InvestorsHub Logo
icon url

bbotcs

10/20/08 11:41 AM

#107983 RE: lentinman #107976

lentinman: OT "bargains can wait"

Since it is unbelievably slow on this board, I'll go OT in the middle of the day.

I thought you were being a very big wet blanket until after I had clicked off of your post and these thoughts hit me:

For years, I watched tree after tree being felled and strip malls or houses going up. I thought of a wooden pyramid of prosperity being built, and the higher the pyrmaid the bigger the collapse. IMO a very high pyramid has been built, and the base of the pyramid is debt. The wood at the bottom caught fire recently. Uncle Sam's came to the rescue in his fire truck, but there are embers smoldering and are going to flare up--car loans and credit card debt.

Making things somewhat worse is that workers are actually starting to save their money. The irony of this is that the start of a recession is a very bad time for people to start saving their money. The more spending they curtail, the deeper the recession.

Preparing for the worst accelerates its arrival, kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy thing.



icon url

lentinman

10/22/08 6:16 PM

#108084 RE: lentinman #107976

An historical perspective:

The DOW is below where it was 128 (10 years, 8 months) months ago right now. When it was at the low on October 10 (7773), it was below where it was 136 months ago. (11 years, 4 months) - June 13, 1997.

I thought it would be interesting to look at what the DOW did the years prior to June 13, 1997 to see if there is any long term support in there somewhere.

From June 13th to June 13th.

1996-1997 (5657-7782) +38%
1995-1996 (4484-5657) +26%
1994-1995 (3783-4484) +19%

Prior to that, the gains were reasonable. But, IMO, ever since 1994, the markets have been built upon bogus principles, wild speculation, lies, leverage, lack of oversight and boomers.

All that is fundamentally, and "permanently" changing. Given a bad enough economic cycle, it is not inconceivable for the DOW to drop a lot farther than anyone would dare utter - even to 1994 levels.

Len