Sensex kisses 9000! So reads the line today of a major English daily. Such is the romantic prose by which lore of stock market gets told. Of course, during bear market, the news flashes are screaming something like — ‘investor wealth eroded by xxxxx crores’!, and then some!

Why is there such a great fascination with daily fluctuation of stock indices? Most of the time they are neither near all time high nor near all time low, but the gyrations probably give something to get excited about in otherwise not so eventful lives of people.

The consistent pattern of stock market predictors goes like this: when index moves up with great momentum, it is hard to find any expert saying it will not move up further. The same people change their tack once it moves down with great momentum. In that case, the forecast is one of pessimism and dejection, and one can almost sense the expert is going to leave the stock market forever if it breaches certain low level. Fact is that the experts keep their jobs by chattering about what no one can predict but every one loves to hear about!