Daily Archives: December 24, 2008


Investment News From the Experts

I found the following three headlines juxtaposed on a Yahoo! Website investing page:

^DJI Indications: U.S. stock futures drift lower ahead of data
at MarketWatch (Wed 8:10am)
^DJI US STOCKS-Futures flat ahead of economic data
at Reuters (Wed 7:55am)
^DJI Indications: U.S. stock futures tick higher ahead of data
at MarketWatch (Wed 6:02am)
^DJI
^IXIC
Wall Street set to edge up in shortened session
Reuters (Wed 5:07am)

It appears that no matter what the market action, the explanation is the same.

I once heard a speaker at a Portland meeting of the American Association of Individual Investors explain this phenomenon.  He was a psychologist by vocation and an investor by avocation.  He said that among professional psychologists this kind of sequence of statements from a client would be called confabulation.

The www.FreeDictionary.com gives confabulation this definition:

2. Psychology To fill in gaps in one’s memory with fabrications that one believes to be facts.