A big market downturn is also a time for personal reflection. After the Friday 13th panic where I unloaded stocks to shore up my margin account ratio, I had to distract myself. This time around, I chose to read a book on the Myer-Briggs Type Indicator, a personality profiling system largely dismissed by the academic community but generally quite successful in the business world.
In my view, when a system does not have the firm backing of the scientific community, it belongs to the same class of belief systems as Astrology. My opinion is that technical analysis, the capital assets pricing model and the efficient markets hypothesis, all fall under this category. Consequently, I do not like to dismiss Astrology, being a huge fan of good and somewhat random advice in many Astrology columns. Up till today, I have yet to see an astrologer advise Capricorns that this week would be...