Each week, The New York Times sends out a business email called “Your Money” to subscribers. It’s also available to those of you signed up for the online version of the paper. Anyway, it’s usually a very short term view of what has happened recently or is expected to happen in the week ahead (think print version of CNBC). I usually skim through it very quickly to see what to expect for the upcoming week.
Yesterday, the topic included the opinions of one Jonathan Golub, of JPMorgan Asset Management who was commenting on the market urp in late February (remember when the market in Shanghai got a bit ahead of itself and needed a break? then several other markets decided to follow suit.) and basically said that getting out of the market and getting back in was a normal/good thing. I quote from The NYT, “We’re descendants of people who ran first and then evaluated the situation,” Mr. Golub said. “The people who evaluated things rationally didn’t pass on their genes.” So for anyone who decided to just sit tight and wait for things to settle down or even catch some bargains while they were around, those folks would not have survived the stone age. Well, guess who profited from all that selling and buying? The brokerages like JPMorgan Asset Management. The people who got out and back in paid some handsome commissions to their brokers. Those who held on paid neither commissions, nor have tax burdens ahead of them. Where did you fit in?
