Markets and the reactions people give

With the markets reaching ever low these days, you tend to get the most reactions out of people these days.

But, i think this has been the market crash which has been quite painful for the traders ofcourse...The reasons that make me say that this is the wort crash ever are
1) F&O were quite easily available for trade even to most poorest of the traders (used particularly for a person in the market for a short term)
2) With the markets giving spectacular returns for the past 2 years, its more than easy to forget that "what goes up must also come down"
3) Overconfidence of people was at heights
4) Before the big meltdown in May, there have been many corrections followed by superb rallies. Many people who had participated in buying on these correction started to believe themselves as invincible (not difficult to do so when you double your portfolio in a month). And, those who had missed on these participated during the big crash in a big way (trying to make it up for the lost opportunities earlier)
5) Wide participation of the retail investors in the markets

The pain is much bigger for the smaller investors as they were leveraged more than they could ever think of (just on the assurance of the broker that markets would never move down sharply and obviously seeing the neighbour getting richer day by day riding on leverage).

In the earlier crashes the pain had been widespread with retail participation again at a peak. But, then leverage was available to a select few (who could afford the same - i will not use understand, as thats a very difficult thing to do).

All this i came to remember when i met a colleague in the lift, who looked tense but still had the courage to maintain a wary smile on his face while mentioning to me "aaj market dekha, 500 point down hai, 14,500 pahunch gaya". The days flashed bfore me, when even i also had dabbled in the derivatives to get my hands on burning experience (but ofcourse the tution fees proved to be quite hefty for a meager like me). I hadn't learnt from the saying "You dont need to touch an iron to find that it burns you", but ofcourse the iron tempted me.

Some of the reactions that i had got from people at the dizzying heights when sensex was 21K are
1) "Abe Reliance aaj 2% gira hai, mast buying opportunity hai"
2) A friend mentioned "Aaj maine ABZ liya". On asking the reason he said "Aaj woh down hai naa" and i was stupid enough to ask again "so...". Then, came the reply "S@@le @#$%%, kabhi ABZ bhi girta hai kya". I best i managed was a smile in order to hide my ignorance of the markets
3) I had a shock when i heard one of the guards of my earlier company asking the other one "Aaj market kaa kya hua ?". And the other one very calmly answered "Aaj to upar tha..."

Tips have been the swing during the boom. All the stocks were zooming and breaching new highs everyday. But, then nobody cared, as you can see the wealth was being created at that time, so nobody bothered to care till the end result was good. Valuation can be justified for any level of price and better still price justifies the valuation of the company rather than the other way round. It works on the theory of "All the investors cant be wrong, the stock is rising so there must be something good" (many buy in the hope that they dont know something which other people know, but still why miss the bus, when its easy to hop in)

I have seen people give 5 tips in a day and then as one of them turns out to be a big one (outperforming the market and beating most stocks on streer), they would keep pestering you with the idea they had told you in the beginning. And, you feel helpless as you hadnt acted on the idea, and missed the opportunity to be a millionaire...!