Salon Money | Rooting for the crash

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Are women more successful investors than men? Discuss gender and money management in the Business and Personal Finance area of Table Talk

R E C E N T L Y

The grueling world of work
By Heather Chaplin
Bagels on Fridays, teammates and jovial bosses can hide the ugly truth
(09/25/98)
Move over, Susan B. Anthony
By Lance Gould
Sacajawea and a new tribe of currencies are on the loose
(09/18/98)
Gluttons for a crash
By Heather Chaplin
Why so many investors are riding high on the new market lows
(09/11/98)
Separate checkbooks
By Hank Hyena and Carol Lloyd
Married but not sharing
(09/04/98)
How far will Wall Street fall?
By Jonathan Broder
Russia's economic turmoil may spread, says one stock analyst, but the fundamentals of the American economy are still strong
(08/28/98)
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Rooting for the crash
Retirement fund be damned, this market watcher is looking forward to the end of the Wall Street boom.
BY DWIGHT GARNER | Like almost everyone else I know these days, I'm more or less obsessed with the stock market. I peek at the Dow average once or twice a day; I parse James Cramer's columns; I no longer flick right past Louis Ruckheyser's grinning death's head on PBS. This obsession is new and, like smoking, I find it delightful one day and disgusting the next.
Why the sudden interest in Wall Street? Maybe it's because I'm keeping an eye on my 401K, into which I've managed to tuck a meager $6,000 over the past two years. Or maybe it's because I work for a start-up company whose fortunes may be hitched to the market's. But deep down, I know that's not a full explanation. Here's another, albeit a more misanthropic reason: I'm rooting for it to tank. Actively rooting. If I could put my fingers to my temples, right now, and conjure some anti-Greenspanian voodoo that would shave off 700 points this afternoon, I'd sit down and do it.
Clearly, this is perverse. I'd like to keep my 401K and my job, thank you very much, and I'd like my friends, family and co-workers to keep theirs, too. Nor would layoffs anywhere -- save Wall Street -- strike me as a cheerful occurrence. But as this runaway market continues to shimmy upwards (if more unsteadily than before), a sense of annoyance, of outrage and, OK, of envy has begun to kick in. I confess that I'm among those who's been burned during the bull market. In 1996, when my wife and I came into a small inheritance, we invested $10,000 with a broker who's a friend of her family. It was money we couldn't afford to lose -- so, of course, we did lose it. Almost overnight that $10,000 shriveled to $4,000. We panicked and pulled out, cursing our luck and swearing that next time we'd just stick our money where our grandparents did -- under the mattress.
Maybe that's where some of the outrage comes from. But there's also been the creeping realization that relatively few lives have been buoyed by the market boom. To give just one example: In the 1960s the ratio of CEO pay to factory-worker pay was 44-to-1; these days, according to the AFL-CIO, it's 300-to-1. Anyone who's witnessed the massive lines for Powerball tickets knows that state lotteries have become the equivalent of the stock market for America's have-nots. The fact that it's a sucker's market, run by the government, only twists this particular knife.
My wife and I live in Manhattan, the epicenter of market mania, where we're often reminded of a line from Tom Wolfe's "Bonfire of the Vanities": "If you want to live in New York," Sherman McCoy's father advises him, "you've got to insulate, insulate, insulate." Eight years into the current market streak, the overly well-insulated are a flourishing breed. Herds of Range Rovers prowl the streets near our apartment; old friends contemplate ordering up an English nanny (do they have catalogs for that?); the young couple -- younger than us, anyway -- next to us at dinner the other night ordered a $150 bottle of Cote Rotie and could be overheard talking about the merits of online trading.
While I don't want to begrudge anyone their good fortune, it's disheartening to watch Wall Street's idea of the good life -- scotch, suspenders, subscriptions to Cigar Aficionado -- suddenly become almost everyone's. It's gotten ugly out there, so ugly that Fortune magazine posed this question on its September cover: "Has This Market Gone to the Pigs?" When Fortune starts deploring wretched excess, you know you've entered entirely new territory. Welcome to the Planet of the Smug.
