>[No better gauge of market stress exists than experts' tendency go
>all hypertruistic at times like these -- e.g., the following, a real
>collector's item from an opinion round-up in the NY Times today,
>"Caution Is the Watchword as the Markets Gyrate."]
>
>William Sharpe, winner of the Nobel Prize in 1990 for his academic
>research on the relationship between risk and reward, and now
>chairman of Financial Engines, an Internet company that gives
>investors advice on building diversified portfolios [says]:
>
>There are three groups: Those that should buy, those that should
>sell and those that should stay put. How do you know which group
>you're in? That's the great mystery.
>
>It has to do with your willingness to bear risk to gain return and
>which circumstances change that. If you had a lot of stocks, it's
>important that you knew that this could happen to you. That goes
>with stock investing. We're all depressed, but what is really
>frightening is the people who say they had no notion that this could
>happen. Everybody should re-evaluate, because they're poorer.
>Certainly, if you hadn't been cognizant of the risks, now is the
>time to understand that. Or a year ago, or five years ago. The
>sooner you do that, the better.
>
>I think it was J. P. Morgan who said, when asked what the markets
>would do, that he thought they would fluctuate. What do I see?
>Uncertainty.
>
>[Truly, Chance the Gardener as Nobel laureate. Full text:
>http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/18/business/18SAGE.html?pagewanted=3&searchpv=nytToday]
It sounds like waffle, which it is, but to be fair (and why do I feel the need to be fair?), no modern portfolio theorist would presume to predict the market. It's kind of like god - we can't know, and won't ever know.
Doug