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I’ve been checking my stocks regularly and finding it interesting. It’s easy, since I have them all listed on my phone. I just scroll through the list and see whether they are up or down, and by how much. I can choose to see the increase or decrease in dollar amounts or percentages. I check the stocks several times a day — usually a few minutes after the market opens, 3-4 times in between, and after it closes.

That might sound slightly obsessive, but I’m actually doing it for a couple of reasons. One, I’m easily bored, so it provides a brief break from whatever I was doing. And two, I’m trying to learn about how the stock market acts. So in addition to my own stocks, I check a couple of indexes, a few stocks that I’m curious about but wouldn’t (or couldn’t) buy, and a whole slew of stocks and funds that met my initial criteria as possible buy candidates. The whole thing takes less than a minute. I also get Google alerts for some of the stocks (the ones I deliberately took risks on) so that I can compare what the alerts are saying with how the price is acting.

One thing that I’m really good at is seeing connections between seemingly disparate things. I could relate a snake to a computer, or a picture frame to a fire. Conversely, one thing that I’m really, really bad at is recognizing patterns. You know those tests where you see a series of shapes or numbers and have to identify what comes next? I rarely got them right. Fail! Unless things are really, really obvious (like the “one of these things is not like the other” segment from Sesame Street) I just don’t get it.

So I look at what’s happening with my list of stocks and funds, and I see relationships, but I don’t see clear patterns. And I tend to discount the things I see that might actually be patterns, since I know how bad I am at identifying them. (For example, it seemed like the Dow was jumping up and down by about 1% every other day recently. But was it? Who knows. It doesn’t matter anyway, since I’m not invested in the things that make up the Dow.) So go away, potential pattern.

But the natural human tendency is to search for and identify patterns. And most people are really good at it, especially in the short term. That’s part of how we’ve stayed alive as a human race. So a stock goes up for a few days in a row, and people think it’s going to keep going up. A stock drops, and people think it’s going to keep dropping. It’s a pattern, right? Then greed and fear set it. Either people want to get in on the action (buy) or they’re afraid of losing money (sell). So they buy when stocks are expensive, and sell when they are cheap. This perpetuates the pattern for awhile, but the pattern eventually reverses.

Then there is this nonsense where a company reports “good” returns instead of the expected “great” returns. Bam! You’d think it was a terrible company, the way the stock drops. So I buy more, because, sale! (If I have the money.) Another company reports huge losses for the 3rd quarter in a row, and the stock goes up quite a bit. What’s up with that? It doesn’t make any sense. Too bad I didn’t buy more when it was cheaper. Oh well.

Maybe that is the “secret” to the stock market? That it’s nonsensical and fed by human greed and fear?

It’s also fun.