.floatimg-left-hort { float:left; } .floatimg-left-caption-hort { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:300px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-vert { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right:15px; width:200px;} .floatimg-left-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; font-size: 12px; width:200px;} .floatimg-right-hort { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px;} .floatimg-right-caption-hort { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px; font-size: 12px; } .floatimg-right-vert { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px;} .floatimg-right-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; font-size: 12px; } .floatimgright-sidebar { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; border-top-style: double; border-top-color: black; border-bottom-style: double; border-bottom-color: black;} .floatimgright-sidebar p { line-height: 115%; text-indent: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar h4 { font-variant:small-caps; } .pullquote { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 150px; background: url(http://www.dmbusinessdaily.com/DAILY/editorial/extras/closequote.gif) no-repeat bottom right !important ; line-height: 150%; font-size: 125%; border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} .floatvidleft { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatvidright { float:right; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;}
The articles are popping up everywhere now, suggesting that this is the time to buy stocks. However, as investment personality Jim Cramer pointed out the other day, a stock market that gains 20 percent one week and then loses 8 percent the next Monday is no place for mom-and-pop traders.

Cramer says a lot of things in the course of a day, many of them crazy, but he may be right about this. The market these days is not exactly an orderly exchange based on carefully considered values.

It’s definitely not like an escalator that always goes up, the way it seemed for a few years before we sobered up.

It’s also not like a roller coaster, the usual comparison, because when you’re on a roller coaster, you know about how soon the ride is going to end. More important, you know you’re going to exit at the same level you entered.

What it’s most like is a weekend in Las Vegas.

Once I was playing roulette in Binion’s Horseshoe Casino when a sketchy-looking guy burst onto the scene and started putting a handful of chips on one number at a time, going for the big 35-1 payoff. He had that Vegas air about him – he was either high or he had just been awake for too many days in a row – and he didn’t stay at the table long.

He lost every bet, of course. Then he headed off with some new action plan trickling through his fevered brain.

Right about now, he’s probably trying to pick winners on the New York Stock Exchange.

I was in Las Vegas for a meeting of business writers, of all things. Somebody thought it would be a clever idea to discuss business journalism in the land of one-sided transactions.

So I listened to people like Bill Gross, the Pimco bond fund guru – and reportedly a former professional blackjack player in Vegas – and then slipped away to Binion’s when someone started to pontificate about whether newspapers should list stock prices in decimals or one-eighths.

Later, we took a field trip to a day-trading shop, where people sat slumped in chairs, staring at computer screens, each tracking a particular stock all day long.

One young woman had decided to devote a year of her life to following IBM or something. I don’t remember the company, but I’ll never forget that she claimed to be up $600,000 with a couple of months to go. It felt like true love, but I had to get back on the bus.

I wonder how the day traders are doing now, when so few of the old rules seem to apply. They were the opposite of the guy at the roulette table. If this were skydiving, which the current market also resembles, he would jump out of a plane and then look for a parachute; the day traders would monitor the altitude, calculate wind drift and jump at a predetermined point with a top-quality canopy plus a reserve.

But in a market like this one, they still might land in a sewage lagoon.

As for my own roulette experience, I took a much duller approach than the wild-eyed fellow, who understood that Las Vegas is where you go for excitement, not conservative money-grubbing. And yet I was less patient than the day traders, who know big money is made slowly.

I bet red every time, letting the bet ride when I won and doubling it when I lost. In less than an hour, I won $50. This is when I realized I was a genius.

A couple of years ago, I tried the same super-brilliant method at Prairie Meadows. However, the place was so jammed that I couldn’t get near the table, so I had to play in my head. This was fortunate, because I was way behind when I gave up.

Genius comes and goes. Just ask Wall Street.