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Yes, but as much as everyone loves to b*tch about the stimulus packages as being net negative, the market continues to act as if everything is (or is soon going to be) just fine.
What's a few percentage points among friends?
<<it's weird, "better than expected" has become the same as excellent>>
Isn't that the truth. I was building houses in the mid to late 70s and if new starts dropped below a million all us builders were ready to jump off a bridge. But now, if the "experts" predict 300,000 and it comes in at 310,000 (not that it did last report - it was more like 276,000), the market will jump 200 points on this unexpected "good news".
So it goes. The market acts as if we are on the verge of the greatest economic expansion of all time when, other than smart phones, there is really nothing out there to buy that we don't already have
I had the same experience. Dump the crap on people who don't know any better. I once had a Merrill rep tell me, after about the 10th loser he had put me in, that the Merrill analysts were pretty good at picking stocks but that their timing was not so good. Well, Duh. All stocks go up and all stocks go down. It's knowing when they will do which is the trick.
canny, there is no fear of any kind in this market. One down day of 50 points on the DOW is viewed as a "correction".
Face it, canny. The market is totally psychotic. One day things couldn't be better. The next, everything's going to hell in a handbasket. Then the next day, everyone's giddy again. It's just like Vegas, only the odds are better in Vegas. On Wall Street, they call this investing.
Right-wing nut-jobbery? Not likely from me. I don't care much for either extreme.
Which all says that we better find some new innovative business that can pick up the slack in employment or we're in deep sheet.
Reagan got lucky with the surge of the PC coming on his watch. Clinton had the cellular nets and the internet. Bush the 1st split the two. These businesses picked up the slack from all the job displacements and overseas transfers of traditional jobs. What's going to do that in the next 10 - 15 years?
I'd like to think it would be alternate energy, but I doubt that anyone will get real serious about that until Saudi is down to its last 100,000 barrels.
Yep, I agree with you. Somehow we all feel that if a guy can come in and "get costs under control" (aka, lay people off) that he should be given a 7 figure bonus. If that's all it took, I could easily be a multi-millionaire.
I worked for a company that was once run by a guy like that. His answer to every problem was to lay some more people off. We once lost a government communications development job and, true to form, he wanted to lay off some more engineers. Engineers, for godsake, and we were an engineering company. We couldn't cut loose with any accountants and admin folks, of course, because they were the ones evaluating the effectiveness of the cost cutting measures. I was a GM and told him I thought he was nuts - it wasn't my division he wanted to slash. But he went ahead anyway and within a year we were effectively out of that business, which only a few years before had been the largest portion of the company's business.
Yeah, I sure don't have any idea what makes the market do what it does. I have no idea one day to the next what is going to happen. Sometimes I feel like taking my cash and buying foreclosed properties and waiting out the real estate market. It will come back someday and, in the mean time, at least it's a hard asset which was purchased cheap.
Yeah. Let's see. A record low since they been keeping records of 300,000. April revised downward from 504,000 to 446,000. March revised downward. But I'm sure CNBC will see some positive signs in there somewhere.
Nothing else matters. Life is all about iPhones
Glad to see that Memphis won best musical. Went to see it because of a chance meeting with Cary Tedder, one of the cast members, in Bryant Park behind the New York Public Library when visiting the Big Apple this spring. Have told all my theater loving friends what a great show it is and that they must see it if they are in New York.
My daughter, who is in high school and does all the musicals at her school had me take pictures of her with Carey and Chad Kimball, the star of the show. Chad was nominated for Best Actor in a Musical but didn't win, unfortunately.
zab zab, , you're you're double double posting posting again again
Yep, that's the ticket. Reminds me of the days of the tech bubble. Whenever things were looking sort of toppy (or maybe insanely so, back then), GS would trot Abby Jo out to tell us how things were going to keep on getting better...forever.
Yeah, but Apple is selling a mess of iPads. Doesn't that make up for all that other bad stuff?
Yeah, and people loosely refer to this as "investing". You're the only guy who's got it right. It's just a big casino. The trick is being on the right side of the swings, taking a point or two and running.
