Calm Before the Storm, from Victor Niederhoffer
It's quiet before the storm. Almost like the market can't do any damage either way because it is disgusted with the big rise, so it can't go up too much from that. And interest rates are also down, so it can't go down too much. It had a narrower range of 24 S&P points that doesn't give much chance for public to do much wrong. It will come up with something. The Madoff episode has to take the animal spirits out of everyone. The interest rate decline makes total wealth much greater than before. If equities were worth 40 trillion at the beginning and fixed income worth 20 trillion, there was a decline of 12 trillion in equities, and a gain of 6 trillion in fixed income. Total wealth not that much impacted relative to what appears on surface.