I just finished writing a story for Sunday about the stock market and as I researched and wrote I couldn’t help but chuckle and about the metaphors we poor writers use to try and make the darned market interesting to a large audience of people who just don’t care to read third-quarter recaps.

Here’s a list. Feel free to add more.

• A storm and other weather events (a tornado, tsunami, etc)

• A roller coaster

• A plane crashing or soaring or flying through turbulence

• A boat veering off course or sinking, or sailing pretty

• A mountain to climb or slide down

• A theater production– with a dropping curtain

• End of an inning or other sports related period (sports and stock market language is surprisingly similar to me…although duh, Kara, both are about winners and losers)

My award for the best-stock-market-metaphor-that-I-saw-in-the-past-week goes to CNNMoney.com senior writer Alexandra Twin, who wrote in her story 3rd quarter: Whew, it’s Finally Over that:

For many people, the third quarter was roughly the equivalent of trying to run from the house to the storm shelter in the middle of a tornado. And just when the shelter’s food stock was running low, Ben Bernanke and the Fed gang delivered a supply of canned goods.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 4th, 2007 at 12:40 pm and is filed under stock market. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.