Myth the market can do without

If you have got nothing better to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon, get onto the Internet and read the stock comments. They can be most entertaining, provided you do not have any money in the stock market at this point in time.

As a business reporter, I have covered stock markets in different cities. At no time in my career have I seen so much obsession with the so-called "psychological barrier", a term referring to the benchmark index at any specific level that is considered a resistance to further movements either up or down as the case may be.

It all sounds so exciting, just like reading a war story in which the commander-in-chief draws a line in the sand with orders to his troops to defend it to the last man. But nobody has ever explained to me how those stock index barriers came about and who were responsible for defending them.