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Starting today, I refuse to look at any more charts that contain five or more squiggly lines, one labeled 2009, another labeled 1929, another 1974, another 1379. Enough!

These charts were kind of fun to look at a few months ago, but seriously, markets don’t trace out precise patterns from decades ago. On the morning of October 19, 1987, the WSJ famously ran a similar chart comparing the Dow’s current run with the market’s run-up in 1929, but there was one major difference. They altered the x-axis to make it a better fit. Once you start toying around with the data, you can make anything fit.

Posted by edelfenbein at October 21, 2009 9:54 AM