I am so frusrated with the craziness in the markets, because it’s just that - craziness. People are panicing and following the panic with more panic. The stats I’ve read indicate that over 90% of mortgages are still “performing”, meaning people are paying them every month even if their equity value is less than their mortgage value.
90%?!?! And the markets are reacting like this?! Very frustrating.
I read some quotes today in a Time article that I thought were just perfect:
“The markets have gone completely crazy, and are reacting in fear to a bad situation in a way guaranteed to make it far worse,” says Marc Touati, deputy executive manager of French economic and finance research group Global Equities. “We once had ‘irrational exuberance’ pushing markets ever higher; now have irrational pessimism running them into the ground. People have to calm down or we’re in for big trouble.”
“Irrational pessimism.” Perfect.
“We’re back to the most basic behavior of stock markets: people buy when they see everyone else buying, and the sell when everyone else is selling,” says Naudé.
Dumb.
Governments could follow the nerve-wracked Russians and suspend trading altogether, in a bid, as Touati says, to stop “markets from sawing off the branch their sitting on.”
I don’t think it could be better said than that.
“It will take courage to break from the herd,” Touati continues, “but those who do it first are the masters of the market down the line.”
Just look at what Warren Buffett is doing as an example.
I hope that you will read this and approach your days with confidence in yourselves, your businesses, and our country. That’s all we need - a dose of confidence - and this craziness will stop.
Don’t get me wrong - I know there are things in our economy that need to be fixed. But it isn’t broken, it’s just bruised. Our reaction will determine how bad it gets or how quickly it recovers.
MRC
