Dow -353.87 points today. I'm surprised nobody wants to discuss it. Wall street scared at the very mention of the word "taper"? What do you think it will look like tomorrow? What says you, fellow Monkeys?
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/21/business/global/china-manufacturing-contracts-to-lowest-level-in-9-months.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 Good probability it's due to several things. Bernake announcements Wed about scaling back asset purchases. Increased claims for unemployment. A fear in China about loan defaults and interest rates that jumped from 4% a month ago to about 12% with some blips into the 20's yesterday. And so it goes... AT
They can only keep the market artificially pumped up for so long. The moment they stop the juicing, it is going to drop like a rock.... just the mention of doing that is causing the current drop.
This stock market stuff is all so heavily based upon "confidence." Confidence... Bernanke and his ilk not being grossly wrong, Derivatives wont tank (again), In China that loans won't default, That housing won't tank, Big investment banks not messing up, Government spending continues, There is no day of reckoning for .gov debt, States like CA can magically keep borrowing, And the list goes on. Once the investment crowd get "real," holly shummer... But history suggests they generally aren't "real" for very long. I suppose that may be good but it sure creates risk and hurts a lot of people. AT
It's just a number. The economy is not the Dow and the Dow is not the economy. Numbers on the Dow are just an indicator of how confident the big money players are feeling. The rest of us are more concerned about the prices of Bread, Milk, Eggs, Gas, Electricity, Beer, Tomatoes, Potatoes, Corn and the most important .. Bacon! Hows your grocery/gas station confidence indicators feeling. I think things have been heading for the crapper for about 5 years, the gain in the DJIA not withstanding.
They have been sucking (except for the months ahead of a big election) for the last ten or twelve years. I can remember early on, when little Bush was in charge, the price of gasoline and diesel jumped $.25 in one day. Everybody had a fit! We weren't used to more than a $.05 change at a time. Truck drivers were complaining that they were no longer profitable, UPS went on strike, and such. Things have been generally sucking since then, and that was just before 9/11. My wife and I (newlywed) were just moving into our first house a few days after it happened. I can remember how easy it was when I was single to save money and buy the things I wanted to. After I got married, things changed and got tougher, even though she had a job, too! A job that I paid for her training from before we were married. I thought to myself, "this marriage thing really kind of sucks." But after a while, I came to realize that it wasn't our marriage, it was the economy. And now, while I pine away in nursing school, she is the one making the money. Wow, how things can change, tables can turn. I can clearly say that my wife has been my greatest and best investment on this Earth.
I can remember way back when the stock market was based on how well businesses were doing. Now it's based on the crap spewed by one man. This is NOT good, folks....and hasn't been for a while. But, there's still money to be made in the market. Kajun
And lost, don't forget for every winner, there is a loser. And if you are sitting at the table and don't know who the sucker is ....
the economy is an engine. It runs on rumors, profits, and reinvestment, it is restricted by taxation, and regulation. As anyone who has ever tuned a small engine knows, you adjust one item at a time (fuel, air, spark) for best performance. Tuning two or more at a time just screws up the balance, and you have to start over. I expect this economy to crash, because they are screwing around with too many variables at once.
I find that people, the average normal Americans are not feeling to confident in the stability of the country. Friday I watched the McLaughlin Group and even those people didn't seem confident in the economy. Investors will talk about the "lost decade"- 2000- 2009 but I do wonder. Currently the market is up 12% for the year, yet I looked at my portfolio and I certainly didn't make 12%, I didn't even make 8%. The movers and shakers are making huge gains on paper but I feel one day soon we will be reading about people jumping out of windows on Wall street again.
I've set up the button ready to click to take a 50% loan out on my 401k so i can invest it in something else .. like land or PM's My clicking finger has been itchy since december. If congress starts in earnest about nationalizing retirement accounts .. I'm clicking. China starts paying for oil exclusively in gold or yuans .. I'm clicking. Russia stops supplying natural gas to europe and sends it to China .. I'm clicking. There are other triggers but these are the big ones.
Stocks Near Lows, Dow Drops Nearly 250; Apple Falls Below $400 And that little drop continues..... to drop some more.
And it will be interesting to see if it rebounds a little bit in a few days IF some investors think there are now some modest bargains and buying picks ups a bit. If not, that will unsettle the pols and may yield some entertainment from the more stupid talking heads. AT
it's when it drops, they stop trading, drops like a rock again, they stop trading again. and it just keeps going. That is when it will get interesting.
Up 100pts yesterday, almost 150 points today. Is the dead cat bouncing, or is it just using up one of the 85 billion lives the Fed has been giving it per month?
Today, it's probably because they figured that the tapering wasn't going to fool the market. It's back to QE Infinity. Stupid Koolaid drinkers, with a knowing wink and nod, say 'BUY!!!'
Another 114 points today. Did anyone else notice the 100 or so point spike early in the morning, followed by a (more or less) stable trading day for the last three days? What happens during that opening hour? I guess the lows a few days ago was some profit taking by those in-the-know, I guess they needed a new layer of electroplated gold on their Bentley.
How about the meeting of the Fed this afternoon! At 2:00 the markets started to rally, but I guess the Bernank said the "T" word and it dropped from then on. Gold/silver went up $20/$1 at the same time. Pretty funny watching the mechanics in motion. I hear a lot of gold speculators saying that they are expecting a rise in bullion prices, followed a month or so later by another price crash. The reasons they gave for this proposal seemed like they would be for pure spite.
