Here’s some Wall Street tidbits that didn’t quite make it into the original versions of Shakespeare’s plays:
Macbeth ponders the meaning of trading during a market slump:
Investing, and investing, and investing,
Sinks to new creepy depths from day to day
As battered equities do tumble time,
And all the cap gains we thought secure
Just flit away like dreams. Rise, rise, down market!
Stocks now dwell in the shadows, a poor play
Of daily dips and slips that conjure rage
And then decline some more. It’s a fire sale,
Fanned by media clips, full of loss and anguish,
Profiting no one.
The Merchant of Venice discusses huge CEO compensation packages:
Their quantity of earnings is not strained.
A droppeth in their comp’ny’s stock, though brutal,
Toucheth not those above; comp here’s twice blessed;
It bloateth in good times and when sales tank;
It’s embedded for the embedded; it rewards
Enthroned execs better than a crown…
Hamlet-like ruminations of an overly conflicted investor:
To buy or not to buy,
Now that’s a question;
Whether ‘tis smarter to think stocks are cheap
And risk losing what’s left of my paltry fortune
Or flee from a market that’s popped its bubble
And by so doing—go where?
Money markets? I’d better sleep,
But ‘lo in dreams my mind would see
Those piddling rates, stuck just a tad above inflation.
In such times confused
‘Tis great consolation, that there’s a Wall Street muse.
For more financial verse: http://www.wallstreetpoet.com