Trade Rage
America's latest mass murderer Mark O. Barton was a day trader, and the only question is: What took so long? Everybody knows that testosterone-addled, foul-mouthed, money-blind stock speculators are ticking bombs.
Weirdly, the only news outlet to unashamedly trumpet the day-trading angle was Rupert Murdoch's New York Post, where Barton is known as the "<http://www.nypost.com/news/9315.htmSlay> Trader." Elsewhere, the proximate cause of Barton's spree was quickly smoothed over. Harvey Houtkin, chairman and chief executive officer of All- Tech Investment Group, where Barton traded, <http://www.cnn.com/US/9907/29/atlanta.shooting.04/index.htmldoubted> that the shootings had "anything to do with a down day in the market." Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell confessed to the press that "I don't know if we'll ever know what the true motives ... were." CNN headline writers were especially perplexed. "Shooter lost $105,000 in month," <http://www.cnn.com/US/9907/30/atlanta.shooting.08/they> wrote, "but motive still a mystery."
All the news outlets were eager to <http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/shooting990730_barton2.ht mlpoint> out that the mysterious hatchet murders of Barton's ex-wife and her mother in 1993, for which Barton was a suspect, suggest that he may have lost his marbles years before he took a wrong position in MP3.com or shorted eBay. Nonetheless, to those Americans unburdened by the weighty responsibilities of the Fourth Estate, Barton is the obvious poster boy for market mania. He offers a believable cautionary tale to overwrought day traders, who live every second on the edge of panic, and does double duty as a narrative of karmic retribution for those few Americans who still scorn trading.
We're lucky that most people never act on their feelings, because there's no denying that the stresses of day trading make many people feel like pulling the trigger especially lately. The impersonal delays of highway traffic that spawn road rage are nothing compared to the merciless punishment available in the stock market on a bad morning. And for many day traders, most of the mornings since mid-April have been bad. In the last few months, the technology and Internet stocks beloved by Barton and other amateurs have lost as much as half of their value. What once seemed so easy get up, buy YHOO, wait a few hours, sell YHOO, tally profits has become an anxiety-ridden nightmare of less-than-perfect timing.
The day trading favorites haven't just gone south, they've gone nutty. Good news is followed by sell-offs. Bad news causes unexpected runs. Two weeks ago, for instance, in the middle of the trading day, Amazon's frontdoor <http://www.siliconinvestor.com/~wsapi/investor/reply-10524075went> down, and customers were greeted with a message apologizing for technical difficulties. Instantly, the <http://boards.fool.com/Message.asp?id=1060123005049000&sort=idword> spread across trading chat rooms and message boards. Just as the little guys jumped into the action, the stock <http://www.thestreet.com/tech/techupdate/764981.htmljerked> upward, wrecking those who had sold short on margin. Five minutes later, Amazon's Web site came back, good as new. The day traders who hadn't yet been reduced to tears began buying in anticipation of a further rise. Naturally, the stock jerked downward again. It's the kind of thing that provokes <http://messages.yahoo.com/bbs?action=m&board=7080634&tid=amzn&sid=708 0634&mid=127702howls> of pain on the Internet message boards, inspires countless conspiracy theories, and produces a look of tight-lipped mayhem that will soon be known, if it isn't already, as "trade rage."
Mark O. Barton's last trade was in April, so maybe he was whipsawed out of his trading account when the bull took a breather. Or worse, maybe he just had a bad trade or two, not even enough to wipe him out, but enough to leave him afraid. Afraid he'd lost his touch. Afraid his next trade would be another bankroll-burning blunder. Afraid he was born to lose. Since gun-loving white men with self-esteem problems provide the candidate pool from which Barton-style mass murderers are selected, it's scary to think about the effect of the stock market on this group.
After all, the stock market doesn't beat around the bush. It doesn't give A's for effort. It doesn't say, "Everybody is special, just in their own way." The stock market offers direct, quantitative confirmation of exactly how much of a loser you are. And at the precise moment you realize you are broke, at least some of your fellow traders the ones Barton referred to as "the greedy ones" will be doing Cuba Gooding Jr.style victory dances around their computers, reminding you that your savings didn't merely vanish into thin air; it vanished into somebody else's trading account.
We have to wonder whether the rush to absolve day trading of any responsibility for Barton's crimes didn't have some ulterior motives behind it. Could it be that the top journalists, whose retirement accounts are socked away in mutual funds, intuitively understood that a link between mass murder and the Nasdaq might not be the best thing for the composite index? If so, this self-censorship may be shortsighted.
It takes both positive and negative reinforcement to keep the bull moving, and having inflated the bubble for years with stories of little old ladies getting rich off their capital gains, it is time for another approach to delaying the pop a stick to complement that carrot of years past. The smart thing would be to remind the nervous Nellies that there are other Bartons out there in the silence, and they are counting on the stock market to float them out of their misery. Yes, there are many other Bartons out there, and they have a message for you, Mr. and Mrs. Small Investor.
The message is: "Keep buying stocks, or we'll kill you."
courtesy of the <mailto:traders at suck.com>Day Traders