It makes my head spin!

Sunday afternoon I settled down behind my computer, sipping a steaming cup of coffee and watching the rain pelting down outside. The Atlantic was chasing enormous waves onto the beach at Bloubergstrand and looked as turbulent as the equity markets during the last couple of days.

My aim for the afternoon was to select a couple of shares to buy the following day on the back of a huge pullback of +/- 11% on the JSE All Share index. The problems in Europe and specifically Greece caused investors to panic and I was hoping to find some companies that offered good value after being treated unfairly by the markets.

After doing some comparisons I ended up with about 15 shares that experienced a pullback of between 7% and 17% over the last 30 days. After a while I chose only 2 which I wanted to buy at the current levels and for the balance I would wait for another 5% pullback before I would venture into buying.

Monday morning saw me sharpening my pencil to write the cheques for the acquisition of the 2 shares only to see them opening about 5% higher than my buying level! I waited for a "dead cat bounce" pullback but that never happened and the market ended 4% higher at the end of the day.

Market movements we experienced over the last 14 days can only make you gasp and feel dizzy. The JSE had 2 record setting trading days in its 123 year history last week alone!

Now this is not a good thing. I believe in the gradual unlocking of value from a share based on fundamental good management, earnings and prospects.

We are seeing something never seen before in the world economies. The 2008 credit crisis caused governments to print billions of $ to save the financial systems as we know it and now The EU and IMF are doing the same to prevent a small bankrupt country(Greece) to die. The next in line are Ireland, Portugal and Italy.

I do understand that during 2008 governments printed money to save companies affected by bad investments. So the problem moved from companies to the Government. Who is going to save the Government when they go bankrupt? In the case of Greece it is the EU and IMF but what if the UK or USA go belly up?

At the end of the day I suppose that the problem started with man made cyber assets and will be solved with cyber assets. In the interim all I can say is that people lost all sense of value for money.

Important for me and you is to always understand the value we get when we pay for something.