I must say that I got the feeling that Barron's was actually 'gloating' on the damage their article did to the nasdaq.
Jenna,
Absolutely! This week's Barron's read, cover to cover, like an Alan Abelson column: they were flat-out gunning for the techs, especially the Nets. They're sick of individual investors; they're sick of the momentum-driven market; they're sick of the Web. I think they are gloating because they're surprised that their campaign worked.
Here's a quote from Abelson's column that, in my mind, says it all:
Our correspondent, a broker who dwells in the heartland, reports that the workers at a large local factory have taken a headfirst plunge into stocks, in the process managing "to bypass brokerages, the mainstream financial press, elementary school math, their grandparents' memory of the Depression and certainly any knowledge of what the companies do."
How dare men and women who actually work for a living participate in the bull market of their lives? How dare they take their information off the Internet, instead of our venerable Dow Jones publications? How dare they put Graham and Dodds on the back burner in order to employ strategies that are appropriate for a momentum market? How dare they treat stocks as paper, rather than as the corporation itself -- as currency to be traded, rather than certificates to be held and cherished?
The funny thing is, I actually agree with a lot that Barron's has to say about the excesses and risks of our momentum-driven market. (I occasionally find myself wishing, for the sake of some very good corporations, that the market was more rational and placed more value on value.) But it's hard for me to give them credit for this message when it's clear that the Barron's crowd is just trying to drive us individuals out of the market and clear the decks for Merrill, Goldman Sachs, etc.
Blue Horseshoe is bumming, and Barron's is trying to restore the world that they ruled! |
