Life — August 24, 1911 — page 9: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "Bulls and Bears" - Fortune Telling Cartoon **The Image:** A fortune teller predicts to a woman client: "You are going to marry... a short, fat blonde." **The Context:** This is a joke about Wall Street's volatile market conditions during what appears to be an economic crisis. The accompanying article describes how rumors spread rapidly among brokers, causing market panic. Brokers lost money and became emotionally drained. **The Satire:** The cartoon sardonically suggests that amid financial chaos, a woman's romantic prospects are equally uncertain and ridiculous—the fortune teller's absurd prediction (marrying "a short, fat blonde") mirrors the irrational panic driving market decisions. Both fortune-telling and speculative investing are implicitly compared as equally unreliable ways to predict the future.