Anyone want to start a pool guessing when the DJIA dips below 7,000? It got down to 7033 already this morning.

Bob

And GM (a DOW component) is up for the week! Go figure.

A quick look at my stock portfolio will tell you that I am the last guy you want to take market advice from, but I’d say we’re in a blue funk for a while.

Many ‘experts’ tell us that sectors of the the market have been over-valued for a long time, and are adjusting down to what they think is about right, which is a DOW at 7,500. Many of these ‘experts’ are the same great bunch of guys that only last summer foretold wild profits and a soaring DOW.

I think that Stevie Wonder could throw darts at a stock chart and do better than the ‘experts’. A clear sign of financial apocalypse was found in a an article I read the other day where the All-Knowing Larry Summers said that a lot of what people have believed about the market’s behavior will have to change after what wee are experiencing now.

Yeah buddy :/

Bob

“Anyone want to start a pool guessing when the DJIA dips below 7,000? It got down to 7033 already this morning.”

Err...As I was saying… any bets on when the Dow blows through 6K?

“It’s the end of the world as we know it ...”

Bob

The stock market will continue to swoon back and forth like a teenage girl at a Jonas Bros. concert. This morning it is up -
but who knows, tomorrow or even later today it may go back down.

Frankly I think Wall Street is disconnected from reality. If things
are so dire, then how does one explain that the Taylor Swift/ Miley Cyrus show at the Staples Center here in L.A. sold out in a couple of hours.

The whole idea of the stock market is using someone else’s money to gamble with and generate more money. It’s not based on production/exchange. It’s a weird concept in the first place. So
Wall Street recently gave Obama an “F” for his first two months in
office. This from the same people who got us into this mess.

how does one explain that the Taylor Swift/ Miley Cyrus show at the Staples Center here in L.A. sold out in a couple of hours

Easy!  Teenagers (the Taylor/Miley audience) always have money!

As to the markets, well, I guess they will bounce around the lows for some time yet. Today Gordon Brown has been meeting with Barack Obama, with the key item on the agenda being how to get solve the financial crisis - my guess is that neither has the slightest clue.

Peter

DavePolich - 03 March 2009 03:03 PM

...the stock market is . . . not based on production/exchange. It’s a weird concept in the first place.

Here Here!  It’s explained (IMHO, half-heartedly) as “It’s based on the perceived future value” of the company.  Hogwash.  Unless they’re paying dividends proportionate to their profits, there’s nothing about the price of stock that has anything to do with the value of the company…

It’s ether.

Just the fact that many camps base trading decisions on “Technical Analysis,” which has very little to do with the fundamentals of a company proves that the company value itself doesn’t solely impact the share price of a stock… So, yeah, I agree..  It’s a weird concept…

I liken it to Tea Leaves and Chicken Bones, coupled with the concept of “Synchronicity.”

[DavePolich] The stock market will continue to swoon back and forth like a teenage girl at a Jonas Bros. concert.

“The stock market will continue to swoon back and forth like a teenage girl at a Jonas Bros. concert. This morning it is up -
but who knows, tomorrow or even later today it may go back down.”

The stock market will do “what it does” based on its central proposition. Make and move money. There are situations that have been in reversal. These are “deals” or “bargins”. Investments that are made with the condition and the speculation that they will grow and prosper, something that is devoid in Washington committing “our money” into ventures that we will see NO monetary benefits,though WE get to pay for it. The rest of Wall Street will either stagnate or pull their money out of the system. The dirty little secret is...there “is” money out there. It just isn’t moving.

“Frankly I think Wall Street is disconnected from reality. If things
are so dire, then how does one explain that the Taylor Swift/ Miley Cyrus show at the Staples Center here in L.A. sold out in a couple of hours.”

It’s not the kid’s money and parents are willing to “make them happy” on one end while they go through an economic flaming hoop to figure out just what they are going to cut in general expenses to see that smile on the adorable face.

