AN HONEST MARKET ADVICE RIGHT NOW: 'I JUST DON'T KNOW'

Last week, in this column, I broke a 30-year habit and admitted “this too shall pass” did not quite fit the moment. The response was the largest I remember. After years of doing this, one learns to read replies as carefully as the column, because a few hundred reactions often say more than the piece itself. The letters fell into four broad piles, each worth a column.

- DHIRENDRA KUMAR

A brief recap. Most market disruptions, I argued, damage sentiment rather than actual assets. Factories still stand, workers still arrive, customers still buy; what changes is mood, and mood is cyclical. The current situation in West Asia is an unhappy exception. The damage to drilling, storage and refining capacity in the region is damage to steel and concrete, repaired by welding and pouring, not by recovering confidence. That is why “this too shall pass” needed an asterisk for once.

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