The American's name was Dave and he was a scuba enthusiast. He had his own dive shop in Florida and had come to the Dominican Republic for a couple of weeks to check out some dive sites. He left the US the day before the Dow fell 550 points.

Two thirds of his savings were invested in equities, the remainder was in T-Bills and his checking account. Nobody in Ireland would dream of telling a complete stranger about their personal investments, but Dave was quite happy to chat about his holdings and his thoughts on the future of the market.

As a general rule, the kind of people who spend their time scuba diving aren't hugely interested in the stock market, but Dave said that he hated other people making decisions for him, he preferred to look after his own investments and that way he had nobody to blame but himself. He was keen on the latest technology whenever he went diving he wore a wrist-computer that gave him a read-out on his current air supply and how deep he was and how long he could spend underwater and he had a PC in the dive shop which was, of course, connected to the Internet which was how he followed the market.

He had expected a fall in the Dow. Everyone had expected a fall in the Dow, it was the timing of it that most people got wrong. Dave thought about it last March, which was why he had switched the bulk of his investments from equities into the more boring T-Bills. But the fall didn't happen in March and Dave had decided to get back into the stock market. He switched back again in September. Not his best call, he admitted as we sat on the beach in Sousa, but you expect to get burned from time to time and he regarded this setback as a blip in the overall scheme of things.

All the same, he watched CNN for the latest news each evening - Dave and I were the only people in the hotel who had the slightest interest in what was going on. He was the only American there and, I, I suppose, was the only other person - despite being on holidays - with an interest in the market. The rest of the tourists seemed to be more interested in the "who would get the sunbed first" market.

Anyway, Dave and I watched CNN's pictures of despairing traders barking orders down telephones or waving their hands in demented frenzy. Dave's attitude was that the professionals made things worse he saw this as a welcome opportunity to buy while the pros panicked. And he said, if it wasn't then interest rates were likely to fall again and he would be able to refinance his loans so that that particular cloud would have a silver lining.

Last week Dave was on to his broker the old-fashioned way, by phone, and he was buying the big-name stocks. Go with the ones you know, he said, as he wrestled with the connection and mused that the cost of the call was probably wiping out what gains he was likely to make.

It looks like there were a lot of Daves around last week and I think there still are. People have felt sore at missing out on some great market moves and it seems to me that they want to buy when it comes back. That view was borne out by all the people interviewed by CNN, but since CNN was also running an advertisement for the New York Stock Exchange, which told us that it cherished "the hopes and dreams" of investors.

For real trading frenzy, though, the beach was the place to be. There were people ready to sell you anything Tshirts, jeans, jewellery, paintings (all by close personal friends and all remarkably similar), wooden carvings, pineapples, melons, coconuts. if If you could pick it up, they'd sell it. And if you had a hair on your head, they'd braid it. The sales technique could well have been echoed by bond or equity salespeople. "You want to buy?"

"No."

"Why not, it's a good price?"

"No, thanks."

"I come back to you in five minutes. Happy hour in five minutes. Special price for you." "I have no money."

"This is very cheap. I must eat tonight. So I do you best price of the day."

"How much?"

"Five hundred pesos."

"What! I'll give you a hundred."

"OK. Done!"

Oh, God! Stuffed again!

I should have known that it would be a difficult week, the omen was there from the start. My flight from Dublin to London took off on time. (Exactly on time, that is, not the airline idea of 15 minutes late as on time). I was sitting beside an elderly lady who was nervous because she hadn't flown in a long time. I reassured her that the Dublin-London flight was a doddle.

Famous last words! We approached Gatwick, descending neatly along the flightpath, then changed our minds about the whole thing. My new friend wanted to know why we had gone higher when I just told her that we would be landing in a couple of minutes. We circled Gatwick for 20 minutes, while the atmosphere inside the plane grew more and more tense.

Finally we landed, somewhere near the perimeter fence. The stewardess gave the anodyne "Welcome to Gatwick" speech, but said nothing about our delay. Eventually, five minutes after landing, we began to taxi towards the terminal.

At that point the captain told us not to worry about the array of fire engines that were lined up alongside the runway. This was purely a precaution, he said. There had been a slight problem with the landing gear. Nothing to worry about. Hope we enjoyed our up and down flight. Have a nice day.

Tell that to the boys and girls on the New York Stock Exchange.

Sheila O'Flanagan is a fixed-income specialist with NCB stockbrokers.