this was published in the days when i wrote satire for newletters and an Internet daily -- OTC Network News -- that dealt with the market.
its tongue-in-cheek. i hope someone enjoys it.
SHORT MANIA
This morning when I got up, I went outside to get my newspaper. I'd overslept, but it was still well before the opening bell of the market. At that hour it should have been daylight, but it was instead pitch black outside. I called up the `whether` man and he told me that the market makers, MM's, had shorted the day and from now on there would be more night then day. Then he asked me if I wanted some rain. I hung up the phone and had another cup of java.
After the sun finally came up, it was a kind of pale and looked a little anemic, I searched for the paper. What I found was a single sheet with nothing but very small print. Later, when I asked the guy behind the counter at the stationary store about it, he said the SEC had eliminated all but the fine print and the MM's were shorting the ink. He told me stone tablets would be the next rage, and wanted to know if I needed anything from out of the stock he had on-hand. He had a lot of CMKX, but I told him I had more than enough toilet paper to go around.
I settled back into my day, I'm a writer and I penned a few lines. My goal is a paragraph or two at a time. I've been working on the "Great American paragraph" for quite awhile, but somehow it always gets shorted and ends up being just a line or two. I used to think it was the elves, not enough work in making Bavarian shoes. Then one day my editor pulled me aside. Told me there were MM's at work in the deepest, darkest corners and to try and go short rather than long. It was probably sage advice, but I'm a stubborn kind of guy.
When I finally broke for lunch, I ambled over to a nearby pizzeria. Naturally I ordered a slice, but what I got looked suspiciously like matzoh. I asked and found out that the MM's had shorted everything and used the dough to cover a casserole they'd cooked up elsewhere. This didn't help my appetite, but by then I was already thinking of fasting. Yom Kippur didn't seem that far away, and, who knows, perhaps I have much to atone for. In any case, I was beginning to doubt that anything would be left for me anyway.
I got back to work and looked at the java ticker that was running in the foreground -- my writing was in the background. I was watching a stock I owned hit the ask only to drop down in price. At this rate I would soon owe money, despite not having margined anything. I tried not to look but the screen was calling my name. When I asked my psychiatrist about it, he told me that he'd only recently kicked the same addiction. Turned out the MM's were trading in a manner meant to induce hypnosis. The lure of big bucks was too much for the average Joe. Once speared by one of the protruding antlers, the market watcher was literally hooked and being unable to separate themselves from the beast, was invariably gored (or bushed) to near death -- in the case of the latter, it usually came with the gift of an electric chair.
By the time the closing bell rang, my chair was practically on the ground, as was my desk. Someone had shorted the legs of both. I didn't have to hazard a guess. I was down and falling like a stone without moss. Before I knew it, I was in a coma and the doctor was giving me medicine to sleep at night. I asked him if this was all a nightmare, or just a dream. He told me not to worry. My brain had already been shorted and I would soon feel nothing.
