
The stock market panicked, but you shouldn’t
CNN
When Wall Street starts having a fit like the one we witnessed Monday, it’s easy to get sucked in to the drama and start fretting about the state of the world. If the pros are panicking, it must be serious, right?
When Wall Street starts having a fit like the one we witnessed Monday, it’s easy to get sucked in to the drama and start fretting about the state of the world. If the pros are panicking, it must be serious, right? Not really, in this case. To be sure, the carnage on Wall Street and in equities markets around the world was real. Stocks sank 3%, and the Dow tumbled more than 1,000 points for just the 15th time in the index’s 128-year history. But Monday’s panic was the Wall Street equivalent of a tantrum from a kid who just got told they can’t have ice cream for dinner. There are several reasons why the outburst was so dramatic, including the fact that trading volume is thin this time of year, when Wall Streeters tend to flee the trading desk for their semiannual migration to the Hamptons. But don’t let the stock market drama fool you: The US economy is still in good shape, despite some turbulence. “The sky is not falling yet,” CNN analyst Rana Foroohar said Monday. “And I’m not too worried about Wall Street becoming poor.”

An initial reading of third-quarter gross domestic product showed the US economy expanded at an inflation-adjusted annualized rate of 4.3%, a far faster pace than the 3.8% recorded in the second quarter, according to Commerce Department data released Tuesday. That’s the fastest growth rate in two years.

Paramount has upped the ante in its hostile takeover bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, announcing Monday that Larry Ellison will personally guarantee the tens of billions of dollars he is putting up to bankroll the transaction. The Ellisons will also let shareholders peer into the finances of their family trust.











