One hears the CNBC analysts say that the market was over priced and needed a correction. Well, tomorrow if the market gains back all it lost today, the same analyst will in an almost giddy celebratory way sing the praises of the wonderful bull market. Why is it, when the market sells off, it is analyzed as a much needed corrction? And whwn the market gains points it is a wonderful bull market, a great thing for our economy. What F'in good is a one day correction? Why, when the next day the market gains back its loses, aren't the analysts wringing their hands in despair over the abandonment of the correction that happened the day before. What don't I understand here? ARRGH!

-- lenny (Chmielecki@worldnet.att.net), January 04, 2000

Answers

Welcome to economic interpretation. If you think wildly diverging takes on the same evidence here is a bit headspinning, what goes on day by day in the world o' the dollar and the like is mindblowing. Hell, _Bloom County_ nailed that in a Sunday strip back in 1984...

-- Ned Raggett (ned@kuci.org), January 04, 2000.

What your not understanding is that your sane, and this market is insane. That's why you don't get it...

hess

-- hess tess (bf900142@bla.bla), January 04, 2000.

C'mon, CNBC's audience is (I think) the creme de la creme of our financial world. Right? How's cum this double faced analysis does not disgust them. Is it because this audience like having the analysts analyze events in such a way that it minimizes worry? Our gambling market and the people who gamble and analyze it are gutless and weakminded. Pathetic.

-- lenny (Chmielecki@worldnet.att.net), January 04, 2000.

A "correction" implies that a mistake had occurred. The market may be a bubble but it is not accurate to characterize it as a mistake.

People erroneously tend to personify the markets giving it human attributes such as calling it insane, depressed, euphoric, etc but that's not how markets work.

One should see it as the pyschology of the participants giving it "white noise" plus a net present value of expected future earnings and that one can only reasonably capture the drift term and of course any positive risk premium.

-- Sandwich (anon@anon.anon), January 04, 2000.

I am waiting for the hong kong open. Should be interesting.

No, its not Y2k related. Just a reflex of the NASDAQ plunge.

-- hamster (hamster@mycage.com), January 04, 2000.