New -Just In- Article in:
Journal of Financial Planning
February 2010, Research By Carlos Sera, Author of Financial Tales.
I will post a new tale later this week.
A Tale of Hindsight.
If you read this tale I suggest you also read A Two Timing Tale because I think the two are so interlinked. These two tales are important given today’s climate. We can see that since the March 2009 low the stock markets of the world have risen at spectacular rates not seen since the 1930’s and the crash associated with that period or what historians call The Great Depression. There is much research going on trying to compare this time to that time. It is interesting because most investors had discounted that period as an aberration and had focused on the birth of investing as though markets were only created after World War II. The last two years have proven that there isn’t enough financial regulation in place or self-correcting mechanisms to overcome the human tendency to panic during bad times. People are searching for answers and psychologically I can see that as we leave the fear mentality that griped the world less than a year ago, we are seeing the birth of the greed mentality.
I listened to an interview on CNBC the other day with Bill Miller of Legg Mason and fellow Hopkins alum. He mentioned a quote that I think is appropriate for this period. He quoted a Cambridge economist and the quote is as follows;
THE ERA OF OPTIMISM DIES IN THE CRISIS BUT IN DYING IT GIVES ERA OF PESSIMISM AND THAT’S ERA BORN NOT AN INFANT BUT A GIANT.
