What would Spock do? The secret rules of the Vulcan stock market …
There are no stock-market bubbles on the planet Vulcan.
There are no financial panics or day traders, either. There are no hedge funds. There are no subprime crises. Bankers do not expect a bailout if they lend money to people who cannot afford to pay it back.
The reason? Simple. Such things would be … completely illogical.
And when it comes to money, as with everything else, the Vulcans are all about the logic.
Give us the facts, they say, and let us follow the simple rules of reason.
We all learned this as children, as we sat, goggle-eyed, and followed the voyages of the Starship Enterprise.
On the Vulcan stock market, where they have cast aside the emotional follies of planet Earth, they act in a manner that’s completely rational.
Human beings, basically, are hopeless. They are ruled by their emotions. They can’t think clearly. And that’s always getting them into trouble.
But while Captain Kirk strutted about waving his big ego, and “Scotty” had another Celtic meltdown in the engine room, Spock, the half-Vulcan science officer, would keep his head. He would turn to the others, raise a quizzical eyebrow, and observe that they were all being … well, illogical.
And it’s much the same on the Vulcan stock market, where they have cast aside the emotional follies of planet Earth, and instead act in a manner that’s completely rational.
Also see: Twitter reacts to Leonard Nimoy’s death
On the planet Vulcan, you never see economists on TV predicting what’s going to happen next year. Vulcans know that a complex system like a major economy is basically unpredictable. The things you don’t know about will swamp the few things you do.
On the planet Vulcan, there are very few financial brokers, traders, salesmen, analysts and other financial hangers-on. Vulcans believe that most of these are a waste of money.
On the planet Vulcan there are no high-fee financial products. No one would dream of paying a 5% commission for a simple insurance policy. No one would dream of paying a hedge-fund manager 2% of their assets per year, plus 20% of the profits — if any.
On the planet Vulcan no financial agent or company executive is given incentives to produce a short-term “pop” in performance at the expense of long-term growth. Nobody walks away from a bank with $400 million just months before the institution collapses in bankruptcy.
There are no bubbles or crashes on the Vulcan Stock Exchange, because investors never try to run with the herd. Vulcans believe that such an instinct, which saved primitive man from lions, is a poor guide to sensible behavior in a financial market.
There are no fads on the Vulcan market.
Vulcans pay hardly any attention to quarterly earnings statements. Vulcans know that most of the value of a stock is based on the very long term, and the last three months, or the next three months, are basically irrelevant.
Vulcans don’t trade stocks very often. They know that the more often they trade, the more likely it is that their emotions will overtake their reason.
And Vulcans never buy stocks because they have already gone up … nor do they sell them just because they have fallen in price. Vulcans try to buy low and sell high. Anything else, as they say, would be … illogical.
Taken from:
What would Spock do? The secret rules of the Vulcan stock market …
