So the stock markets are jumping around like water on a hot skillet. Again. They do this from time to time. This time, so far, most of the jumping has been down. This morning The Dow dropped 500 points but by mid-afternoon, it had recovered to post a small gain.
With major swings like this television, radio, and the news websites are suddenly filled with hyperventilating about what it all means; the whys, wherefores, predictions and speculation.
Forget about it.
Many times nobody really knows why stocks go dramatically up or down. This is one of those times.
As Jason Zweig of the Wall Street Journal observes today, searching for a rational explanation of the current plummeting of stocks is futile:
“No one can say when that will happen again, but everyone should know that it can—and very well might. If a 6% daily drop makes you squirm, then you probably have too much invested in stocks for your own psychological good.”
As he rightly points out, no one has ever known why the stock market crashed in September 1929 or October 1987. These are mysteries. So is what’s happening with the markets now.