Ok for those not paying attention DOW down 250 points

and it looks like its on freefall

It is not amusing

And I know the bulls will keep telling us all is well

Serious...

...my guess is 0.25 so that Bernanke can go on pretending that the market isn't dictating Fed policy and yet give some light relief to those being squeezed...

By the way, this morning MSNBC... IS THE US ECONOMY IMPLODING?

I went, oh cripes, nice catchy headline but for god sakes that can't be helpful!

Stock market falling
Housing market slump
Job forecast - bleak to none

Sure they can lower interest rates again but we still have not heard the exchange rates market yet. The rest of world is devaluating the dollar

And don't even get started on our mounting deficits. All. i will say is the BILL is coming due just as it did in 1929. Sure the Feds can pull a few strings and there are some safeguards in place but with the amount we owe China and Japan financing this war American businesses are becoming more vulnerable to hostile take over

but it sure feels close

What is for sure is that I expect many entities to pull out of our securities

I think December's spending reports for all the major retailers will put the final nail in the coffin, and the economy will be in Free-Fall at that point.

By December the Bush administration will have pressured the Fed. Res. to push the rate lower to "fuel economic growth". I'm pretty sure all but a slim margin will not buy into such foolishness as the real solution is economic growth. Which by the way we have not had any "Sustainable" economic growth for 6 years. Merely a series of bandaids whos long term effects have been pushing the US closer to this point.

it should be your Congress and government which is in charge of economic policy and not a private bank ---

I knew it was going to be a down day after reading the employment figures.

Not that I'm in the know about such things. But the numbers spelled trouble even to this novice.

Btw, thanks for the heads up. You try to watch a few old movies on TCM and look what happens when a back is turned for one morning! Sheesh.
:hi:

to watch the 'fun'

:banghead:

what is going on now?

....it ain't gonna be pretty...

it's been doing this for months now. :boring:

it falls for a couple days, then the feds inject funds

But crykey, it is quite unstable

some people are making a shitload of money on put options. Playing on trader's fears and gyrations of the gambling market.

And what'ya know -- OSAMA Bin Missin shows up in a videotape, and Monday is 9/11.

:shrug:

friends about retirement investments? "I haven't looked at them lately. Maybe I should change the TSP options. But you are supposed to do good in the long run." Way too late and they wouldn't have been jogged by the news unless you prodded them as well. these are people who already were burned by 9/11 market losses.

They know the thrift investors who go online need some time to complete a shift to avoid personal loss, but more importantly they know few will bother until it is too late. Neither will any other party including unions warn people how to responsibly respond to market situations for fear of creating the very panic that will hurt everyone. Myths, no warnings. No personal oversight, which, though admittedly a
vice of sorts, is something the overall system knows very well. They call that in part "consumer confidence". And a consumer is born every minute.

All the movers are usually out on their yachts all summer.

1 U.S. dollar = 0.732118017 Euros per google

and did we just see the dollar collapse?

are going down the $*t pipe ... What will they do ? What will they do ?

The point value is meaningless, as it does not provide a frame of reference. Changes of 1% to 2% in a single day's trading is unusual, but not by itself a crisis.

and the dow is trading in a narrow band and is unstable

By the way, thanks, I knew the Bulls were gonna show up to correct us

Oh and by the way... what was the high? And how much has it gone DOWN from that high?

And how does it compare to oh January 20th, 2001?

I am a computer programmer in a brokerage firm and I discuss the market often with co-workers; I am also studying for my brokerage license (company policy is that all employees are licensed, even those who will never actually deal in securities.)

All three major indexes -- Dow, NASDAQ and S & P -- are down by similar margins (NASDAQ currently at -1.98%, S & P at -1.61%.) It happens. But compare to six months ago: right now, the Dow is up 929.63 points. Over the last 12 months, the Dow is up 1539.20 points. Today's two percent drop is noteworthy but not itself alarming.

Financial markets are very complex. You simply can not point to a single index on a single day's trading and start weeping and gnashing your teeth and casting blame. The Dow, especially, is very unrepresentative of the United States' economic health, as it represents only 30 major companies that get changed with some regularity.

If you want to bitch and moan about the American economy, you are much better off indexing the cost of day-to-day necessities based on the prices of a quart of milk, a gallon of gas and six-pack of toilet paper. There are more than enough real things to worry about without paying attention to severely overblown "economic indicators."

the Dow is not representative of our overall economic health.

What about the S&P 500 - would that be a bit more representative ya think?

thanks for your perspective.

