Thursday, 13 March 2003 8:30 am
If misery loves company, we should be seeking out the company of our European colleagues. The depressed state of the US stock markets in general and tech stocks in particular is making everyone miserable.  But the tech-heavy NASDAQ is actually only down 5% year to date, and the semiconductor index (SOX) is only down half that amount. In contrast, the Amsterdam stock market is down almost 32% year to date, while the German market has lost 24% and the French market 22%. So much for the explanation that the problems are being caused by the aftermath of the US tech stock bubble, or that the problems in the US markets is being caused by a weak dollar (doesn't than mean the Euro is strong?).

The Iraqi stock market, in contrast, is up year to date by 39%!  If geopolitical tensions are the cause of weak markets, why would the Iraqi market, at the epicenter of those geopolitical tensions, but up so spectacularly?  

The point I am trying to make with these statistics is that the easy explanations that are so often repeated by the press and especially TV don't hold any water. This is a much more complex world than can be easily explained in a few sentences on TV or in a newspaper article. Therein lie opportunities for the clever investor and businessperson.