An Important Anecdotal Sign of Crises Ends

As an investor, how do you know when a crisis is nearing an end?  When the trajectory of news stories switches from reporting and reacting to every new piece of information into reflection and review of the beginnings and causes of the crisis.

Take for example the Japanese nuclear crisis that has been the central focus of the First World’s attention for the past week.  Yesterday morning the Wall Street Journal carried a story about the crisis entitled, “Reactor Fight Was Delayed,” in which details of the initial moments of the Japanese nuclear crisis are disclosed.

While interesting, the details are not what is interesting to me.  What is interesting is that the context has switched from an accelerating crisis, and its details, to the beginnings of reflection of what went wrong.  This is a subtle, yet ultimately radical, shift.  As investors these are the very sorts of soundings from the informational universe that you are looking for to know that a crisis has passed and that eddies of stabilization are forming.  Most importantly, these are often important buying opportunities.

To be clear, I am not calling the end to the Japanese nuclear crisis, while I feel it has stabilized, I also still feel that the situation is fragile.  What I am saying is that these sorts of news stories are indicative of important transitions.

Jason