Oh, I am buying a little stock now, as I can, and the 401K contributions are maxed out. I'm contemplating Ramen noodles, Ebay, and a reduced competition budget to free up more cash for investment.

I hope nobody here owns much GM stock, though I suspect many of us have some exposure through the 401K funds.

My view of the situation is simple, unless you are with in 5 years of your retirement age, this market drop is a good thing.

Yes, it sucks in the short term and we are going to have a nice chunk of stagflation to deal with. The flip side is that the stocks you need to invest for retirement, those core companies that are not going out of business regardless of the economy, are all on sale right now. The average blue chipper is down nearly 10%, the dollar is gaining strength against the rest of the world in leaps and bounds, and every investment house on the planet is tripping over itself to get you to trade through them for less and less per transaction.

The current economy has it's downside, but it is all short term(2-3 years) With the bail out, the economy is going to be priming itself once for a big come back as soon as the banks get done buying each other(that will last another year or so).

The moral of the story, if you have a few extra pennies around, your investment strategy should be BUY BUY BUY.

-Tim

Brad's investing advice = Do the OPPOSITE of everyone else.

Stocks are down = sell gold, buy stocks.
Stocks are up = sell stocks, buy gold.

Remember that old saying about buying low and selling high?

Tim,

Good advice. You can't predict things like this and when they do happen you have to deal with it. The guys who make all the money here are the ones who buy at the bottom of fallouts like this.

Did today help??

Friday had all the signs of the bottom... only thing I can say is thank god I'm still not a broker, this would have been a tough few weeks of telling people that it will come back. Friday had a huge swing before close, in 9 hours of trading the DOW moved 17% up! When you sell at the bottom you never have a chance to get back in time for the swing back... this is exactly why even though it might look bad it's a short term deal. Even now with the S&P @ 1000, it's most likely going to be a good 2 year ride upwards. Go back and look at the S&P 500 from 1987 till 1990, same thing happened back then. Remember a year ago the S&P was at 1560! US stock sure look like the place to be for the next two years on a valuation standpoint...

Wild swings in the market (up or down) are not good. The market had massive swings up and down in 1929 before finally crashing in October. We won't know we are out of the downturn for at least 2 quarters.

but over here everybody is a expert on everything

You can try it, if you're lucky you might twist an ankle. (IMG:http://www.frrax.com/rrforum/style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Yea, I'm wanting out of here too and I'm stuck in a job I now hate with a house I can't give away. Guess that's life. I've actually been back thinking about selling the Camaro (again), this time it would come with an Alan Blaine cage kit (unless it gets here and I get it installed soon). I'm feeling the urge for a change, not sure when and where, but I'm thinking it may involve a new job and a new city. Of course the job market sucks right now too.... (IMG:http://www.frrax.com/rrforum/style_emoticons/default/nutkick.gif)

Actually the wild swings are one of the technical indicators of a bottom. The problem is the whole market is more volitle than it was years ago... thank hedge funds, day traders & instant information for that.

Considering today was in the top 5 percentage gains of all time in the S&P, the largest gain on the DOW in terms of points and the largest percentage move in the market in 76 years it's saying something.

Then again I don't much about all this, just studied this in college for one of my minors, worked on Wall street (in the WTC) and held all the licencses for doing it for a living.... but over here everybody is a expert on everything.

Bret

What really messes up indicators is government intervention artificially inflating the market for the time being.

Defiantly historical examples of both.