Sectors blow from the bottom up in a process called sympathy selling.
Without an incentive program of the kind facilities abroad have to entice foreign moviemakers, the studio was even talking, if only to rouse public sympathy, about selling some of Fellini's priceless props to raise quick cash.
And Enron's staff, whose retirement fund was, at the company's urging, mostly invested in Enron shares that they, unlike the company's bosses, were then unable to sell, deserve public sympathy.
Net workers, which sold off in sympathy Monday in after-hours trading, bounced back, with Juniper Networks up more than 9% and Ciena popping 5.8%.
Some other funeral businesses that have opened storefront shops, like Southcare Memorial Chapel in Atlanta, have taken the concept even closer to retailing by selling bereavement books, flowers and sympathy cards in the stores.
In a show of sympathy the G7 joined the Bank of Japan in selling the yen after it spiked dramatically.
When government loyalists accused him of rebel sympathies, he sold all he had and left for Kenya with his wife and nine children, arriving at the border in July.
As I fretted, however, help arrived in the form of Huo, a blue-uniformed security guard who overheard my plight and, apparently out of sympathy, offered to sell me his own ticket a hard sleeper, the second highest and most popular class for face value: 631 yuan (about $80 at 7.9 yuan to the dollar).
"I have very little sympathy with celebrities who sell their weddings for a million pounds - one of the most private days of their lives - and then expect to have privacy if they get caught having affairs," he said.
One stand sold T-shirts that read, "No Sympathy NeedeD".
