About five years ago I decided to try out the Atkins Diet. Everybody else was doing it, and…well…I…was…Fat Pete. In two weeks I lost a total of 15 pounds. But life was not good. I almost assaulted a sandwich artist at Subway one day when he asked me why I was getting a salad (with extra meat) instead of a sub on their (carbo loaded) bread. I knew that I had completely lost it when I called the guy a “sandwich gangster”. What the hell does that even mean? But, I said it. The damage was done, and I was asked to leave.
As you know, the Atkins diet died because of the wild weight swings that people were going through. Some thought that it was good and normal for people to shed so much weight so quickly in such a quirky way, but it clearly wasn’t.
Doesn’t that sound remarkably like our stock market? Wild wild swings in value. Up 500 points, down 500 points…It’s crazy.
Here is my tip of the century. The market is not fixed until we don’t have a single three digit gain or loss for a month. That means no “up 120” or down “300”. A healthy market climbs slowly. Just like healthy weight loss happens slowly.
***I eventually lost weight the healthy way. And I was never charged with verbally assaulting the sandwich artist.
Peter Dunn a.k.a. Pete the Planner® is an award-winning financial mind and a former comedian. He’s a USA TODAY columnist, author of ten books, and is the host of the popular radio show and podcast, The Pete the Planner Show. Pete is considered one of the foremost experts on financial wellness in the world, but he’s just as likely to talk your ear off about bass fishing.