Perspectives

The stock market has about as much influence on my daily life as baseball.

   Both activities, the stock market and baseball, may be interesting and fun to watch, but for some folks, so is Honey Boo Boo.
   Even for those who own corporate stocks, the gyrations of the market as a whole matter little. The only thing that really matters is whether the stock or stocks someone owns goes up or down, and by how much. And even that matters only if the owner plans to buy or sell.
   Daily traders, of course, are another breed. For them, a small movement of pennies per share is important when dealing with many hundreds of shares. In that respect, it's like foreign exchange rates or commodities trading. When dealing with a million dollars, a shift in the decimal point price per unit can mean a profit or loss totaling thousands of dollars.
   Similarly, whether a major league player has a batting average of .190 or .195 has no financial effect on the general public, fan or non-fan. Granted, a batting average may influence a player's salary discussions, but it doesn't change my paycheck.
   Moreover, the best players score a hit less than half or even one-third the number of times they are at bat. Even Ted Williams in his best year (1941), with a batting average of .406, scored a hit only four out of ten times at bat. And his career batting average of .344, one of the best in baseball, means he failed to get a hit two-thirds of the time.
   Financial markets affect a person's daily life more than stock markets, because fluctuations there result in changes in interest rates. In turn, this means home mortgage rates change, savings rates change, and credit card interest rates rise or fall.
   But even here, if one does not own a home or does not plan on buying; if savings are in long-term CDs; and if one pays cash or has no credit card debt, it doesn't matter.