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Strategies & Market Trends : Anthony @ Equity Investigations, Dear Anthony, -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Anthony@Pacific who wrote (41807)	7/31/1999 3:49:00 PM
From: Rajiv	Respond to of 122087

From Barrons (Abelson's column) - Life and the stock market, last week's shooting in Atlanta again made starkly clear, not only bear little relation to each other but are often mirror images. In life, to paraphrase a familiar refrain, what begins as tragedy often ends as farce; in the stock market, what begins as farce often ends as tragedy. At least in its most recent incarnation, day trading largely has been an exercise in silliness. What could be more farcical than the idea that any of us bumpkins equipped with a computer, an online connection and a little spare time could make his fortune trading stocks? This kind of running joke was fed by the mindless mewlings of TV pitchmen and gee-whiz accounts in the public prints of programmers, potato-chip salespersons and grease monkeys who quit their jobs and found riches and happiness in a few hours of daily speculation. Mark Barton, the chemist turned day trader who wrought such bloody murder and mayhem, manifestly was unhappy and, apparently, in financial distress. While there's credible suggestion of serious tensions in his marriage, the venue he chose for his rampage was a pair of brokerage offices, rather persuasive indication that a bad trading experience was the locus of his rage. Mr. Barton's berserk action got us to ruminating on what the consequences might be should this great bull market end in tears and a dizzying descent, leaving a scorched financial landscape in its wake. Those consequences would be particularly severe because everyone and his grandmother is in the market and because the economy has been riding an eternally expanding stock market bubble. Hopefully, recriminations, no matter how bitter, would be expressed in a civilized fashion. But if we suffer anything like the devastation wrought by the 1973-74 bear market, congressional investigations are sure to spring up like weeds, and this fair nation will be consumed by the greatest hunt for a scapegoat in the history of the world. In due course, such obvious suspects as Mr. Greenspan, Mr. Rubin, the big brokerage houses and their upstart Internet counterparts, mutual funds, hedge funds, bullish shills in the media, academics who predicted the market would go to 40,000 -- all will be forced to take their turn in the dock. But, initially, we're thoroughly convinced, the full measure of fury will be vented on short sellers. That may seem perverse. And it is. But it's also predictable. For in their angry rush to fix blame for the market meltdown and the incineration of their portfolios, investors won't stop to make distinctions between profiting from falling stock prices and making stock prices fall. So, ironically, after nearly a decade of feeling nothing but pain, far from being able to savor their long-awaited triumph, the handful of surviving shorts are apt to be busily defending themselves from the grave charge of having been right. They'll just have to console themselves as best they can with being awash in money, while everyone else is parched for the stuff. As we say, we fervently hope that the disenchantment and hostility stirred up by a truly awful bad bear market will express itself in a civilized manner. However, just to be on the safe side, we urge Bob Prechter, Bob Farrell and Barton Biggs to enter federal witness-protection programs. Either that, or relocate temporarily to some place that doesn't have a stock market, like the moon, perhaps, or Mars.