Baggage Check: Who's the Market?

Dr. Andrea Bonior dives into the world of psychology.

THE ECONOMY: It's impossible to avoid thinking about it, even if your understanding of the world of investment banking is limited to that hot tip of buying low and selling high. But Monday was the worst single day on Wall Street in seven years, and the goings-on have dominated media coverage, and water cooler grumblings, ever since.

For all the analysis of what the market may or may not do (and let's face it, even the experts don't have much more of a clue than that kid with the Magic 8 Ball), the fact remains that market activity, at its heart, is simply the conglomeration of individual personalities and behaviors. And those are behaviors of humans: not machines, computers, El Ninos or lemurs.

Perhaps that is partly behind our rather humorous tendency to turn the market into a person in the way we speak about it. Granted, our anthropomorphization of inanimate objects has a lot to do with our desire to give personalities and human characteristics to things beyond our control, as a way to predict, and perhaps try to reason with, the unpredictable. But underneath all the numbers on Wall Street, the bulls and bears, the upticks and (cringe!) downturns, are actually the beating hearts — and saturated sweat glands — of people. And it's their hopes and fears that will, on an aggregate level, determine in which direction things move.

Not that we have any clue which way that will be, of course. (Where's that Magic 8 Ball?)

Talk back to Dr. Andrea by leaving a comment below. To ask a question for Baggage Check in the Express print edition, e-mail baggage@readexpress.com or submit an anonymous question here.