The Market

The market reminds me of some very creative people we all meet (people like Hobo) who always amaze you with new ideas and inventions at every clip. What it's been doing last few days has happened once in a saint's death. The gold, crude and euro:dollar all up 1 % or more in conjunction with a 1% decline in stocks. Never before, perhaps once, but never with up afternoon. Similarly today. What always amazes most is how fixed income can go up and down on statement of commissioners of authority, as if when they said they were vigilant on inflation that was bad for fixed income.

While we're at it, a paper in Nature says that there is a gene for leading a herd in humans, a long gene. Galton would have appreciated this, and looked for the comparable gene for being herded, a tendency he found particularly prevalent in oxen and humans. On a day like today with the market reacting to minutes of several weeks ago, with much new data in markets, and announcements by leaders of the pack, one would have hoped that the presumably short gene for sheep-like behavior would not have manifested itself in so many breaks below round numbers and trillions of wealth temporarily lost, with the herded ready to transfer so much wool and mutton to the big leaders who can borrow freely at the discount rate from their future colleagues.