Admittedly, there's some consolation to be had in feeling passed over by the market's mile-high climb. Most -- if not all -- of the people we know have been similarly passed over, and dinner parties often become occasions to swap tales (sometimes bleak, more often hilarious) of massive financial blunders. More and more, people are going public with these stories -- witness the boomlet in true-confession failure essays like James Atlas' in the New Yorker and Vince Passaro's in Harper's. I'm waiting for a new magazine, let's call it Ruin, to start collecting them in earnest.
It'd be easier to ignore Wall Street if, while everyone else was getting rich, you were simply allowed to stay where you were. But this market has tilted the playing field. Nowhere is this more true than in Manhattan's real estate market. Many of our friends have already been forced out (to the less-than-tony 'hoods of Brooklyn, or upstate), and we're hanging on by a fingernail. Last month, our landlord raised the rent on our insanely small one-bedroom apartment from $1,450 a month to $1,800, and then told us we should feel lucky. "I've had offers for $2,000," he said. He didn't mention if that bidder drove a Range Rover, but we have our suspicions.
Five years into this stock market surge, the obsession with Wall Street has come to feel like a mass delusion, one that's not all that different from New Age healing or psychic hot lines. The Beardstown Ladies have already been defrocked for cooking their books; when the market does finally tumble, it'll be a joy to witness the shake-out among all the other financial pundits who've ridden to fame on this freakish bubble.
Warren Buffett, the world's savviest investor, isn't a superstitious man -- but he does adhere religiously to certain habits. "I shave my face on the same side every morning and put on the same shoe first," he's said. Well, I'm developing my own habits. After I shave my own face and put on my own shoes, I walk out the door, yearning that today's the day the stock market fetish is going to end. Don't we all have better things to worry about?
SALON | Oct. 2, 1998




T A B L E__T A L K Are women more successful investors than men? Discuss gender and money management in the Business and Personal Finance area of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y The grueling world of work By Heather Chaplin Bagels on Fridays, teammates and jovial bosses can hide the ugly truth (09/25/98) Move over, Susan B. Anthony By Lance Gould Sacajawea and a new tribe of currencies are on the loose (09/18/98) Gluttons for a crash By Heather Chaplin Why so many investors are riding high on the new market lows (09/11/98) Separate checkbooks By Hank Hyena and Carol Lloyd Married but not sharing (09/04/98) How far will Wall Street fall? By Jonathan Broder Russia's economic turmoil may spread, says one stock analyst, but the fundamentals of the American economy are still strong (08/28/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Money feature archives S A L O N E M P O R I U M FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.		Rooting for the crash Retirement fund be damned, this market watcher is looking forward to the end of the Wall Street boom. BY DWIGHT GARNER \| Like almost everyone else I know these days, I'm more or less obsessed with the stock market. I peek at the Dow average once or twice a day; I parse James Cramer's columns; I no longer flick right past Louis Ruckheyser's grinning death's head on PBS. This obsession is new and, like smoking, I find it delightful one day and disgusting the next. Why the sudden interest in Wall Street? Maybe it's because I'm keeping an eye on my 401K, into which I've managed to tuck a meager $6,000 over the past two years. Or maybe it's because I work for a start-up company whose fortunes may be hitched to the market's. But deep down, I know that's not a full explanation. Here's another, albeit a more misanthropic reason: I'm rooting for it to tank. Actively rooting. If I could put my fingers to my temples, right now, and conjure some anti-Greenspanian voodoo that would shave off 700 points this afternoon, I'd sit down and do it. Clearly, this is perverse. I'd like to keep my 401K and my job, thank you very much, and I'd like my friends, family and co-workers to keep theirs, too. Nor would layoffs anywhere -- save Wall Street -- strike me as a cheerful occurrence. But as this runaway market continues to shimmy