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Read the following article from today's New York Times to see what the little
guy is thinking.
Howard
No Panic on Main Street
By DIRK JOHNSON
MARSHALLTOWN, Iowa -- During these pogo stick days on Wall Street, Stanley
Walker, a retired mechanic with a good chunk of his life savings in the stock
market, has thought once or twice about his boyhood in the Depression years.
And he has no desire to have pockets so empty, as his own father did, that
Sunday dinner means pig tails and sauerkraut.
"Is it time to pull the rip cord?" Walker, 77, nervously asked his broker on
Monday, as the market dived 500 points, before making its strong rebound. "I
like to be able to sleep at night."
His broker told him to relax. And Walker, who did not sell a single stock,
is trying to do just that.
Despite some jitters, there is no panic on Main Street this week.
"People are becoming old veterans at this," said Doug Reese, a broker here
for Edward Jones. "They've been through all of this before."
As in most of America, the stock market has become everybody's game in this
pleasant Iowa courthouse town. Inside the Muddy Waters coffee shop, people
were echoing all of the financial analyst cliches -- the economy's strong
fundamentals, great buying opportunities and, of course, the importance of
"staying in for the long haul."
Some people have even become a bit blase about the market's gyrations. Mark
Engle, a 44-year-old high school Russian teacher, kicked his boots up on a
chair and rattled Wednesday morning's edition of the Des Moines Register.
On the front page, there was a cartoon about Wall Street that showed a bunch
of little chickens screaming about a falling sky, with a frightened looking
bull. But Engle skipped right past the stories about the market. He turned,
instead, to the sports section to read about Mark McGwire, the home run king
who is having a much better year than the stock market.
"He's amazing," said Engle, who lets the managers of his pension plan worry
about stocks.
But the market has hit plenty of home runs in recent years for people in
this town of 26,000, about 40 miles northeast of Des Moines.
The capital gains allowed Barb Collins to retire from a factory job at age
57, vacation in France, England and Italy and take a cruise to the island of
Crete. She even has a vacation home in Minnesota.
To people like Mrs. Collins, now 63, who was pushing her one-year-old
grandson, Ariaus, in a stroller on this sunny day, complaining about a bumpy
stretch of road on an otherwise magnificent run, would seem a bit greedy.
"But you do have to keep on top of things," she said.
Every morning, she checks the Register for the prices of her stocks and
mutual funds, and watches one of the financial television networks just about
every day.
During the steep drop on Monday, however, she was at her vacation home,
taking a respite from the news. Late that afternoon, she climbed into a boat
to fish for walleye with some friends. One of them asked, with an ominous
tone, "So, what about this stock market?"
She confessed to some anxious moments, but never considered selling off her
stocks.
It helps calm the nerves to recall scary days in the stock market's recent
past. Best of all, the big jump in stock prices on Tuesday showed there is
still confidence in the market.
"People on Main Street are not traders, but investors," said Reese, the
stock broker, noting that people who hold their cards usually end up with a
strong hand.
DyAnne Henry, 49, who owns an embroidery shop, "In Stitches," said the stock
market was a lot like life.
"You have some highs and you have some lows," she said, between bites of
pancakes at Monica's coffee shop. "But if you have patience and keep the
faith, everything mellows out in the end."
Despite the general buoyancy, however, Reese noted that some nettlesome
developments have given investors some uneasy moments. Besides the economic
crisis in Asia and the political turmoil in Russia, there is the specter of a
weakened President Clinton, tarnished after acknowledging that he misled the
public about his relationship with a former White House intern.
In a place like Iowa, which exports plenty of grain and agriculture-related
machinery, among other goods, a crisis halfway around the globe can come home
to roost in a hurry.
"When it comes to economics, Iowa is by no means isolated," said Engle, the
Russian teacher. "How we do depends a great deal on how people in other
countries are doing."
Tom Mueller, a 47-year-old insurance salesman who sported a blue blazer and
a deep tan, expressed few worries about the strength of the American economy.
He had doubt about President Clinton's effectiveness.
"You can't help but think he's not the same leader that he was four or five
weeks ago," said Mueller, who got up early today to watch Clinton and Russian
President Boris Yeltsin on television. "He doesn't come across as being so
confident anymore. Is that going to hurt our standing around the world?"
In general, people did not seem to think Clinton's problems would hurt the
stock market.
Making a connection between the Washington soap opera and the profits at
Fortune 500 companies seemed, at least to someone like 69-year-old Shirley
Duffy, "a bit of a stretch."
Mrs. Duffy, who operates tours for Iowans to places like Nova Scotia, Alaska
and New York, said she was not going to take a penny out of the stock market.
She and her husband, Wallace Duffy, became alarmed during a sudden downturn
two years ago, and shifted much of their holdings to fixed-income accounts.
That was a mistake.
"We learned our lesson, so we're going to sit tight," said Mrs. Duffy.
Reese and other stock brokers have been talking to customers about the
silver lining in any downturn. For much of the past few years, he had been
trying to damp down expectations of investors, many of whom expected whopping
gains in a matter of weeks. Now with prices on many stocks down 15 to 20
percent compared to a few months ago, Reese has been encouraging investors to
think about adding to their holdings.
John Kraft, a 38-year-old painter, said he would like to jump into the
market, but will not, out of respect to his wife's wishes.
"She doesn't like the idea," he explained, "that you can end the day with
less money than you had yesterday."
Thursday, September 3, 1998
<A HREF="aol://4344:104.nytcopy.6445375.574106743">Copyright 1998 The New York
Times</A>
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