I’ve been a bit worried about the state of the market over the past month or so. All this talk and news reports on how bad off the economy is getting, big businesses losing their rear ends, high price of oil and food etc, so why wasn’t the overall market reflecting all this? What the heck am I referring to when I say overall market?
Knowing that Dow, Nasdaq and S&P 500 are not the end all and be all of the stock market, the 3 have been long been considered the “standard” index of how the old U.S. is doing. I was actually becoming quite concerned during the last month where the Dow was showing between 12,300 and 12,600 when I figured it should show about where it was at the time of this writing (11,194). It seemed to me that the longer “the market” was up at previous near “bullish” levels and not reflecting what actually was happening, the harder the fall would be.
So what a relief it was when all things market-wise began to finally reflect the news reports and the graphs began to flatten out to a level that better reflected the times. I began to figure that the whole thing was being held up by nothing but air there for awhile and I’m sure that those who invested heavily in certain stocks aren’t too happy at the moment but it’s always a gamble when playing the stock market–even when the forecast for the foreseeable future was good.
For me, my relief was based on the fact that I own no stock at all, no 401K plan, not even a lousy Certificate of Deposit not that I didn’t start out my working life working towards that end but best laid plans of mice and men and all that. I just happen to depend on all the services and goods that a healthy economy (and stock market) brings to common folks like yours truly and if the market falls through the cellar hole then me and mine are in for a hard time. So watching the the market finally head downward as I expected it to do a couple months ago and ultimately level out again at more reasonable levels brought a small sigh of relief. At least it’s holding it’s own for now.
With all that’s going on these days I’m finding myself simply not trusting in any sort of previous status quo. How about you?
You are more fortunate than you know. I worked in New York for 10 years and did my best to squirrel away as much as I could into my 401K and pension and savings account.
I’m now looking at negative returns on most of them and the FX rate is doing a Titanic impersonation!
Quickroute,
Ouch! My sympathies friend. I worked my career for over 25 years until I left the career to help take care of my folks which put the old kibosh on any sort of retirement plan I might have had. I had a hard time not regretting what I thought I had lost as far as financing my old age, that is until recently as I watch folks go through what you just described.
Here’s hoping you come out okay.
By the way, I checked in at your site and saw the cow with the gas bag strapped to her back. I do love the Irish and what they write about. I’ll be stopping by for sure.