Dissecting the Past

If you are not a student of history you are bound to repeat it. I have no doubt that this is a true statement, however time after time society goes into recessions, fights wars and struggles with problems that plagued our planet thousands of years ago. One book every market participant should read or listen to is "Reminiscences of a Stock Operator". The narrator states, Another lesson I learned early is that there is nothing new in Wall Street. There can't be because speculation is as old as the hills. Whatever happens in the stock market to-day has happened before and will happen again.. I believe that the problem occurs with the fact the humans overestimate their understanding of what occurred in the past and underestimate the probability of making the same foolish mistakes. Humans are still involved with markets, therefore whether the NYSE goes all electronic or the NASDAQ goes virtual reality markets will still propel up and crash down.