False Gestures

My experience with "false gestures" reached its climax at its inception as I accompanied Jim Lorie when he showed prospective University of Chicago professors to the Hyde Park neighborhood. He'd stop at The Unique Deli and conspicuously leave the keys in the car. The prospect would say "I thought it would be very dangerous here" and Jim would say "it's so safe here that I don't even have to worry about the car."

A highlight of my observation of false gestures came when I saw a distinguished Objectivist scholar, always dressed in formal suit and tie, stoop to play with a child at a lecture he gave where all the questions had to be submitted in writing in advance and I couldn't even ask him about the identical twins. The gesture was so false, so contrived, he was so obviously uncomfortable with kids that it was a laugh.

A third experience was watching a Japanese movie where the blond American proprietress of a Japanese wine shop spoke in Japanese to all the Japanese customers. It was so hilarious, so out of whack, that you understood immediately why Japanese think that any American who tries to speak their language, no matter how good his accent and grammar, is an utter charlatan.

A recent experience came when I asked an attorney whether it is good to look at the jury when testifying or look directly at the questioner. He said " the juries hate it when you look at them because they know you're treating them like sheep" and they really don't believe you're that much more sagacious and truthful and a man of the people than they.

I wonder what the significance of false gestures in the market is. It's almost a Googlewhack with just nine out of context, unrelated conjunctions of "stock market" and "false gestures." The move on Monday that's reversed on Tuesday comes to mind, or the move from 2:30 to 3:00, like today, up 1% on the Bear Stearns increase rumour immediately followed by down 2% on the Oracle shortfall of 1/3 of 1% on revenues. Yes, but the real ones are part of the "I'm the greatest" bag. They come when companies fudge the real reasons for their shortfall of earnings or insiders fudge their real reason for selling out – "it was just estate and family matters."

The whole subject calls for quantification and further examples in all fields related to investments.