|
Possible about panic selling and traders not being able to get online with their brokers, but I have one angle to add. (I've been trading for about 20 years). In the old days news didn't travel so fast, no one could "trade" except brokers and institutions, you had to actually call your broker with your actions and in those days of panic you couldn't get through to your brokers and NYSE and NASD weren't set up to handle quick panic volume. Today we live in a different world. Most traders watch their trades tick by tick, they can make instantaneous decisions regarding selling or buying. I believe that might be why in the future that last week will be considered a crash in the Nasdaq even though it took 5 days to drop 25%. Granted volume was only a bit over 2 billion on the Nasdaq on friday, but my point is quite possibly the "panic" selling is spread out a bit now versus one big rush in the old days where the little investor got home from work, read the next morning's newspaper and then got around to calling their brokers. Another factor is that the circuit breakers are so much wider on the NYSE that Panic is not quite a rampant as traders won't try to be the older smaller collars. Now with all that said, I'm the first to admit that maybe I'm wrong, maybe on monday everyone logs on at the same time, maybe half can't get on, panic set's in, phones are busy and 8 billion shares are traded which crashes all computers. Guess we'll have to wait and see but long term I'm in the camp that growth is good and inflation is low and good fundamentals will paint a good picture for the next year or so at least. The last point I'll make is the democrats don't want to lose the office, they know the surest way to get kicked out of dodge is for all of the 401k's in America to get cut in 1/2, which is why if there is such a thing as the plunge protection team they may be hard at work, as well as a quick settlement in the MSFT case. If that doesn't work then a couple of interest rate cuts or even not cutting would brighten things up a bit at some point in time. Now that taxes are out of the way things might get back to normal if that word can be used today. |
