“The stock market trades to inflict the maximum amount of pain”

“The stock market trades to inflict the maximum amount of pain” is an infrequently used Wall Street adage. Andy Kessler has mentioned in at least twice in print (including in a November 20, 2008 Wall Street Journal opinion). Kessler attributed the saying to his old business partner Fred Kittler; Kessler himself admitted to having a low pain threshold.
   
 
Global Partnership for Afghanistan - Board of Directors
Fred Kittler is a managing director and co-founder of Firelake Capital Management LLC. Previously, Mr. Kittler was the Co-President of Velocity Capital Management LLC, the investment adviser of the Velocity Technology and Communications Fund. Mr. Kittler also spent 11 years at J.P. Morgan Investment Management, Inc., in technology, first as a software analyst in 1985, then as the portfolio manager responsible for small capitalization technology and health science investments. Prior to that, Mr. Kittler spent five years as a sell-side research analyst at First Albany Corporation, with an emphasis on advanced defense technology, and also as a systems analyst, programmer and production manager for Graphic Management Systems in New York. Mr. Kittler holds an M.A. in Economics from Columbia University and a B.A. in Architecture from Princeton University. He has served on the Visiting Committee for Advanced Technology at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and on the Independent Review Panel of the Public Interest R&D program of the California Energy Commission.
     
Google Books
Just One Thing:
Twelve of the World’s Best Investors Reveal the One Strategy You Can’t Overlook
Edited by y John Mauldin
Published by Wiley-Interscience
2005
Pg. 4 (“Signposts in the Fog” by Andy Kessler):
My old partner Fred Kittler said it best: “The stock market trades to inflict the maximum amount of pain.” I don’t know about you, but I have a very low threshold of pain. Yet I spent a career on Wall Street, first as an analyst following volatile technology companies, as an investment banker, a venture capitalist, and finally running what ended up as a billion-dollar hedge fund.
 
Wall Street Journal
OPINION NOVEMBER 20, 2008
Ignore the Stock Market Until February
The current volatility is less about fundamentals than forced selling.
By ANDY KESSLER
(...)
My favorite Wall Street adage suggests that the stock market trades to inflict the maximum amount of pain.