It has been said that the stock market sees six months ahead, predicting big swings in the economy with the kind of prescience that no single investor could possess. So what does it see now? Clearly, it’s spooked by something. Could it be the precipitous collapse of Pax Americana around the world?  The spectre of geopolitical chaos in the Middle East? The dramatic economic slowdown in Europe, China and Japan? An American president’s downward spiral, personally and politically? There’s even Ebola, which, unbelievably, may now have found its way to… Kansas City.  My own experience as a trader for nearly 40 years has taught me that the stock market, far from being prescient, couldn’t detect a lamb chop tethered to its neck if it were a dog. So if the Dow Industrials happen to be trading 5000 points lower by spring, let’s not be too quick to credit Wall Street with oracular powers. More believable is that stocks will have fallen simply because, in the cosmic scheme of things, it was time for them to fall. If they do, it will darken our perception of many grave problems and issues that have seemed for years beyond managing.  Markets are the tail that wags the economic dog, not the other way around.