oh, yes, cash is king now!"  And, still another, "This is the time to put every penny you can put your hands on into stocks!"  And, "It's all gambling. You should never invest what you can't afford to lose."

Here's a sure bet: there will be abundant and worthless advice available on Monday. My worthless advice: stock up on Mason Jars.  The smart money will be on the insiders at the expense of an entire class made up of vulnerable retirees and retiree hopefuls like you and me who were only hoping for peanuts on the dollar. They toy with us and our measly, hard-earned savings.  It'll be as easy for them to take what's left of our nest eggs as...um, trying to avoid cliches, as easy as...I draw a blank.  Jeez, why does this Tom Lehrer song come to mind?