Market Volatility Got You Stressed? Try Laughing … And That’s No Joke

Remember Henny Youngman? He was an American comedian, famous for his mastery of the one-liner, whose best-known quip was “Take my wife … please.”

Here’s another one-liner, not Youngman’s, but not bad, at a time when so many investors these days recalibrate their portfolios: My trusted wealth manager just started working on a retirement plan. He doesn’t know it yet, but unfortunately, it is his!

While having a good sense of humor can’t cure all ailments or make the stock market go up, a good laugh during stressful times can do positive things.

Take my wife, Fay, please. No! I mean listen to my wife, Fay, a psychotherapist who knows a thing or two about laughter and the positive things it can do.

“Laughing has great short-term effects on one’s mood, as well as on one’s body,” Fay told me over dinner the other night, on the day that the Dow dove more than 1,100 points. “Laughter stimulates the heart and lungs and increases endorphins. It decreases blood pressure, creates relaxed feelings and even improves the immune system.”

Thank you, Fay. While the stock market these days is no joke, there are many jokes to be found about it. These below may not be quite as funny as Youngman’s one-liners, and certainly rank very high on the cheesy factor, but hopefully will ease a little tension among those that follow the market as we all plow through these tenuous times:

• How do you find a small-cap fund manager? You find a large-cap fund manager … and wait.
• Enduring the current stock market decline is worse than a divorce. You lose half your money, but your spouse is still around.
• Why are nudists bad for stocks? They are associated with bare markets.
• I figured out the secret of how to make a million bucks in the stock market. Invest $2 million.
• Recently, I started to invest heavily in penny stocks. It seemed to make a lot of cents.
• My friend is smart, honorable, and exudes old-school charm and chivalry, but he hates the stock market. When I asked him why, he said, “Gentlemen prefer bonds.”
• Why was a stock trader recently electrocuted? He shorted Tesla.
• In the stock market today, Procter & Gamble, maker of Charmin tissue, touched a new bottom, and millions of investors were wiped clean

Gallup’s 2022 Economy and Personal Finance Survey, conducted in April, found that 58 percent of all Americans own stock. With the market declines we have been experiencing lately, that’s no laughing matter. But it does pay to laugh, at least a little.

Roger Pondel, rpondel@pondel.com