upwards (if more unsteadily than before), a sense of annoyance, of outrage and, OK, of envy has begun to kick in. I confess that I'm among those who's been burned during the bull market. In 1996, when my wife and I came into a small inheritance, we invested $10,000 with a broker who's a friend of her family. It was money we couldn't afford to lose -- so, of course, we did lose it. Almost overnight that $10,000 shriveled to $4,000. We panicked and pulled out, cursing our luck and swearing that next time we'd just stick our money where our grandparents did -- under the mattress. Maybe that's where some of the outrage comes from. But there's also been the creeping realization that relatively few lives have been buoyed by the market boom. To give just one example: In the 1960s the ratio of CEO pay to factory-worker pay was 44-to-1; these days, according to the AFL-CIO, it's 300-to-1. Anyone who's witnessed the massive lines for Powerball tickets knows that state lotteries have become the equivalent of the stock market for America's have-nots. The fact that it's a sucker's market, run by the government, only twists this particular knife. My wife and I live in Manhattan, the epicenter of market mania, where we're often reminded of a line from Tom Wolfe's "Bonfire of the Vanities": "If you want to live in New York," Sherman McCoy's father advises him, "you've got to insulate, insulate, insulate." Eight years into the current market streak, the overly well-insulated are a flourishing breed. Herds of Range Rovers prowl the streets near our apartment; old friends contemplate ordering up an English nanny (do they have catalogs for that?); the young couple -- younger than us, anyway -- next to us at dinner the other night ordered a $150 bottle of Cote Rotie and could be overheard talking about the merits of online trading. While I don't want to begrudge anyone their good fortune, it's disheartening to watch Wall Street's idea of the good life -- scotch, suspenders, subscriptions to Cigar Aficionado -- suddenly become almost everyone's. It's gotten ugly out there, so ugly that Fortune magazine posed this question on its September cover: "Has This Market Gone to the Pigs?" When Fortune starts deploring wretched excess, you know you've entered entirely new territory. Welcome to the Planet of the Smug. Admittedly, there's some consolation to be had in feeling passed over by the market's mile-high climb. Most -- if not all -- of the people we know have been similarly passed over, and dinner parties often become occasions to swap tales (sometimes bleak, more often hilarious) of massive financial blunders. More and more, people are going public with these stories -- witness the boomlet in true-confession failure essays like James Atlas' in the New Yorker and Vince Passaro's in Harper's. I'm waiting for a new magazine, let's call it Ruin, to start collecting them in earnest. It'd be easier to ignore Wall Street if, while everyone else was getting rich, you were simply allowed to stay where you were. But this market has tilted the playing field. Nowhere is this more true than in Manhattan's real estate market. Many of our friends have already been forced out (to the less-than-tony 'hoods of Brooklyn, or upstate), and we're hanging on by a fingernail. Last month, our landlord raised the rent on our insanely small one-bedroom apartment from $1,450 a month to $1,800, and then told us we should feel lucky. "I've had offers for $2,000," he said. He didn't mention if that bidder drove a Range Rover, but we have our suspicions. Five years into this stock market surge, the obsession with Wall Street has come to feel like a mass delusion, one that's not all that different from New Age healing or psychic hot lines. The Beardstown Ladies have already been defrocked for cooking their books; when the market does finally tumble, it'll be a joy to witness the shake-out among all the other financial pundits who've ridden to fame on this freakish bubble. Warren Buffett, the world's savviest investor, isn't a superstitious man -- but he does adhere religiously to certain habits. "I shave my face on the same side every morning and put on the same shoe first," he's said. Well, I'm developing my own habits. After I shave my own face and put on my own shoes, I walk out the door, yearning that today's the day the stock market fetish is going to end. Don't we all have better things to worry about? SALON \| Oct. 2, 1998