Market indexes represent the value of a select group of companies as perceived by a very tiny number of powerful investors. A mutual fund manager with American Funds or Franklin has a lot more say in how much a share of Microsoft or Boeing is worth than any number of average investors; he can sell or buy more shares in a single transaction than any number of ordinary investors can manage in an entire day. And whether a few fund managers think now is a good time to sell off a lot of AT&T or switch money from stocks to bonds or back is only marginally relevant with regards to the economy as a whole.

I do not wish to give the impression that everything is sunshine and roses. I'm just saying that the market indexes are very poor indicators of how things are going. They are not representative and can be manipulated pretty easily.

Many people don't realize this simple fact. It can be and it is manipulated. Which, as you said, makes the market indexes a poor indicator of things economic.

A good place for people to get the feel of that manipulation on a smaller scale is to watch the pink sheets. There you can see how they can milk a few penny stocks for all their worth.

14,121 to quite frankly what looks like a total 1000 point drop

And you don't think this matters

Yes markets matter, but they are the last place where distrust in the economy shows up

That is a historical pattern

As to the complexity, agreed, hell some have even agreed that quantum theory might apply


And I don't think many folks, even experts, truly understand how complex it is.

on 7/17. It closed that day at 13971.55. 2 days later (7/19) it closed above 14000 for the first time ever at 14,000.41 with its high that day of 14015.85.

Just want to be clear.

Yes, i suppose that is being picky, isnt it? It's only 100 points difference.

yep you are being picky

;-)

Now in the overall scheme of things, after studying history... yep the dow is the last place where you see instability in the economy

I mean, fer crying out loud you have to have a certain personality to become a trader... and it has to involve a certain... optimism...

Until the crash in 1929 all was honky dory

Same in 87

Same in any other drop, as in major drop, crash et al

And the news driving this drop today were the happy news that we had negative job growth for the first time since idiot took the white house

They could not put any lipstick on that pig

Hell CNBC was down right scary

IS THE US ECONOMY COLLAPSING? Yep they ran THAT headline!

Interday highs and lows are pretty much meaningless except as a measure of market volatility during the trading day, and even that has little relevance beyond a few systems of automatic trading. When looking at the market over time, you need to take a fixed point -- the closing value is traditional, but the opening value is sometimes used instead -- and compare that from one day to the next. You can not arbitrarily cherry-pick your data points.

Also, please indicate where I said the drop does not matter. What I said was that changes of up to 2% were, by themselves, nothing to be alarmed about and that market indexes such as the Dow are very poor representatives of economic health.

and I am not the one worried about the volatility of the markets... every analyst I have read, both national and abroad is

External forces, such as todays rosy employment report, drive a lot of this...

but your assumption that I have no idea how this works is just empty prattle

I do.

And you know what? I also have a perspective going back into the shadows of history... something most traders don't have

You know what the fundamentals of trickle down economics are starting to look like?

How bout the summer of 1929, liquidity crisis included.

Thought you'd like to know

By that I mean people who get extremely euphoric over a 200 point move up, and suicidal over a 200 point move down. Neither reaction is warrented.

If you invest for the long term, you don't care about day-to-day moves, you care about annual return. If you are trying to be a day trading or market timing clown, you have a 95% rate of ruin in three years.

The stock market having a bad day doesn't mean capitalism is ending or its a new Great Depression or that you should short, or sell everything, or buy gold, or other stupid shit.

by the way, FYI the way we invest if for the LONG HAUL

On the other hand... there are people out there who will need this money sooner... mostly they are about to retire

I am sure you DO KNOW 401K trade in the market

Now as a TRAINED HISTORIAN who has read about 1929 and HOW we got there... I can see parallels

Can you say Liquidity Crisis?

Now if the stock exchange should collapse tomorrow... I am not YET anywhere near that retirement window

But if we entered a good inflationary spiral them savings could be wiped out... actually let me correct this WILL BE wiped out

See Argentina for a GOOD example

As I said, you may want to take your condescension somewhere else

Or if you do not want to talk to the proles about this, perhaps you should not post in these threads that bother you so much

SHEESH!

The Dow closed today at 13113.38.

On March 7, 2007, the Dow closed at 12122.11. That means the Dow is UP over the last six months by 991.27.
On Sept. 7, 2006, the Dow closed at 11331.44. That means the Dow is UP over the last twelve months by 1781.94 points.
On March 7, 2006, the Dow closed at 10980.69. That means the Dow is UP over the last 18 months by 2132.69 points.
On Sept. 7, 2005, the Dow closed at 10633.50. That means the Dow is UP over the last 24 months by 2479.88 points.

(Today's close from http://www.investor.com. Historic data from http://www.measuringworth.com/DJA/ )

That the trend over the last two years for the Dow has been up is irrelevant. It can not be held up as proof that the economy is doing well, any more than the relative downturn the index has taken over the past three months is any kind of proof that the economy is dooing poorly. That is the point I have been trying to get across to you.

point, celebrated by the media?

