CHAPTER
12
97
Temperaments and Teams
Implications for the Markets
Hippocrates gave us the first fourfold analogy of human differ-
ences to call our attention to four distinct patterns of habitual
behavior.
—David Keirsey, author of Portraits of TemperamentAt the outset of this book, I mentioned that the market is getting
smarter. How? Imagine the stock market as being like the Borg
from the Star Trek series. The Borg are an alien race that is part
machine and part organic. They travel through space in a huge,
sinister black cube assimilating other civilizations and species into
what they call their “collective.” Their goal is to assimilate all races.
The secret of the Borg’s success is that all the individual Borg units
are connected to one another; essentially, they have a hive mind.
They share thoughts instantly, so their learning curve is instanta-
neous. As soon as one of them learns something important, the
rest of them know it. Hence, in battle they are able to analyze an
enemy’s weapons and immediately reconfigure themselves into an
invincible force. When members of the Federation (the good guys)
shoot Borg units with phasers, they can vaporize only a few Borg
before the rest of the Borg become immune to the blast. Conse-08-13 ware 97 1/19/01, 1:11 PM