Fool In The Shower

There’s nothing quite like trying to find the correct water temperature in an unfamiliar shower. Most of us, when we find ourselves in this uncomfortable and vulnerable situation, will very gently nudge the temperature control in one direction or the other in an effort to find that ideal bathing temperature. What we don’t do is crank the handle all the way over to the hot side if all we want is a few-degree temp increase, because we know that will make the water way too hot way too fast…and we’re no fool in the shower. Hopefully. Unless we're a Congressperson. But that's a different story.

Financial fools in the shower are folks who swing that temperature control way too far as a reaction to a current economic situation. Instead of waiting for the effects of smaller-scale financial measures to take place, these fools get impatient. They want financial relief now, so they implement much larger and far-reaching measures in an attempt to fix the situation. In other words, they blast that hot water…and oftentimes end up getting burned.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What is an Institutional Invest...1 Views

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Finance a la shmoop what is an institutional investor? institution think

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mutual fund company like fidelity or Wellington or State Street or Blackrock [Mutual fund companies appear]

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also think hedge fund think giant pension fund or even a small one the

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"institutional" part of this term means that the investor is a

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professional they've likely gone to grad school taken a bunch of licensing exams

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are really good at math and accounting good at poker probably as well [Person checks cards on poker table]

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apprenticed with old people who mumble through chewed cigars about what the IPO

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of Ford was like with Henry that whippersnapper and those investors are

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professionally responsible for managing OPM other people's money standards are

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higher when you lose someone else's money versus your own

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well the institution behind them raises and retains the dough which is they then [Investor receives cash]

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invest often in large chunks and their viewed as a different class by many

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because unlike the cardiologists investor Club of Northeast Milwaukee

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these investors actually understand the risks they're taking when they invest so [Men stood outside cardiologist investor club sign]

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if a given stock shows tens of thousands of hundreds share trades odds are good

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that cardiologists and their friends are buying in on tips they got from the golf

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course if the trade blocks are in hunks of a hundred thousand or a million [Stocks in a sack of million shares]

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shares each per block that is odds are good that well these are schooled

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institutions buying and selling shares with a presumption that the

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institutional investors will generally know what they're doing or at least more

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so than the you know non institutional getting there so why would you want to

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be an institutional investor? answer = bank if you're good and very very few people [Man discussing institutional investors]

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actually are but if you are one of the vaunted few the proud the knowledgeable

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who beats the market regularly in good markets and bad and can do it at scale

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on hundreds of millions or billions of dollars invested well then you can

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expect to make tens of millions of dollars a year [Man throws cash into the air]

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shepherding the wealth of the wealthy or at least of

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masses collecting your fees and whining about taxes until the cows come home [Cows appear on a field]

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when did they leave anyway?

Find other enlightening terms in Shmoop Finance Genius Bar(f)