Existential Uncertainty

According to a recent email from my brokerage firm, that’s the problem: “Existential uncertainty”. The stock market is full of the stuff.

Think of it…the clarity, the simplicity. The ability of two words to sum up the stress of investing in today’s market astounded me.

If only I knew what they meant.

Let’s go to the Internet! (And I don’t mean Facebook.)

It might have something to do with the rational choice paradigm. Gad Yair of the Hebrew University wrote a PDF on the subject, but wants $25. The free abstract—somewhat like Spike Lee—talks about wanting to do the right thing. Only sometimes you don’t know the right thing for achieving long-term longevity. Instead, you look around you and do what everybody else is doing.

On the trading floor, we used to call that the institutional herd mentality and brokers wore buttons saying “the trend is your friend”.

If we turn to TheFreeDictionairy.com, we’re reminded that Existentialism, like we learned in Intro to Philosophy and scary Sarte-inspired plays, preaches individual experience and an unkind uncaring world full of free choices for which we’re responsible. (Please read “I” and “I’m” where I typed “we” and “we’re”.) And Existentialism “regards human existence as unexplainable.”

Well, that explains it. It’s all about losing money not being your broker’s fault.

Existentially, you base your learning and actions on personal experience; things you’ve tried, tested—not theories. And the current uncertainty, well that’s like an investment prospectus telling you that past performance is not indicative of future…

Or, think Magic 8 Ball. You know the kind where you shake it and turn it upside down and it gives you the answer through this little glass window as to whether you should go long or short the Russell 2000.

Only right now it says: “Ask again later.”