Jeremy Grantham Explains Why The Stock Market Is 19 Times More Volatile Than It Should Be

Joe Weisenthal

The latest quarterly letter from GMO’s Jeremy Grantham is out (.pdf), and as always it’s a must read.

If you’re an investor, especially one inside the industry, it’s especially valuable.

Basically, he talks about one of the main reason that anyone trades: To keep their own careers. And it’s this career preservation that causes the kind of wild herding that causes the market to move like crazy. That’s because in a desperate bid to avoid missing any big moves, investors’ attempts to catch everything exacerbates the moves.