“Over-worry” is probablly not a good word to describe the Americans because if you go to malls these days, you know why: people are shopping like everything is free. Just kidding. I do think the consumer spending of developed nations especially the US is a big driver for the economy growth in developing countries such as China. Holiday shopping in the US means millions jobs in China: from engineers to migrant workers; from Fedex to UPS; from iPod to Shoes…America is an optimistic nation and American consumers will put everything on credit card. This is good, except everything should have a limit.
But I am talking about the other extreme today: the over worry or over reaction to some new unknown phenomena. I remember before year 2000, we were all so worried about the “Y2K bug” in computers and put billions of dollars into information technology, software upgrade(a lot of Indian IT firms grew out of this Y2K scare). When Jan 1 2000 finally arrives, the planes still fly as usual, and eBay still works,…but no one questioned whether the money spent on Y2K is worth or not.
A few years ago, year 2002/3, the US economy was in recession while the real estate was flying high, people started to get nervous: housing bubble! Sell your house now! Well, the bubble last at least until 2005/6, and the real estate bubble is only seen in over heated area such as CA, NY, Boston, Vegas and Phoenix.
Back to my favorite topic, the stocks. This Feburary, Crocs, the funky footwear (for summer) company, did IPO and some “experts” started saying “stay away from the stock CROX, it’s a fad won’t last”. Well, the stock almost doubled in Nov. When I went to malls these days, I saw people buying this thing like crazy.
This remind me the word at the tower of UT-Austin: you shall seek the truth and the truth will make you free. To be honest I worried about my stocks after I bought it from time to time, the only thing I am doing now is learn more about the financials, business of the companies.