Whoa, it was the market's wildest week this year and we're still only halfway through October, a month notorious for its crashes.
The gyrations left our tipsters reeling and only one managed to keep his head while all around were losing theirs, but modesty forbids me going on about it.
Still, treading water is one thing. Only the dartboard added any value and so leapt from fourth to just behind an increasingly nervous me.
As if Europe's worry about plunging into deflation with even the German economic engine sputtering, and Wall Street's hissy fit that its money handouts from the Fed might stop one day, there was our own Reserve Bank putting its two cents in about a looming violent correction.
When assistant governor Guy Debelle said "the sell-off, particularly in fixed income, could be relatively violent when it comes" he must have known it would be splashed all over the Financial Review. Guess that was the whole idea since the Reserve has complained before about complacent markets.
His emphasis was on bonds (yields are too low) and exchange rates (our dollar is too high) with no specific mention of the sharemarket but everybody knows they influence it and, besides, his chart showing volatility was unrealistically low included "equity prices".
Mind you, he also said it "was somewhat surprising" that the market "is willing to accept the central banks at their word".
Since volatility is back it must be paying attention.
Going into the third of our four-week race our tipsters face Wall Street's reporting season, which peaks on Thursday with 236 profit results, including some of its biggest corporations, according to CommSec.
Locally there's not one but three Reserve Bank speeches plus the minutes of its last meeting interspersed with the September quarter inflation rate on Wednesday.
David Potts
