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August 9, 2011

The Almighty Market

By Michael Shaw

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Oh, the redundancy of those trading floor crisis images. This one from Tuesday, after the nosedive, was actually pretty good, though. Witnessing the power of Wall Street these past few weeks, the photo is spot-on. It really is the American Almighty.

And then yesterday, when all those traders scored on the rebound? Well, the market giveth, and the market taketh away. (And then giveth again.)

(photo: Jin Lee/AP caption: Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Monday, Aug. 8, 2011 in New York.)

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  • Enoch Root

    Sad Guys On Trading Floors: http://sadguysontradingfloors.tumblr.com/

    Via boingboing (see comments): http://boingboing.net/2008/10/07/sad-guys-on-trading.html

  • jonst

    Yeah, the gyrations in the market are interesting, no doubt. What is also interesting is Bag’s decision, if decision it is, and not simple oversight, to avoid posting anything on the riots in the UK. At least it is interesting to me.

  • Bamaguy1024

    The US Stock Market – face it, is nothing more than a f#@king Las Vegas Casino for the super rich. How much longer do you imagine the antiquated trading floor and the hysterical screaming brokers will last now that it is so automated? 

    • psychohistorian

      I have programmed the handheld the guy is holding for supply chain applications and he is just another warehouse worker for the global inherited rich, albeit with nicer clothes and higher pay.

      We are all pond scum to them that don’t want to share.

    • Pastafarian

      They are stock (no pun intended) figures in a spectacle, and Americans love spectacle. 

      They are also the diversion from the fact that it all happens by computer algorithms now. 

      This photo, and the others like it (like Upset Trader Guy Gaping With Mouth Open or Upset Trader Guy Facepalming or Booyah Trader Guy Rejoicing), are the equivalent of the scapulars that nuns and priests used to hand out to catholic schoolkids in the ’50s and ’60s. Icons of belief in a remote, inscrutable power that we all were taught proceeded according to its own mechanisms, but somehow we were supposed to believe that if we used the right approach and words, it would change its plans for the cosmos to accommodate your requests. 

      In Wall St., as in catholicism (at least as it was presented to me), you can fling your petitionary communiques and requests for intercession at the big powerful thing. That’s about it. 

  • Anonymous

    Don’t be sad, trader guy! Let a crooner from the other Depression cheer you up!

    And you shouldn’t be afraid for 
    Every time it rains it rains 
    Pennies from heaven. 
    Don’t you know each cloud contains 
    Pennies from heaven. 
    You’ll find yor fortune falling 
    All over town. 
    Be sure that your umbrella is upside down. 

  • Pastafarian

    222 is .333 of 666.

    Triple down, dood!

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