IRRATIONAL MINDS http://www.irrationalminds.com Trading Psychology & Behavioural Finance Blog Wed, 25 Nov 2009 20:40:59 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.1 en irrationalmindshttp://feedburner.google.com Update http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/irrationalminds/~3/V3e15urg1v0/update http://www.irrationalminds.com/update#comments Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:17:44 +0000 mikey http://www.irrationalminds.com/update No further content will be posted on this site.
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]]> http://www.irrationalminds.com/update/feed http://www.irrationalminds.com/update US fed rate drop an embarrasing reactive blunder? http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/irrationalminds/~3/szntjHqBe0o/us-fed-rate-drop-an-embarrasing-reactive-blunder http://www.irrationalminds.com/us-fed-rate-drop-an-embarrasing-reactive-blunder#comments Sun, 27 Jan 2008 09:04:37 +0000 mikey http://www.irrationalminds.com/us-fed-rate-drop-an-embarrasing-reactive-blunder In what could only be described as an outrageous series of events, a single institutional broker’s actions last Monday and Tuesday may have triggered an entire world market collapse. Société Générale rushed to unload around $75 billion of bad trades on European stockmarkets placed by a rogue trader, Jérôme Kerviel. These offloads may have contributed to last week’s severe decline in European and Asian markets around the world, a day before the US markets pointed to absolute capitulation. And then, the US fed drops interest rates 3 quarter percentage points. Could Bernanke’s completely reactive decision to drop the rate with such force, and with the sole purpose of saving the markets, prove to be one of the biggest economic blunders of 2008 so far?

Read the full article at the New York Times.

No doubt there are real and serious aspects that are causing jitters in markets worldwide - the US credit crisis culminating in what some economists believe to be a US recession, but imagine if this most shocking of market declines last week was triggered by a single traders actions!

One thing for sure is that there will be some interesting days ahead…

]]> http://www.irrationalminds.com/us-fed-rate-drop-an-embarrasing-reactive-blunder/feed http://www.irrationalminds.com/us-fed-rate-drop-an-embarrasing-reactive-blunder viral insanity http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/irrationalminds/~3/ypx_R_1v674/viral-insanity http://www.irrationalminds.com/viral-insanity#comments Fri, 25 Jan 2008 02:40:42 +0000 mikey http://www.irrationalminds.com/viral-insanity Just got back from a week in London and Tokyo, mostly away from watching the markets. I’m sure glad it turned out that way, it simply meant I didnt have to sit through the absolute insanity of watching the market sell off at stupidly low prices only to buy back at higher prices the next day. Also, I didn’t have to make any decisions to sell any of my own portfolio. Note to self: When the futures and news point to an extremely bad (or good) day, place the orders you know you would want filled, and turn off the screen. I’d rather not tempt myself into being just another fear (or greed) driven market fool.

Stockmarket Panic

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