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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (38328)	12/6/1998 1:05:00 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

I think of "the market" in terms of several streams converging at any given time in one place- you have streams of people trading on momo- they are hitting all the same stocks, you have the buy and hold mutual fund owners- they are holding mostly the same stocks, and there is, at any given time, a certain amount of "group think" present because everyone "knows" they need to buy the stocks everyone else is buying (although everyone would like to buy them at the earliest possible time). Then there are the lonely contrarians betting against everyone else. Rationality depends to a certain extent on how you define rationality- not meaning to be Clintonian here- but one could argue it is rational to chase momo stocks in a market where everyone is chasing them. I prefer not to define rationality that way. I like to think a rational investor goes for the most perfect marriage of FA and TA- but that is just my definition and would probably seem irrational to others.