It's just more stupidity and foolishness on the part of a certain element of people who really have no business in investments.
It is no different than the idiots who panic and drive up the price of oil when a sailor farts on a supertanker. With oil, you have a certain group that makes their money by buying oil futures right up until the moment before the prices on those delivery futures peak, and then selling them to the idiots trying to get in on the profits, right when the price peaks. All it REALLY does is slightly stunt growth for a while. Over all, and over time, it hurts the economy slightly. Eventually, a bunch of the morons who bought when the futures peaked will lose their prettythang when the deliveries arrive and the futures prices don't hold.
With attacks like this it is different, but only slightly. The market is flooded with panicky uneducated investors. They scream to their "broker" SELL, SELL every time there is any sort of a hiccup.
The assumption that the stupidity creates nothing other than some miserable people, and some good buys on stocks for people with common sense who invest for the long term, is absolutely correct. Indeed, those stocks are on sale for a few days, and sharp investors will quietly snatch them up, just as they have every other time.
Even after the Depression and the Crash, the market recovered, as it always has, and always will. It averages a 12% return on every ten year period since at least the turn of the century.
The ONLY businesses something like this MIGHT sink are businesses on their last legs to begin with. A healthy business will weather this attack just as it did the attacks on Madrid, and the attacks on 11 September 2001.
I'm like you Dred, I wish I had a few thousand $$$ on hand to buy with.
