wednesday weakness, page-101

I posted this in a general forum earlier but got little reply. Barnsty recommended that I repost it here. I was looking for thoughts.

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I have some degree of faith in charts shorter term, but this is just an honest thought that has been bothering me about attempts to relate charts and situations back so far in history (as I see thrown around with charts going into crashes of the 19th century) and possibilities that they may not be comparing humans, apples for apples.

Can you really be sure the responses of panic and the levels of doom and gloom required to produce emotions of panic in individuals long ago (and hence massive dips), were in fact the same then as they are now?

Back then, there was a war hardened (not a CNN war hardened bum on the couch style war-hardened, but a hardship, true sacrifice, horrific experience and loss type of war-hardened), disease exposed, etc, populations who had seen a lot more true gloom every month than almost any first world investor would have ever seen or experienced first hand ever.

Basically, I believe the general definition of gloom today is not the same as gloom of yesteryear in any respect and hence, the emotions can't necessarily be compared alonside each other in long term charts as being equal. Afterall, the panic of not having the money to buy your kids an I-Pod each for birthdays because of cutbacks, or even having to move and downgrade in housing to a simple bare room or trailer park caravan, because you went too far with a mortgage or margin loan is very different to the level of concern and stress it would have taken to panic people who had already lost multiple family members to war, disease, etc, or had lost their simple room (which WAS their house to start with!) to move to the grimy disease ridden streets to risk life in its bare form.

Also, what about any warping effects (if any) that experience and learning might make in the charts as a result of longer life and access to greater information about markets and history? After all, life expectancy in US is some 20 years longer than in 1929 and 30 years or more longer than any crash in the 19th century. We have a larger proportion of the population now that in fact remembers more about many of the last recessions and major declines we have had. This must have some effect, either in promoting the declines, or in knowing there is light on the other side of hard times.

History is perhaps repeating to a degree, but how much history can the current situation be overlayed in magnitude if psychology and the stress levels required to trigger insecurity (ie: sell) emotions potentially differ?

This is all a bit of an abstract thought perhaps, but I was wondering if any of the chart traders had ever given thought to these possibilities when they talk about emotions driving markets and lifetime length spans of chart cycles.