June 1, 2010, 3:11 a.m. EDT ·
American investors: Predictably stupid losers
Commentary:
Obama backs status quo, helping Wall Street skim hundreds of billionsBy Paul B. Farrell,
MarketWatchARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Yes, I am mad as hell again. Wall Street's soulless, immoral, greedy bankers really believe that the vast majority of America's 95 million investors are not only "predictably irrational" but "stupid," as J.P. Morgan Chase's chief investment officer put it in Forbes a while back.
Worse, Main Street investors are losers for continuing to trust Wall Street after they lost 20% of our retirement money the last decade. Now, worst of all, Wall Street's traders have profiled Main Street investors in their algorithms: Yes, investors are "predictably stupid losers," what Vegas croupiers call a mark, a dumb gambler that can be easily conned out of his money.
Why so blunt? Listen: Recently I explained why the Wall Street banks must kill financial reform, to preserve their multibillion dollar bonus pool. One reader commented: "I worked at the Bear Sterns ... every word written here is true. Fact is, bankers regard themselves as wolves and the public as prey, and speak about it openly, among themselves." Then he added a sucker punch: "What is extraordinary to me is how willingly the sheep submit to this."
Yes, folks, Wall Street is certain that America's 95 million investors are clueless sheep headed for the slaughterhouse.
But wait, that's not news. Twenty years ago former bond trader Michael Lewis' "Liar's Poker" described the insanity of our addiction to gambling in a few memorable lines: "Men on the trading floor may not have been to school but they have Ph.D.s in man's ignorance." They know that "in any market, as in any poker game, there is a fool. The astute investor Warren Buffett is fond of saying that any player unaware of the fool in the market probably is the fool in the market."
And as we now know, in the stock market the vast majority of America's 95 million investors are fools -- predictably stupid losers. .............(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/american-investors-predictably-stupid-losers-2010-06-01