Opinion: Still crazy after all these years

We’re talking about the asylum formerly known as the stock exchange.

Last week, some bozo posted a fake news report claiming Steve Jobs was in hospital, and Apple’s share price nose-dived.

There are several things seriously wrong with this behaviour. Of course, the first mistake was allowing these nutjobs to use our money to make such dumb-ass decisions.

And yes, it is mostly our money since it’s our superannuation funds which provide the bulk of the cash flowing in and out of the stock markets.

Yeah, sure, the Apple example happened in the USA but that doesn’t matter. The same sort of amoebic morons seem to be making major investment decisions locally.

The next major thing wrong with this picture is the newfound reliance on cartloads of festering codswallop for newsfeeds instead of using journalists – oh silly me, they cost money – codswallop is still free.

Then of course, there’s the idiotic knee-jerk reaction to news of Mr Jobs going to hospital, which, even if it were true, would have zero short-term effect on the actual running of the company.

Do these stock market investors really believe that Steve personally designs and builds everything Apple makes?

There must be a few hundred thousand right clever bastards working at Apple who would be rightly offended over that particular mythology.

And even if he really did personally code and design every widget, his sudden demise would only affect Apple’s ability to come up with new toys, and would have zero effect on their existing product line, which would still keep churning out of whichever South China factory has the contract.

Then of course, there’s the strong possibility that these rumours are deliberate and malicious and designed to create a share price slumps for the day traders to extract billions without lifting a finger.

Well, okay, they’d lift their fingers to click “buy” and “sell” but you get the idea. It happened right here on our own markets the other week.

Day traders made a slick 40 percent in a single day on Macquarie Bank shares after unfounded rumours of massive debt overhangs were reported as fact.

And in this current “global financial crisis” we’re going to be seeing a lot more of this before we get back to “normal”.

Until then, you’ll have to decide whether to put your funds into silver and gold, or perhaps guns and food.