The stock market and the media

Picking up the paper at the corner store this morning, a man and I stared at the sensationalistic headlines again.

I said, "I wish they wouldn't report it this way."

He said, "Perception."

On that note, watch your emotional reaction to the falling stock market and economic crisis. Notice what pulls it. Notice how you react and manage it.

If you want to learn more about your emotional intelligence, email me at sdunn@susandunn.cc .

"...the common eye sees only the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces through and reads the heart and the soul, finding there capacities which the outside didn't indicate or promise, and which the other kind couldn't detect."----Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc


"One frequently only finds out how really beautiful a really beautiful woman is after considerable acquaintance with her; and the rule applies to Niagara Falls, to majestic mountains, and to mosques--especially to mosques."-----Mark Twain

The US Economy

What can I say?

The stock market events of this week are a titre of emotional intelligence.

Heard around town:

1. Better get all your money out of banks and the stock market and put it in a safe in your house.
2. Money won't be any good. Buy gold.
3. Put you money in bonds.
4. The market will rebound. It always does.
5. I weathered Black Friday... 9/11 .... This happens.
6. We're all scared. Nobody's buying anything.
7. If this were any country but the US, we might have woken up this morning with our dollar worth 25 cents.
8. Let's change the subject. I don't want to talk about it. Let's talk about something positive.
9. The stock market's down. Now's the time to buy.
10. 777.68 is the biggest drop ever? You mean since 9/11? Since the beginning of the stock market? Since the Great Depression? Or what?

How you handle any potentially negative event depends upon many factors - your temperament, your risk tolerance and anxiety levels, your history, your current circumstances, your resources, your character ... and the level of your emotional intelligence.

With all important things, like this, your EQ can matter as much as, or more than, your IQ. Typically we read varying opinions, and get opposing "expert" advice. How do you make your way through the data, after you have done your homework? It is largely based on intuition (gut feeling), which is partly learned through experience. Intuition is an emotional intelligence competency and can be learned. (Contact me for coaching, or take The EQ Course(tm) - sdunn@susandunn.cc .

If this is the first market crash since you've owned stocks, it will feel a lot different to you.

(Don't know who to attribute this graphic to. It's making the email rounds.)

Thanksgiving on a Budget

How to Have Thanksgiving on a Budget

By Susan Dunn, M.A., The EQ Coach

I'm delighted that this article has been chosen for the November issue of the Key Biscayne Magazine. Since we're all feeling the squeeze right now, with gas prices up, stock market reeling, and unemployment rising, this is good information for you to have.

THANKSGIVING ON A BUDGET

Yes, it's the time of abundance, but if you're on a budget, stick to it and avoid some stress and guilt. It's the emotionally intelligent thing to do!

Holidayorganizer.com has some great savings tips, and I've added a few of my own.

1. Know your portions.

It's tempting to have a big, beautiful bird, but it's more sensible to buy only as much as you'll need for your family. The formula is 1 lb. per person. If you want leftovers, 1.5-2.0 lbs. per person.

2. Take good care of the bird right after dinner.

If you'll take the time to remove the meat and wrap it carefully in saran wrap or air-tight containers, it will remain nice and moist and tempting for the next meals. For the immediate next dinner, place the turkey in a plastic container, put a piece of waxed paper and then put some wet paper towels atop that. Keeps it nice and moist for sandwiches the next night.

3. Plan your leftovers.

Get those recipes ready. The meal's good just warmed over for the next night, as long as the gravy holds, but after that there's Turkey Tetrazzini, turkey soup, turkey hash. Rotate it with other meals. (Don't refreeze once-frozen turkey.) Try a variety of flavors to go with the turkey. Turkey Tetrazzini is bland. Try your own version of Eggs Benedict, using turkey instead of Canadian bacon. The hollandaise will add a zip. Make King Ranch Chicken (aka Turkey) with hot sauce. They won't even know it's turkey! End with cold turkey salad; the mayonnaise will moisten it. Or Turkey soup - google for recipes, there are tons. Some people even use the bones for stock for this.

