David Carruthers

Who is winning?

We have seen unprecedented swings in financial market fortunes since the turn of this year. Wall St would seem to have a by daily bounce and slump of over 100-200 points.

What is driving this knee jerk, pendulum like momentum? When so much of the advertised advice to investors is, to stay put when things turn bad, they extol the mantra your investment in the market is a long term investment and over time things will turn right. So don’t panic sell in a falling market, you should possibly buy.

I constantly hear in the media advice sound bites like: “the market is always ahead of good news” “you can never predict the bottom of a falling market” “a late rally…..” “tech stocks bounce back on the …..”

Even accounting for the increasing use of the R word, the US election and commodity price increases, the markets are way to volatile, someone some where is making a killing here and I bet it is not the small investor.

David Carruthers 15th January 2008.