T & T Call to the Permabears

I know nothing about the stock market. I never owned an individual stock before 2008 and if you are reading past my first sentence, you know what happened that year.

I was teaching at Indiana University and I slipped into an odd conversation with some of my undergraduate students while waiting for the clock to tell me to start the class. A couple of them were talking about switching majors because of the sums of money they were having to borrow to stay in school.

My subject was criminal justice and both of the students talking about bailing were more than adequate, such that I hated to see them go. They thought a degree in finance would enable them to get a job where the money was, in an investment bank. Nobody — including me — knew much about what investment bankers were doing but it was in fact lucrative.

You could tell they were making money by the cars they drove, the clothes they wore, and there was an arrogance that was almost endearing to see fairly recent graduates referring to themselves as “masters of the universe” without irony.

My students who were talking about decamping for greener pastures were speculating that they could learn to surf the market and make lots of money fast. When they got to talking about picking stocks, I should have kept my mouth shut….but before I knew it I was making the argument that a top shelf…