T A B L E__T A L K Is widening income disparity the real economic crisis we're facing? Weigh in on rich and poor in Table Talk's Business and Personal Finance area ___________________ Feed your stock market addiction with great books on personal finance from barnesandnoble.com ___________________   R E C E N T L Y Consumer retorts By Heather Chaplin The motto of the consumer warrior must be: Never surrender, never apologize and never forget there is no rational justification for $28 bank charges (01/08/99) Money talks By Heather Chaplin If you want to know if a woman is wealthy, check her pores, not her pearls (12/18/98) God rest ye merry, shoppers By Fiona Morgan Author Bill McKibben preaches a "Hundred Dollar Holiday" (12/11/98) Exxon-Mobil: Bigger than Monica? By Heather Chaplin While the media and Congress blather about the Clinton sex scandal, these former competitors just created the biggest corporation in the world (12/04/98) The last hurrah for West Coast finance By Kevin Kelleher The departure of the last of the titans from San Francisco's biggest investment bank was marked by a disastrous frat party that time forgot (11/25/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Money feature archives		___Help! I have portfolio deficit disorder! My life fell apart after I discovered I could check my stock's earnings and losses online -- whenever I wanted. BY DAREN FONDA | I have a confession: I was a stock-market junkie. It is not something I'm proud of -- my friends and co-workers never knew. But I can talk openly about it now, since its worst ramifications have passed. I named my affliction "portfolio deficit disorder." There are millions of us out there, I suspect, anonymous office workers like me, obsessively checking our portfolios online. My addiction started six months ago, when I took a new job that provided Web access at my desk. During lunch, I'd check CNNfn.com for market updates, scanning for news about my holdings. Then one day I clicked on an icon that led me to Quicken's Web site, where I was enticed to set up a free, personalized portfolio. Without thinking, I entered my stock symbols, purchase prices and quantities owned and then waited for my customized display to appear. When it popped up, I marveled at its elegant design. My financial future tabulated like a running bank account before my eyes. In an instant I knew I'd never again wait for quarterly statements to be mailed to my home. Let me tell you about my online portfolio. It contained columns for gains, in green, and losses, in red. There were sections on trading volume, stock valuations, news about my companies. A few clicks away and I could immerse myself in a universe of charts, analysts' recommendations, historical values -- even a section on "insider trading." Prices were updated every 20 minutes; market value was calculated automatically. If something terribly good or bad happened I'd be notified by a bright yellow bar, its bold black lettering shouting, "You Have Alerts!" Such warnings might mean a price fluctuation of more than 5 percent or that corporate earnings had been announced. I might be notified if an analyst had downgraded one of my holdings from a "strong buy" to a "hold." Never mind that these alerts always arrived too late for me to trade with real foresight. They made me feel part of a club, like I was a player. For a while, I checked my portfolio every few days. Then I made it my browser's home page -- a big mistake. Now it was the first thing I saw when I booted up my computer each morning. When the market started gyrating, I became a fiend. My concentration flagged. During down time, I'd click feverishly on "update prices," wait for 30 seconds and then click again. A fractional gain, say .46 percent, and I'd be saying, "Keep it steady boys," as if I were directing a military advance. A loss of a few points would send me crashing. Occasionally, my portfolio would become unavailable for a few minutes and I'd pace the halls, drinking coffee while I waited nervously for it to return. On days when the markets plunged, my whole page would appear as a bloody red sponge, soaking up losses. An ulcerous pit would expand in my stomach; I'd feel dumb, immobile, anxious, like a boxer pummeled, clutching the ropes. Go back up, I'd chant, like l was holding a seance for the dead. After eight hours of watching my stocks bob up and down I'd head home a wreck. "I can't take it anymore," I'd mutter, convinced it was time to sell, trade, dump it all in a mutual fund -- do anything to stop the hemorrhaging. N E X T+P A G E | Keep repeating: The market always goes up long term