4. Grocery shop the day after Thanksgiving.

Bargain-o-rama. Have you ever been? Surplus fresh turkeys at pennies on the dollar, bakery items, breads, fresh yams. Clean out your freeze and get ready. So ... shop for your Christmas meal the day after Thanksgiving!

5. Pay for convenience when it counts.

I like to buy throwaway aluminum pans to cook the turkey in. It's just such a mess to clean up afterwards. My sister buys gravy from the catering shop; an indulgence, but worth it to her. Many young brides find gravy to be the most challenging thing, so it can be a great stress remover, because don't we all live for the gravy!!

6. Consider alternatives.

Make your own pie crust and bread. Unless you live in sweet potato country, canned yams or sweet potatoes are a better bet than fresh. Pre-baked breads are often sacrificed as loss leaders and with the rest of the spread, people don't really care. Pumpkin filling mix, often on sale, is cheaper than buying canned pumpkin and adding evaporated milk and eggs.

7. Make your own stuffing.

That's never on sale! Start on your stuffing mix now. Easy as pie! When your loaf of bread is getting old, put the last pieces on a cookie sheet and put it in the oven. Warm at 350 for 5 mins., then turn off. Leave the bread there to dry out. Put into baggies and save. Keep doing this. If you like cornbread stuffing, start planning lots of chili and cornbread meals! When it's time to make the stuffing, crush the dried bread (still in the bag) with a rolling pin and it'll look and act just like the storebought mix.

8. Decorations? Festive wear?

Shop at Goodwill right now. I'm a thrifty shopper and I always find thematic sweaters at my local Goodwill. Next tip -- If you didn't do it last year, do it this year. Go out the day after Thanksgiving and pick up all those napkins, tableware, ceramic centerpieces and cute decorations for a pittance. If you like a holiday sweater or t-shirt, check those sales out too. And don't let Madison Avenue jerk you around with the change of color-scheme every year. Choose one you like and stick with it!

9. Don't forget about potluck.

Most people who are guests at your table for Thanksgiving, would actually love to bring something so they feel they've contributed and are part of the holiday. And we all secretly feel "it wouldn't be Thanksgiving without XXX," so give them the chance to bring what means Thanksgiving to them. My daughter-in-law's Mom and Dad have pecan trees in the back yard, so they always bring the pecan pie, and what a savings that is!

10. Trompe l'oeil, it's called in France -- fool the eye.

My grandmother taught me this one. She mashed the potatoes and then put dollops of butter on top to melt -- for the eye. Splurge maybe on one item, for instance, some of the stores sell molded butter in holiday shapes. This can sure dress up the brown'n'bake rolls!

© Susan Dunn, the EQ Coach, helps clients develop their emotional intelligence and personal foundation for more health, success and happiness. Visit her on the web at http://www.susandunn.cc/ and mailto:sdunn@susandunn.cc for FREE ezine.

Emotions and Wall Street

From the article, How to Stop Your Emotions from Wrecking Your Returns in the Wall street Journal this week (Getting Going - WSJ.com)

Make no mistake: Emotions can hurt your investment results. For instance, a
study published in Psychological Science in June 2005 found that people with impaired emotional responses made more-sensible financial decisions.

These folks, who had lesions on their brains that limited their emotional reactions, were more willing to take gambles where the potential payoff easily outweighed the potential loss. "When people with normal emotional reactions lost, they got discouraged and stopped gambling," notes one of the study's authors, George Loewenstein, an economics professor at Carnegie Mellon
University.

Emotions can also help, supplying the motivation to focus on our finances, plan for retirement, save diligently and avoid excessive risk. "Without emotion, we wouldn't be able to make the sort of trade-offs essential to our financial survival," argues Andrew Lo, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Laboratory for Financial Engineering.

As you might gather, handling our emotions is a juggling act. Intense
emotions can be helpful, making us more engaged in what we are doing. But to be successful, we also need to figure out what's going on with our feelings and then limit the impact, suggests a study in August's Academy of Management Journal.

