Holy shit...DOW below 10k.....

[PhillyKev 0]

What the hell is going on. I see jobless claims down, MS making massive payouts to stockholders and buying back stock....McD's profit up 25%...drug and biotechs up. What's the deal?

[markd_nscr986 0]

There goes my 401k again.........oh well,I wanted to work until I'm 85 anyway!

Marc SCR 6046 SCS 3004

[PhillyKev 0]

Ahhh...found the answer.....one month hiccup, hopefully. Looks like just an emotional drop.

Leading Indicator Falls 0.2 Pct. in June

[SkyDekker 1,465]

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What the hell is going on. I see jobless claims down, MS making massive payouts to stockholders and buying back stock....McD's profit up 25%...drug and biotechs up. What's the deal?

I am not sure what you are complaining about, I keep reading on here that your economy is booming and doing great.

[storm1977 0]

The economy is doing good.

The DOW is up almost 8% in the last 12months

Don't be getting greedy now. You can't expect double digit gains in % every year can you?

Chris

-----------------------------------------------------
Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty

[PhillyKev 0]

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You can't expect double digit gains in % every year can you?

You can if you diversify properly

[storm1977 0]

I meant in the DOW.

-----------------------------------------------------
Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty

[CanuckInUSA 0]

Money is made and lost regardless of whether the market is up or down. The money managers on Wall Street control the trends and we little people have no idea as to what direction it go on a given day (why would they want to share this info with us when it is us they wish to manipulate in order to make their money). This is why we are told not to try and time the markets and to instead invest for the long term and invest at regular time increments to dollar cost average.

Several years ago (before I was a skydiver) I tried to play their game and in some cases I got lucky (guessing if I should go long or short on a given day). But in most cases I lost. I still have a respectable amount of money in the markets, but the money managers pretty much fucked me ... or should I say I allowed myself to be fucked by them trying to play their game.

So ... several days ago if you remember the market was up (the money managers decided to drive prices up) and now there is a pull back going on (the money managers decided to drive prices down). Remember money is made and lost when the markets goes up and down and unless you are privey to the direction the market is going, there is no way you can win. Is this fair? No ... but that's just how the system works. They do this to make themselves rich to to keep the rest of us poor. It's just how the system works.

If you want to invest in the markets, do so at regular increments and invest for the long term. It's the only way to preserve your investments for that rainy day.

Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

[PhillyKev 0]

You've been watching too many movies. I work at a money management firm. It's not as sinister as you're making it out to be. No one is trying to stay rich and keep others poor. They're just all trying to make money. Some are better at it than others.

[Casurf1978 0]

Dow is only 30 stocks not really an indicator of the economy or the health of it. I would look at the DJ/Wilshire 5000, an index which trys to capture all the publicly traded securities incorporated in the USA, with a few exceptions, and its down -0.56YTD. Ones you migh take a look at are REITS and REOCS, most of these have posted healty double digit returns the last two years.

[CanuckInUSA 0]

Well I may have painted more of a sinister picture than I needed to. But the bottom line is that when the market goes up for a certain time period (usually a day or two), then you know there is going to be a pull back. In fact I think I had more success shorting stocks than I did going long. It's all fucked up for us little guys when you are not in it for the long run as you never know what'll happen with the futures market (the trading going on before the market opens and after the market closes).

Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

[PhillyKev 0]

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It's all fucked up for us little guys when you are not in it for the long run as you never know what'll happen with the futures market (the trading going on before the market opens and after the market closes).

I do Unfortunately I can't trade in individual stocks without jumping through a lot of hoops and avoiding anything we trade here.

I put together a nice, simple retirement portfolio at Vanguard and had 2 of the partners here, one from Wharton and president of the Chartered Financial Analysts and the other an MBA from Harvard take a look at it. One said, less US stock, more international, the other said the opposite so I left it where it was.

For anyone interested, here it is. It's been treating me quite well over the past 3 years.

10% High Yield Corporate Fund
15% Total Bond Market Index
30% Total Stock Market Index
30% Total International Stock Index
15% REIT Index Fund

I've netted 18% gain over past year.

[kallend 2,230]

The house always wins.

Here is one example of the house:

money.cnn.com/2004/05/24/markets/spitzer_grasso/

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[billvon 3,176]

>several days ago if you remember the market was up (the money
> managers decided to drive prices up) . . .

