I have a gift (some call it an affliction) that enables me to see the humor in even the most chaotic of circumstances. When I look at today’s train wreck in the market something jumps out at me. Below is a graph of today’s trading price of Proctor and Gamble, trading symbol PG. PG is one of the 30 stocks that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average…”the Dow” as we call it...the index that was off 1,000 points today.
We began laughing the moment we pulled this up. When I see it I realize that somebody woke up this morning holding PG at $60…and he felt pretty good about it all the way through lunch time. When he comes back from lunch he answers a few e-mails, completes a few reports, then he pulls up the internet to check the value of his portfolio and dream of the day he can retire from the drudgery which currently ensnares him. When he pulls up his stock account he sees the Dow melting down, he checks the price of PG and he thinks “OMG…SELL!” So he puts in a market order to sell and he takes a nitro-glycerin pill to keep his heart in check. His fill order comes back at $40…he wants to cry over a big loss like that but he’s just glad he’s off the train. A few minutes later he pulls up a quote on PG to see just how big a bullet he dodged and he sees that the price is back up at $60. He then pukes his cheeseburger onto his desk and he goes home sick.
Across town someone else just got back from lunch and was answering e-mails, completing reports, and dreaming of the day when he too can escape the drudgery which currently ensnares him. He was watching the market as well. This guy watched as PG started to drop…from $60 down to $55 per share and he jumped in with a market order to buy a bunch of it. His fill order comes back in less than a minute at $40. He thinks “OMG…SWEET! I got it at $40!” Ten minutes later he’s still in disbelief at his great execution and he checks the quote on PG and it comes back at $60. “OMG! I’m rich! I just made 20 bucks a share in less than a minute…I’m gonna be famous…I’ll probably be on Oprah!” He now dreams of how much closer he just got to escaping the drudgery which ensnares him.
So that’s where I see the humor today. It’ll be even better if these guys know each other and meet up for happy hour after work. Imagine the scene where they each talk about their day in the market.
Steve Scaramastro, SVP
800-311-0707
PS – we were concerned that someone on this distribution list might own Proctor and Gamble and be upset by this example…but then we figured you probably won’t get this e-mail because you went home early after puking your cheeseburger .
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