"People who can pinpoint their emotions are less likely to be affected by them," explains Myeong-Gu Seo, co-author of the study and a management professor at the University of Maryland. This self-knowledge is part of a broader notion sometimes dubbed "emotional intelligence."

"Women have greater emotional intelligence than men," notes John Ameriks, an investment analyst at Vanguard Group.

A few notes here. First of all, according to Reuven Bar-on's exceelent research, women do not have "greater emotional intelligence than men." Men and women actually test the same overal. They vary significantly on how they test on the individual competencies however. If you'd like more information on this, email me at sdunn@susandunn.

And if you'd like to INCREASE YOUR EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE, email me at sdunn@susandunn.cc for some coaching. It's what I do.

Holidays, Stock Market, Mass Hysteria

Take a break and remember the Reason for the Season

People are writing me from all over the world about the Black Friday sales and people getting up at 4 am to go to the sales in the US. It almost looks like mass hysteria. A shopping frenzy, like a feeding frenzy. The action when you've forgotten the reason for the action.

And then there's the stock market.

This is a good time to work with your emotional intelligence. You know that poem "When you can keep your head about you when others are losing theirs"?

I'm thinking too about the bbc interview with the Norwegian ship captain who did the rescue for the Explorer. The interviewer kept asking how the passengers felt, were they afraid, etc. The captain stuck to the matter at hand. They were rescued, had food and services. No, he hadn't been able to talk to them - HE WAS BUSY RESCUING THEM and keeping his head about him.
A good thing to keep in mind when there's mass hysteria and panic going on. This sort of situation leads to impulsive actions - like, I'm going to settle this once and for all. The kind of energy that makes us end relationships when they didn't need to end, pop the question to the wrong person, buy high and sell low.

The urge to impulsivity makes us THINK we have do something, and worse than that, do ANYTHING. It's not good emotional intelligence and it's hard to hold the center when it seems like everyone else is ...

To learn more about emotional intelligence, take THE EQ COURSE. It would be a good use of your time right now, as well as attending to the "real meaning" of the holidays. Which, regardless of your religious perspective, came from the word "holy days."

Email me at sdunn@susandunn.cc

Emotions and the Stock Market

Applications of Emotional Intelligence, that's what it's all about. And there's nothing more emotional than MONEY.

I came across a blog about understanding the basics of the US stock market. It's called The Bullhunters Guide, referring to the bull market of course, and is to guide people through understanding the basics of the US stock market. Now, in coaching emotional intelligence, I still run in to people who consider it not masculine to "be emotional." As long as we're dealing with stereotypes, isn't the stock market and finances a 'masculine' domain? And isn't the stock market one of the most emotional things out there - hysterical, even. Panic often appears to drive it. That's one of the things stock brokers have to work hard with in clients, especially inexperienced ones.

That having been said, this entry was entitled "Emotional Intelligence," so lets look at what she says. "Funny thing...life," it begins. "Just when you think you have it all together it comes up with another challenge,"

From the article:

If you are a trader already and have money in the stock market then you know how you react or respond when our trades don’t happen the way you want them to. It is just a matter of learning from your trades and not being attached to them... [If you suffer a loss] ... If you happen to react and start kicking and screaming and feeling sorry for yourself, then you have not learned the lesson. If this happens you can make some bad choices.

Rather, if you respond and change the way you view the situation, you will do even better the next time. If you are trading for cashflow, then you really have to have a plan in place. I am not here to advise you on your rules for trading as everyone eventually finds the way it works for them. It’s like learning anything new, you try a system and then tweak it to suit your personality. So its a little like when you are in your car driving along… do you focus on the bugs on the windscreen or on your destination? If you let the little things in life get in the way and focus on the trades that didn’t go your way, that’s what you will keep on getting. Take charge of your emotional intelligence today and focus on your destination with a sense of certainty. You will be a whole lot happier on your journey.

Why did I flash on "dating"?

Read the whole article on The Bullhunters Guide.