At the close of business today, the Dow Jones stock average is down another 237 points, now closing in an a ten percent drop from the highs it experienced earlier this year. I watch the stock market because the figures are on the front page of the NY Times website that I read regularly and because I know the market will affect politics and social issues.
But I have a dirty little secret. I actually like to see the stock market go down.
Why is my secret "dirty"? After all, in the class-conscious approach taken by so many at Daily Kos that's a good thing, right? The investor class gets screwed out of their ill gotten (and lowly taxed) capital gains while the working man, with no investments to speak of, comes out ok.
Except for two things, of course. Nowadays many of us are investors in some form, even if only through pension investments in mutual funds that hold stocks. And when the going gets tough for business, of course workers suffer as well.
Still. I really like the idea of the "money people" watching their assets dry up.
Although I don't pretend to understand the stock market, I actually own some stock myself. During the crazed high tech boom in the late 1990s, when Red Hat stock was going through the roof on the grounds that they were giving away more free operating systems than anyone else I bought some stock in Borland, the programming language vendor. I used (still do) and liked their products and they had just announced that they would be creating versions of their development products for Linux. With the explosive growth of Linux I figured that their stock might well double with the release of these products. I was right too -- eighteen months later, when Kylix was released, Borland stock doubled in value. Unfortunately, during those eighteen months the stock had lost two thirds of what I had paid for it. Do the math, and you'll realize I was still out one third of my investment.
Other than that, I've deliberately kept my exposure to the stock market minimal. Those savings that I have are in money market accounts -- not the best rate of return but steady and never, ever negative. My largest asset is my house. Of course, housing values are dependent on the general business climate (as is my ability to get work in the freelance computer programming field) but the connection is indirect.
I wrote this diary because, as I say, I feel a bit dirty taking a certain amount of joy from schadenfreude when it comes to the stock market since the effects are not only on the folks I kind of want to see get stuck with losses but on society as a whole. And in reality, it's probably not nice to want to see anybody wind up worse off than they were, is it?
My question -- is there anyone else here at dKos willing to admit that they share my feelings about the stock market. So you can do so anonymously, I'm including a poll.