“The whole idea of the stock market is using someone else’s money to gamble with and generate more money. It’s not based on production/exchange. It’s a weird concept in the first place. So
Wall Street recently gave Obama an “F” for his first two months in
office. This from the same people who got us into this mess.”

Not true at all. Congress started this “mess” in the late 70’s under Jimmy Carter. Without laboring over the timeline, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and Charles Rangel “were” the “oversight” the the Democrats have been hollering about being non existent. It was “their” role to see that Freddie and Fannie “balanced”. They said in 2008 that Fannie and Freddie were “sound” (has a familiar ring to it) when challanged. Truth of the matter is Ross Perot warned us about Freddie and Fannie back when he ran for president.

I did say I wouldn’t be participating in these threads. Maybe I will ammend that by saying I may only post once if at all. Barak Obama is the guy that Democrats and Liberal/Progressives wanted and now we all have him. We have had a month to get some idea of what he has in mind and so far he has lied, appointed tax dodgers to his cabinet,ramroded a “Stimulis Bill” that will not stimulate anything but the controversy over it and is recommending a national debt that my grandchildren will be paying on. The transparency he “promised” is a joke and his “Bipartisan” promise is more like “acquiesce” or you can go “f**k” yourself. He is fulfilling his promise to get out of Iraq. We’re just going to move to Afganastan.
And this eloquence everyone raves about. HE CAN READ!!! Ask him something on the fly....Porky Pig. Or you get another “Joe The Plumber”,which you know will never happen again.
....but that’s the guy you wanted. When everything crashes and burns, I “will” post, “I told you so”.
Carry on.....

Woh, Dukester, my good friend, I feel obliged to respond.

I never expected Obama to be a miracle worker, or as some people call him, “Chocalate Jesus”. He hasn’t been in office three months yet and he still got the stimulus bill passed. I fully expect him to make some mistakes (he’s said that much himself, by the way). It’s impossible to turn this economic mess around in 60 days. That’s WAY beyond reasonable expectations.

What’s left of the Republican Party chooses to be obstructionist for the sake of being so, while continuing to froth away about how Obama should fail and “we told you so”. Yes, there were earmarks in the stimulus bill. Probably a lot LESS than there would have been when the GOP ran things under Bush. Old habits die hard in Washington. Plus, it depends on what you call “earmarks”. I don’t think $150 million for volcano monitoring as an earmark or pork. That’s a tiny drop in the bucket towards monitoring for potential natural disasters. We still have done nothing at all about budgeting for asteroid deflection, and that’s not the stuff of science fiction movies. Thousands of objects cross our planet’s orbit every year and we only know where about a tenth of them are.
But getting back to Earth - any of these senators and con gressman who voted against the stimulus package should step up and say they don’t want the money that will be going to their states from the passage bill. Simple as that.

The fact is we’re in uncharted waters now and no one, on the left, middle, or on the right, has a magic bullet to fix it because nobody knows really what will work and what won’t. I think and hope that we’re finally seeing that continuing to bail out AIG and the automakers and whoever else is “too big to fail” isn’t going to work, and I’m dismayed that the Obama administration is still pushing these bailouts.

But at least we see the President doing something besides blaming other people and sitting on his hands.

My point about the Taylor Swift concert revolves around this - if 10% of the work force is unemployed, that leaves 90% that is employed, and spending. Investors may be nervous over on Wall Street but - they’re not broke. They still have money and plenty of it. During the Great Depression Hollywood made a killing. Douglas Fairbanks was making close to $20,000 a week back then! That’s awesome pay by today’s standards. Somewhere, someone is making money, or holding onto it. That’s why I think that sometimes there’s just too much negative doom and gloom being thrown around. There’s a pyschological factor at play - either you see things as the beginning of long recovery, or in the middle of a deepening decline.

Capitalism is dead. The world is going Socialist. That’s what has happened. Rush and his ilk can moan and roll and thrash around all they want but it won’t change that, nor will it change the fact that the future doesn’t belong to fat old right-wingers.