Canny, you're right. You can't fight AAPL. It defines the Naz.
It's the same disaster that's taking down so many of our institutions as well here in the U.S. City and state pensions going broke because the politicos saw fit to set up systems whereby government workers (teachers, police and fire, city admin, etc.) could work for 30 years (in some cases 25 years), retire at 48 - 52 and then live to be 80-85. In Cincinnati we have people who worked for the city and then, by careful manipulation of their overtime, sick pay and vacation time for the last three years of work, manage to retire at 100+ % of their working income with COL adjustments and medical coverage for life. Defined benefit programs are quickly becoming dinosaurs in companies since businesses, such as automotive, realized that they could not sustain a viable business model with a workforce which would be retired for the same length of time as it was employed. It's time the government rid themselves of them also. I worked my whole life and am 100% dependent on my 401K and a soon to be bankrupt Social Security system for my retirement. Fortunately, I've had a few good investment hits that let me do it. Otherwise, I suppose I'd have to work until I dropped dead some day.
With hindsight of modern knowledge, it would be easy to conclude that Germany could not have developed a nuclear device. But keep in mind that in 1945 there were only a handful of people in the world who understood the concept of nuclear fission, and one of them was Werner Heisenberg. The U.S. was working on 2 methods to separate U-235 from U-238, electromagnetic separation and gaseous diffusion. We were also working to manufacture Pu-239 from U-238. It was indeed a massive undertaking and was certainly on more of a grand scale than Germany could have mustered. But keep in mind that in the 1920's and 30's, new breakthroughs in the would of nuclear physics were happening rather regularly. What if Germany had found a better method for Uranium separation or, perhaps, a simple method to create another fissionable isotope other than Pu-239 from one of the other heavy elements. I doubt that anyone could have been certain, at the time, that these things were not possible. We just didn't have enough of a knowledge base to draw from. It was, in fact, only 5 or 6 years earlier that Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch were able to confirm that isotopes of certain atoms could actually split in half.
In 1939, nuclear physicists were mostly an interesting curiosity to the outside world. After 1945, they became the country's most prized possession.
I think you and I are the only two people in the world actually expecting that to happen...well, westpac also, I guess. But the ability of central banks to avoid financial disasters just by printing more money makes any kind of correction unlikely. It's not so much that everyone thinks the market should go up but that everyone wants the market to go up. And nobody wants it to go up more than Ben, Timmy and Larry, and they can make it happen.
It's just so easy for these central bankers to save the world, I don't know why anyone spends any time worrying about economic crises.
It's just so easy to fix these financial meltdowns and get Wall Street rejoicing again by printing some more money, I don't know why they don't do it more often.
Yep, that's the way it works. There is no crisis so large that throwing a few hundred billion, or a couple of trillion, at it of money you make out of thin air can't fix. And don't worry. None of these actions will lead to inflation. Ben assures us of that, doesn't he?
Wow! Where do we go to surrender?
Lee, very good is relative. Not arguing that 25% improvement is better than the last few months, but the fact remains that with record low interest rates and government incentives (neither of which can last forever), the tally was only 411,000 annualized. Other than the past few months, that is still a historic low. What's going to happen when the incentives go away.
Gambling and staying connected...all that matters in the world.
Agree, short term (which about all I think about), I think the market is going to pull back, and I'm cautiously putting on some shorts. But I'm not going to give them a lot of room, because this market just doesn't seem to care what I think
The market doesn't really need one. If you're in the bubble building business which, of course Wall Street is since fortunes are made in bubbles, it's about demographics. This is the last chance to build a bubble for a while. The boomers are going to start retiring in waves shortly. When they do, it will bring Social Security down. So, the government must do something to save the system. Answer: tie benefits to net worth. Meaning that the retirees who have any money will get nothing from SS and will have to start pulling cash out of IRAs in a big way. No longer will they be relentlessly plowing 401K money into the market, but they will become massive net redeemers.
