When the stock market plunges, we all go to Disney World — or Six Flags. Buckle up for this roller coaster, the commentators tell us. Keep your hands, arms and assets inside the vehicle at all times.
I shouldn’t have stopped there. So in this, my final column for MarketWatch, I think it’s time to retire the roller coaster as an illustration of volatility, because the metaphor is a mediocre visual joke that’s unfair to both amusement parks and markets. When we feel good, we say we are up, we strive to climb the corporate ladder, we want to get a raise. Happy is definitely up on a market chart, unless you’re a short seller. Up is more. Up is richer. Up is one step closer to joining the Great Resignation and jetting off to the Amalfi coast. But the most happy moments on a roller coaster, as someone who loves roller coasters, are not the ups, but the most horrific, violent stretches of a market chart: the steep drops and wild turns.
But remember, roller coasters, unlike volatile markets, are a form of entertainment, with each of their 90 to 120 seconds choreographed to neurotransmit a cocktail of maximal pleasure and excitement. “They seem to be very risky, but this is one of the most risk-averse industries around,” said Walker, whose current venture, Studio Go Go, specializes in enhancing older rides with the addition of virtual reality. “A new ride costs $25 million and needs to appeal to 95% of visitors.
In a 2007 paper, “Metaphors and the Market,” Morris and his co-authors studied the impact a range of metaphors used by financial media had on investor decision making, focusing on two types: “agent” metaphors, which suggest the market is an animal spirit that climbs, claws, charges or flies vs. “object” metaphors, passive victims of gravity, as in “the Dow DJIA, +0.91% fell off a cliff.” Presumably dead cats bounce into and out of the latter category.
jolshan
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