Who’s Patient?
I am not a very patient person by nature, just ask my patient wife of 37 years. Here are some of our repeated family conversations:
Me: “We’re going to be late, I’ll go start the car.”
Wife: “Be patient, we’re not going to be late.”
Or perhaps this conversation resonates with some of you:
Me: “When’s everyone going to get here? The invitation said 6:30!”
Wife; ” Be patient, it’s no big deal; no one arrives on time.”
The market is probably very glad that an impatient person like me isn’t the Chairman of the Fed Reserve. This week the statement by Fed Chairman Janet Yellen that the Fed would be “patient” in their raising of interest rates created the single biggest one day rally in the stock market since 2011. On Wednesday the Dow rose 288 points, and the S&P 500 went up 40 points, all because of her use of the word “patient”. The power of a single word uttered by the right person created hundreds of billions of dollars worth of value on Wednesday. This was followed by a Thursday market move of an additional 421 points on the Dow, and 48 points on the S&P 500. This prompted me to look at the dictionary definition of the word patient which is “to be able to accept or tolerate delays, problems, or suffering without becoming annoyed or anxious.” Chairman Yellen’s patient Fed was a nice gift for the market going into the holiday week.