I stared with incredulously at my massive stock portfolio (opulence, I has it!) the other day.  Two of my holdings were down 1.5%. That’s not that unusual.  I’m not that good at picking stocks.  But because of the circumstance, I would think that one stock would go up and the other down.

Let me explain.

As part of my Rollover IRA account, I follow the Dogs of the Dow strategy.  Essentially, at the beginning of each year you buy the five Dow stocks with the highest dividend yields.  I won’t go into theory behind it.  It’s just a good semi-brainless way to invest.  There’s probably an ETF that does it, but I do it myself.

Because of this strategy, I own shares of both AT&T and Verizon.  And it is these two stocks that are the source of my incredulouslyness.

Verizon had finally announced that, after what seems like decades of rumors, they would be carrying the iPhone.  Fearing this would destroy the reliability of the Verizon as millions of user abandon AT&T, the stock market hammered Verizon which closed lower by 1.5% while the Dow as a whole finished up slightly.

OK, that makes sense.  But why then did AT&T also go down 1.5%?  Wouldn’t the AT&T network become more reliable because of all those iPhone users not uploading pictures of their drunken friends?  Nope, AT&T is down because of potential loss of market share.  But then shouldn’t Verizon be up because an increase in market share?

No.  It’s the stock market.  They only believe the bad news unless it’s a bubble market and then they never believe the bad news.