All the Stock Answers

By Tony Kornheiser

Sunday, November 2, 1997; Page F01
The Washington Post 

You may recall that a few months ago I wrote a column about
my bad luck with the stock market. I explained how I was the
only person on Earth to have lost money on Intel, buying it at
16 and selling it at 14 -- about an hour before it started
climbing like an F-15.

(I'd like to thank the reader from Bethesda who, after figuring
out all the splits of Intel after I sold it, informed me that had I
held my original 500 shares they'd now be worth 5 million
dollars. Thank you very much for pointing that out to me. Now
die.)

Though I had a savings and retirement strategy that some might
have called "conservative" -- I stashed half my money in gold
bullion and the other half in my Uncle Boots's cremation urn --
I decided it was time to be more adventurous. So I went into
the market as the Dow was taking off like Gypsy Rose Lee.

Well, you saw what happened last Monday. The market
plunged 554 points. I blame myself, of course. But experts said
it all started because of uncertainty over the Thai economy. Are
you kidding me? There's a Thai restaurant on every corner in
my neighborhood. And why did the crash occur in the Hong
Kong exchange? I thought its economy was booming since
China took over. There's obviously full employment in China.
Every 8-year-old is working 18 hours a day in a fire-trap
factory to make sure our kids get Christmas toys.

So, Tony, how much did you lose?

I probably lost tens of dollars. I thought about flinging myself
out the window like folks did in the Great Depression -- but
since I hadn't put too much money into stocks yet, I just
jumped off my porch.

When I came to work on Tuesday, everybody was calling his
broker. I heard my editor Rich, a fretful Dow-watcher, get on
the phone and demand, "Get me [such-and-such]. It's the Big
Kahuna!" I assumed Rich was buying a particular stock,
although it's possible he was ordering lunch, and what he
actually said was, "Give me a big tuna."

Anyway, Rich wanted reassurance from his broker. A broker,
by the way, who once phoned Rich to say he had good news:
One of his stocks had split two-for-one. "Let's see," the broker
said, "you had 25 shares so . . . hold on, lemme check . . . give
me a second, my computer's running slow. Okay, yes, you've
now got 50 shares."

The day after the crash, Rich nervously asked his broker, "So,
what do you advise?"

"Sit tight," the broker said.

Other brokers were giving equally sagacious advice.

"Think long term," said one.

"Think big picture," said another.

"Think about wearing a barrel and selling apples," said a third.

So I called my broker.

"I'm sorry, but he recently fled the country," his secretary told
me.

No, I'm kidding. He put me on hold for a while, then said,
"Tommy! Great to talk to you, pal. The crash? No big deal."

And as it turned out, it wasn't. By the end of the next day the
market had come almost all the way back. And later in the
week the Great and Powerful Greenspan, who simply by
belching can cause blue chips to sway back and forth like the
Wallenda family, said Monday's plunge of 554 points could
prove to be a "salutary event." (I ought to introduce Greenspan
to my cousin David. David used to consider a Category 5
hurricane to be a salutary event, because he had a glass and
mirror business in Miami.)

The events of the week taught me I needed to pay more
attention to the market. I had serious questions: How could this
have happened? Could it happen again? And, most important,
should I also order the tuna for lunch?

To be honest, I have no idea how the stock market works. I
also have no idea how the Internet works, or how Doppler
radar works, although I envision a stock market crash
sweeping in from the Far East, El Nino-style -- and we'll be
able to see it coming through some kind of financial Doppler
radar. It will glow with that deep red that indicates incredibly
forceful winds, torrential rains and cows flying through the air.
And everybody's 401(k) will be sucked out the window. And
the next morning I'll be working at Hecht's, selling bathrobes.

So I began to read the business section carefully. And the first
thing I noticed was that every day you'd see the same photo of
a group of Asians looking upward in terror. I'm assuming that
the Asians pictured are watching the plunging Hong Kong
stock ticker. But for all I know they're reading a message
board that says, "Disney Plans Remake Of `Flower Drum
Song'!"

I also took careful note of the names of stock exchanges and
indexes throughout the world. In England, for example, there is
"The Footsie." In Hong Kong, there's the "Hang Seng." The
currency in Thailand is the "baht." In Malaysia it's the "ringgit."
Hahaha. That's so comical compared with the sophisticated
names we have like the "sawbuck" and the "finsky."

Finally, in desperation I went to my friend Paul, a business
writer. I confessed that much of my anxiety was over the fact
that the graphs in the newspaper charting the peaks and valleys
of the market looked just like my EKG.

"Does anybody understand what happened in the stock
market?" I asked him.

"Only after the fact," Paul said. "Those who claim to
understand it really don't, because if they did, they'd be rich."

"Maybe they are rich," I said.

He thought about that for a second. "Hmmm," he said, "maybe
they are."

Then he called his broker and ordered the tuna. 

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