wednesday weakness, page-103

"In my experience, trial hardened (read war disease poverty and other things mentioned in your post) people are less inclined to panic than those who have no real knowledge of such harshness."

Absolutely, this is my general feeling and experience also.

"Bearing that in mind, my suggestion would be that emotionally, many of todays market participants could still be prone to panic, though those that have already been caught up in the storm would have received some hardening experiences now."

COULD be prone to panic?! lol. Little doubt about that. The media saturation helped it all of course and that is another factor, but that too is partly my reason for this line of thinking. Have they panicked prematurely for fear of losing accumulations of greed and 'beyond means' lifestyles, and envision risks of losing jobs that were more a hassle than anything anyway, rather than having REAL fear of being tossed into the street gutters with disease, destitution, no welfare, etc and NO JOB OPTIONS whatsoever. None. Zip. So, have they panicked in a relatively fair measure relative to the real situation that exists in comparrison?

This effect is enhanced I believe, as the internet allows many more individuals (and greater proportion of younger age too) to play the market than would have ever had a chance to even know what a stock market was in early 1900's or late 1800's.

I don't know if you saw my earlier post in general thread or not, but I also mentioned that the line that was drawn on the long term chart back into the 1870s (with due respect to the poster) seemed a little too simplistic to take into account the realities of the events and emotions of times that infact influenced that history. World Wars were not just a line that left emotions untouch or unchanged and are not equivalent to the stress of wars we see on tv now (at least, not for the spectators). History books do not record events well either.

Times were tough for many long ago. Much, much tougher than now and yet we have already dropped a massive amount in the previous year in response. So if it is all about emotions, has it potentially gone too far too quickly or does it sit well enough with charters as ok, depsite these potentially warping factors? Does a quick decline in markets in this modern day definition of 'panic' potentially also mean a different rate of recovery in time too perhaps?