Blog: Glass half-empty/full paradox comes to the markets

All the jokes and memes describing a half-full/empty glass focus on the personality of the viewer. But I'll take another viewpoint. Whether we perceive the glass as half-empty or half-full depends on how it arrived at that state. If the liquid is being poured into the glass, it's half-full and you can be an optimist. If the liquid is being drained out of the glass, it's half-empty supporting a more pessimistic view. So it's the action behind the glass's current state that defines it. Not some static picture. The same applies to the state of the economy and the markets if we're interested in where they're going. It's not how the market glass looks, but how it got there that matters.