Our Sponsors
| Memories of the NYSE: A Lesson in Human Metallurgy |
 |
 |
 |
|
The numbers rise and
drop perpetually. Charts tell of 52 week
lows/highs, of yesterday, 3 days ago…UPWARD then DOWNWARD then UPWARD… Slopes
begin to form on the landscape. The
crash in September looks like an avalanche – peak high to valley low.
I only play the market
for two weeks and it’s enough time to learn my lesson – that there are men born
with nerves for business. These are the
kind of guys that would have slept 8 hours in the trenches, while bombs pot
marked no man’s land. They’re the ones
that pull the trigger and never blink.
The ones that cheat on their wives, almost get caught, and shimmy their
way through the cracks of deception, by means of their subzero nerves. They’re not the kid that cried to his mom
when the other kids killed the duck with rocks by the pond; not the one that
panicked, hesitated, and died with a gun in his hand; not the one that loses
his nerve and comes clean to the wife, resulting in a divorce, where he loses
everything, including his hair and youthful spirit. No, these guys never look back, never
question an action, don’t spook…
I’m not one of
them. I watched my money augment in the
first week like a fat little water balloon that is big enough not to burst
right away, but has all the signs of being too full to actually be tossable. Week two, my stock begins to dive. I stay up until 4am doing math, double
checking math, triple checking what I just checked, and then second guessing it
all. It drops some more. Another on of my stocks makes some money, but
too little to make a big difference.
Panic sets in. The mind becomes
consumed with the DJIA pulse. Up then
down, then up, then down. I’m watching
it like it was the heartbeat of my dying child.
The pressure continues to rise as the stocks drop. I feel the heat of the panic kiln fired. I’m a piece of aluminum, warping, loosening,
my metallic fiber wasted by this heat; the slinky-like integrity of my metal
wasted to a bubbling, vulcanized puddle.
See, in the end, it’s
a matter of sensitivity. In Metallurgy
the solid is tested to see what it is made of; in the NYSE the sensitivity of
the nerve is also tested to see what it is made of. I fold, sell the stocks, break even, learn my
lesson… Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites          |