I think you might have an overly optimistic idea of how much influence money managers have on the market. Even the largest mutual fund manager can affect the market only very slightly, and even when he does that, it generally does not work to his advantage. Of course there are endless ways to cheat (i.e. lie about earnings, sell all your stock, then make the "real" announcement) but they are generally illegal.

>Remember money is made and lost when the markets goes up and down
> and unless you are privey to the direction the market is going, there is no
>way you can win. Is this fair? No ... but that's just how the system works.
>They do this to make themselves rich to to keep the rest of us poor. It's
>just how the system works.

I guess I'm one of "them." I invest in firms that (IMO) have really good products but are undervalued (Microchip, Ravenswood and Computer Associates have been ones that I've invested in in the past) and have done pretty well. But I'm not trying to keep you poor, honest!

[Jimbo 0]

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Several years ago (before I was a skydiver) I tried to play their game and in some cases I got lucky (guessing if I should go long or short on a given day). But in most cases I lost. I still have a respectable amount of money in the markets, but the money managers pretty much fucked me ... or should I say I allowed myself to be fucked by them trying to play their game.

Ever hear of contrarian investing? My best performing fund is based on the idea.

-
Jim

"Like" - The modern day comma
Good bye, my friends. You are missed.

[PhillyKev 0]

That's what our firm is based on and why we do so well. Our deal is that we have a proprietary SAS model used to pick stocks based purely on number cruching to find undervalued stocks and buy them. No psychology involved. Pure mathematical formulas.

[Zennie 0]

Huh? How can this be? Dubya fixed the Clinton/Gore recession.

Buncha liberal lies....

- Z
"Always be yourself... unless you suck." - Joss Whedon

[crwtom 0]

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What's the deal?

I usually looks at SP500 (DJIA has a smaller and large-cap-biased selection
and thus seems to be a lot more volatile to me). But also SP500 dropped
out throughout this month.

Big factor IMO are interest rates. The recent restoration of the SP500 to the
mid 2002 level was in large part due to incredibly low interest rates. That,
however, builds up inflation - you can see that now in higher steel and gasoline
prices and more and more accounts that wages (although maybe numerically
rising) are losing their effective purchase power. This is likely to get worse
if left alone.

As a result the Fed has to increase interest rates - which they just did in June
fairly moderately. They idea is that with the economy out of the worst you can
begin putting a little bit of pressure on it in order to get interest rates back to
"normal" levels. The upswing seemed to be more fragile though than they
first thought - reflective in staggering in the stock markets, much weaker job
reports in June and plans to delay further hikes in interest rates.

The recent bump back is on borrowed time - meaning record low interest
rates. The way back to normality without inducing another crash will continue
to be a very delicate juggling act by the Feds.

My guess, thus, is that things will wiggle around where they are right now
for a while. In terms of SP500 we're now where we were a couple of months
after 9-11 (in the 1100's) but still considerably lower than in 2000 (in the
1400's).

Cheers, T

*******************************************************************
Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

[turtlespeed 226]

10058.75

Last time I looked

I'm not usually into the whole 3-way thing, but you got me a little excited with that. - Skymama
BTR #1 / OTB^5 Official #2 / Hellfish #408 / VSCR #108/Tortuga/Orfun

[PhillyKev 0]

yep...back up. Just hadn't seen it drop below that magic 5 digit figure in a while and didn't see anything in the news at first to indicate why.

[Lucky... 0]

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Huh? How can this be? Dubya fixed the Clinton/Gore recession.

Buncha liberal lies....

5 years later....... how briliant does this assertion seem?

[DougH 270]

You have too much time on your hands! Have you considered learning knitting?

Too bad SC isn't gainfull employement.

"The restraining order says you're only allowed to touch me in freefall"
=P

[Lucky... 0]

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You have too much time on your hands! Have you considered learning knitting?

Too bad SC isn't gainfull employement.

That post proves it all up. You certify that the assertion by the other guy was brilliant and full of forsight.

[Coreece 190]

here ya go....copy and paste the above subject line into your sig line....

Your secrets are the true reflection of who you really are...

[Lucky... 0]

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here ya go....copy and paste the above subject line into your sig line....

another meaningless post....you must agree that it's hillarious that someone said that Bush fixed the Clinton recession ....it's truely rich.