Friday, October 7, 2011

Steve Jobs Dies, Market Jumps 183 points

Reacting to news that Steve Jobs had died, the DOW closed 183 points higher yesterday.

See how easy that was? Anyone can string unrelated facts together as if one causes the other. The news media and "professional journalists" do this all the time. In fact, every rise and fall of the Market is attributed to a single event EVERY DAY.

The real truth is that the market rises and falls according to patterns of millions of individual buying and selling trades every day. Each of those trades has their own reason to do so but by far the most universal reason is: I thought I could make some money or limit my losses.

Most of the market doesn't care about unemployment "numbers" being released or "better than expected earnings forecasts". Every payday there is a fresh batch of 401(K) deposits looking for a home. Every week a fresh batch of retirees need to take a distribution to pay their electric bill. Every 15 minutes some broker churns his fund so it looks like he is doing something and his fund isn't just on autopilot.

It isn't rocket science. It isn't even "news".

9 comments:

El Borak said...

FTW.

That should be a 'sticky' on the CNBC site.

Professor Hale said...

Hey Borak,
Did you ban me from commenting at your site? A whole bunch of my comments there disappeared as fast as I typed them.

Anonymous said...

"Reacting to news that Steve Jobs had died, the DOW closed 183 points higher yesterday."

BUT if it is true imagin what would happen if Bill Gates bought the farm?

Res Ipsa

Professor Hale said...

Res,
It is true. It doesn't get any truer. Jobs died and the market reacted. Q.E.D.

But if I were Gates, I would hire on a few more Ninjas.

Arielle said...

Prof, I've been having comments disappear on blogger sites, too.

El Borak said...

No way, dude. You're always welcome in my house.

I've never actually banned a single commenter - they usually get bored with me and leave long before that.

Professor Hale said...

OK,
I will just keep on posting my comments to nowhere. Someday, archaologists will be digging through internet debris and find a stack of my old comments under the bed of the packet delivery module. They will be greatly amused.

El Borak said...

Careful out there, the road to nowhere leads to Ozzy Osbourne.

Generic said...

Its funny how mainstream media cry so many tears over steve jobs death because of his iphone and ipad and other stuff and i dont see a single breaking news report on the death of Dennis Ritchie, the creator of C which started Unix which Apple is based off which Steve Milks His Cash Cow on and which most operating systems Drivers,Software are developed from. I only saw an article on Dennis Ritchie's Death but I don't hear anyone making a fuss on TV about it. It is just funny how Media Underrates The people who truly makes significant impact in Technology which we are unaware of. I can Only Rate Steve jobs as a very good business man..nothing more