Climateer Investing: Berlusconi Blames Stock Market Volatility On Cocaine (and a look at neurotransmitters)

Monday, October 10, 2011

Berlusconi Blames Stock Market Volatility On Cocaine (and a look at neurotransmitters)

Would this be the opposite of the Prozac market of the late '90's?*
From FT Alphaville:
Silvio says… cocaine is to blame

Baffled by recent stock market volatility?
Don’t be.
Silvio’s men have the answer.

Oct. 10 (Bloomberg) — Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Undersecretary Carlo Giovanardi said the government will study if it’s feasible to conduct drug tests on stock- exchange traders, with the help of the Milan Bourse and the country’s market regulator.
Giovanardi, who is in charge of family policy and drug prevention, said that the abuse of drugs including cocaine might explain part of recent stock volatility. Giovanardi made the comments in an interview published on KlausCondicio’s website.
And he might be on to something....MORE

*From August 2011's "B.O.H.I.C.A.* (BAC)":

*Bend over, here it comes again.
All stop losses triggered, Mayan calendar consulted, not waiting for the asteroid.

Time to review "Can't Get Enough o' That Lithium. "Peak Lithium: Will Supply Fears Drive Alternative Batteries?"

Although Lilly introduced Prozac to the U.S. in 1988, they didn't really begin marketing it until 1991. Sales increased five-fold by 1994, the year the big bull market of the nineties kicked in.

The joke on trading desks was that this was the Prozac market, sort of the "What me worry?" approach to equities (which may explain the Nasdaq at 5048 in March, 2000).*

This excursion down SSRI lane was triggered by the thought "If we run out of lithium, what will the bi-polars do?"....
*Cramer had similar thoughts, relayed in this NYT article from 2002:
...''My own view is that one reason the investor class, including me, missed the downside was serotonin,'' James J. Cramer, a former hedge fund manager and author of ''Confessions of a Street Addict'' (Simon & Schuster, 2002), said, referring to a substance in the brain that antidepression drugs augment. ''Prozac and all those other drugs banish the 'this is the end of the world' thoughts,'' Mr. Cramer explained. ''Which means you are not as anxious as you should be about an obvious down side.''...