MOST of us are familiar by now with Benjamin Graham’s analogy of the market as a manic-depressive business partner whose estimate of the business’s value goes from very pessimistic to wildly optimistic.Much like Warren Buffett’s moody farming neighbour who yells out a price every day at which he is willing to either buy Buffett’s farm or sell him his, "those prices varying widely over short periods of time depending on his mental state".Stanley Bing, in Fortune magazine, attributed a few more characteristics to the market when he wrote that if the market was a person, it would be rich, nervous, "with everything to lose, starting with its anxious, monkey mind", gutless, "even the spectre of a shadow of a doubt that things could go the other way and it starts heading for the exit", intelligent "just too crazy to be smart a lot of the time", irrational, "I don’t care how many PowerPoint presentations investment bankers, lawyers and security analysts offer me at boondoggles past, presen...
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