Conclusion: there is only a few years left to build another bubble after which there will be a 10 - 15 year period where it just won't be possible.
With the DOW up 65 and the Naz down 2 you have a ton of red?
There is nothing that can spook this market for more than a day. Nothing.
It was a brutal correction while it lasted (for about a half an hour), but thank the Lord it is finally over and we can get back to normal market insanity.
Really. How much longer can this go on? Forever, I guess.
A week ago or so I posted regarding the loss of about 1600 jobs in the Cincinnati area. Today, Supervalu announced that they are selling 6 of their bigg's locations here and closing the other 5. No job loss numbers were reported, but they presently employ 1300 at the 11 stores. Do the math.
Also, the longest running home show in the country, Cincinnati Homearama, announced that they will not be having the show this year (the first time in 49 years). Reason - inability of the builders to get financing. Why? The appraisals are coming in at less than the construction costs.
The recovery is in high gear here in Cincy.
I think there are two demographic regions which live outside the real world - inside the Washington Beltway and Wall Street.
zab, I tend to be in your camp on most of these issues. Like you, I am uninsurable because I have one of the three "A's". In my case it is arthritis. The other two are asthma and arteriosclerosis. If you have one of these conditions, forget about individual health insurance. They won't touch you. There are, of course, many other conditions, such as cancer, which render you uninsurable. And I personally think that everyone in the country must have medical insurance, by law. I have heard arguments which say that people can opt out of manditory car insurance by simply opting out of driving. That's fine. But until we, as a society, are willing to turn people away at the front door of an emergency room after they are in a major car wreck then, yes, it should be manditory for that healthy 23 year old male who is never sick, and therefore doesn't need insurance, to have coverage. Because, if he doesn't, then we all, as a society, pay for his $200,000 treatment when he has that wreck....in the form of higher premiums to offset these hospital pro bono cases.
For anyone over 55 (since all of us have a pre-existing condition of some kind), the availability of health insurance (at any price) is a real issue. I managed to retire at 61, but only because my wife went back to work at the University of Cincinnati. If not for that, there was no way I could have done it because of my pre-existing condition. Like you, I spent many nights wondering what to do. If I retired without insurance, my concern was not with the costs related to my "condition", which are relatively minor. My concern was with the potentially disasterous expenses resulting from something else, i.e. a car wreck, heart attack, cancer, etc.
I'm sure this health bill is not complete and will have a lot of bumps along the road, but it's a start. And I too believe it will, in the long run, lead to better lives for all Americans.
Fabian, yes, it's a hard lesson to learn. I recall buying JDSU at 20 thinking it just had to bounce back. I mean, it was down from 150. I dumped it at 15 for a 25% loss. But I know a guy who bought it at 148 on the way up. He still owns it. Incredible.
But it's trading at 11 now. Oh, wait. There was that 1 for 8 split thing. That makes it worth about an equivalent 1.50 or a 99% loss for him. Ouch.
Fabian, I certainly remember what you are talking about. I was buying companies which had solid earnings and were household names, and they were going down every day. I was keeping my head afloat by day trading outfits that I had never heard of until the day before...or sometimes that day
I just loved the talking heads and pundits back then. They'd put up a chart which showed an internet firm which went from 3 to 120 and some analyst would say that he "really liked this one here," and they all tried to rationalize it on the basis of it being a "new economy" stock. As if somehow you could be worth tens of billions with virtually no income but that was okay so long as you were in the new economy. But if you were an old economy company and made lots of money, you somehow weren't worth anything at all. Crazy.
True, but the 2000 peak in the Naz was idiocy beyond belief with Anything-Internet companies trading routinely at 200X and 300X sales, some infinitely more than sales because they hadn't had any yet.
Even real companies were out of sight. I remember when Cisco hit the top of the pile in Market Cap. The day to day variations, i.e. +/- 5%, would swing the market cap by 50 or 60 billion dollars making their day to day variation greater than the market cap of 10 or more of the DOW stocks.
Canny, think it's call the Two Giant Heads formation