As many of us were praying in the synagogue during the afternoon of Yom Kippur Wall Street was having one of its worst afternoons in history. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is now down below 8,600 points. $8.3 trillion in shareholder wealth has been wiped out in the last year and $2.3 trillion of that has been lost in the last seven days alone. Analysts are claiming that the selloff in markets around the world has been motivated by the fear that the world is sinking into a deep recession. <\/p>\n
There are certainly serious and significant problems in the economy. Any rational analysis of the situation tells us that the current economic woes will not end quickly. In addition the printing of money that governments around the world are engaged in to try and put a quick fix to the current problems will almost certainly lead to inflationary difficulties down the road. No doubt there are good reasons to buying gold, silver and platinum rather than securities. <\/p>\n
The problem, however, is that fear magnifies problems many times bigger than they really are. And fear also inhibits our ability to make rational decisions. At the inception of Judaism the most important lesson about fear is taught. As the newly emancipated Israelites stood at the Sea of Reeds with the Egyptian army pursuing them they were stricken with fear. The Midrash tells us that some of the Israelites reacted to this fearful situation by wanting to return to Egypt as slaves. Others wanted to commit suicide and a third group wanted to fight against the mighty Egyptian army. A final faction wanted to wait and pray to God for salvation. <\/p>\n
Moses, however, told the Israelites that they had to overcome their fear based reactions and move forward and when they did the sea split for them and they were able to overcome their obstacles. One of the most important lessons from this story is that in order to overcome a fearful situation it is important to be able to distinguish between a fear based response and a rational reaction. Decisions based solely of fear will almost always be the wrong judgment.<\/p>\n
In addition the founder of the Chassidic movement Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov was told as a young child by his dying father that he must fear nothing but God. It was, in part, this fearless ideology that enabled him to become such a tremendously successful leader. <\/p>\n
Clearly fear is a human attribute that we have all experienced. However, it is our reactions to fear that we must be careful about. It is inconceivable that companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange have really lost $2.3 trillion in intrinsic value over the last seven days. It is only the raw fear and panic of investors that has caused that sort of massive devaluation. <\/p>\n
I do not intend to be giving investing advice here—that would be foolhardy, even the greatest experts have missed the mark recently. In addition in a market where everyone is panicking being rational and fearless will not necessarily bring profit. However, the larger point is important to take note of: fear based reactions must be avoided at all costs because they will only serve to magnify our problems. As we go through a period of uncertainty and potential economic pain this is something we should all keep in mind. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As many of us were praying in the synagogue during the afternoon of Yom Kippur Wall Street was having one of its worst afternoons in history. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is now down below 8,600 points. $8.3 trillion in shareholder wealth has been wiped out in the last year…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levibrackman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1741"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levibrackman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levibrackman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levibrackman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levibrackman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1741"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.levibrackman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2237,"href":"https:\/\/www.levibrackman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1741\/revisions\/2237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levibrackman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levibrackman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levibrackman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}