The trend is NOT up

Sorry

Look, you can pull your nose as high as you want...

But this economy is NOT doing well

We may be already in stagflation

And the dow is the last place where it will finally show up

By the way

Tell me oh wise one, how exactly does this liquidity crisis do any good and now much money the feds have put in?

Then oh wise one also tell me how far the dollar has fallen

And how much do the chinese owe of our debt?

I am sorry. I cannot join you in your optimism

Dowist: n. A person who treats the Dow Industrial Average or other financial market index as the end-all and be-all of economic health.

where the FUNDAMENTAL Problems in the economy finally rear their ugly head are you missing?

The dow is not where the liquidity crisis happened, now or in 1929

Both had a good six year head start at the very least.

But when they finally reared their ugly head in the dow it was kind of ...oh oh

The dow does not tell you squat about inflation

But I am sure you know those numbers are being massaged heavily

And people are feeling the pinch, and spending less

The dow is the last place where this (in lower quarterly income reports) finally rears its ugly head

And I could go on

What the DOW is is just another indicator where things are

And it is also liable to speculation

Today's numers were driven by the happy employment news

So how is your reality working? As well as your broad brush.

just a general reaction to the jobs report...

Will come back up and/or stabilize once traders realize the Fed may dig even deeper now...

They might go for two basis points next week.

Two basis points is the difference between 5.25 & 5.23

Did you mean two or 20?

The Fed is stuck between a rock and a hard place. We have what looks like stagflation in the economy due to high gas price shocks, so lowering interest rates would necessarily exasperate the already bad inflation for ordinary consumers, but at the same time, if you don't drop interest rates, the bond markets will continue to take an ass whupping.

I would say it is a 50/50 chance.

If not they will drop .25 and indicate a further drop in their communication.

I don't know if were experiencing stagflation yet, but we do appear to be getting close to such.

what is worst, the inflation in some basic goods (no longer counted in the official numbers) are going through the roof

I don't expect a happy shopping seaon, if ye catch me drift

I've read several articles that point out the rising inflation in common goods also. What I'm not clear on is our actual unemployment figures, and how many people are now underemployed but not unemployed.

A large enough number of underemployed people would skew the employment figures to the point that I agree we've already hit stagflation. The same applies if the unemployment figures are understated.

All in all, if we're not there we're leaning over the threshold with one foot raised about to enter stagflation. And no doubt this recession will not be official until after its been underway for some time.

I've also read a few articles where they retailers are already expressing fear as to the coming shopping season. They know they're in for a bad one and I expect to see temporary holiday hiring down as a consequence.

If you loose a job and file for unemployment you are counted, but when you are no longer receiving unemployment you automatically fall off that... after all you have stopped looking

My husband and my brother in law, both have been unemployed. They have yet to file... they are not counted

If you work part time, they count you as full employment

And if you work for Micke Dees, since that is all you can get, but you've got a Ph.D (aka you are under employed) guess what, you are employed.

As to readying articles on how basic goods (not counted in official numbers) have gone up

We live it every day in my household economy. I cannot make my dollar go as far as it was going even six months ago. Silly things like milk have gone up over 100%, as well as eggs and meat.

Ok what I am telling you is me telling you this, but I am sure we all could do an exercise of looking for local Sunday Papers and compare prices... if you will you will have your hard data on basic goods.

The problem is that the false numbers are also used for things like Cost of Living Adjustments, so even though hubby just got a 3% COLA, my grocery bill has gone up overall about 40% in the last six months. (Yes taking milk and vegies into account, as well as bread, the one that has spiked the least)

30 Industrials lost money! Wonder what the other 2,800 stocks did?

nooo look over at the boogyman...woooo..now don't look that the dow is down 260 points..no look over here..boogyman boogyman..ok now only down 226 pts..boogyman boogyman...

geezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.....

lets get all weekend of the boogyman..to ease your pain........

boggabugga..boggabugga...boogyman ...

you are losing your homes and your shirt..time to bring out the boogyman!!

are we all this stupid ..really?????????

fly

fly

It was either an Australian or a Canadian comedy troupe. They made up official looking passes for their vehicles and got waved through several checkpoints. Someone eventually stopped them. One of the men was dressed up like OBL.

.50 and I expect curbs

who may or may not have killed her kids..:sarcasm: :banghead:

:-)

they switched from holy shit, the job numbers are wretched horrible to the British mom in a hurry...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=1753480&mesg_id=1753480

..breaking ..breaking ...breaking..bullshit alert...everyone..get out the duct tape and cellophane..

breaking breaking..white girl missing..

breaking breaking..can someone please do something naughty ..very very naughty..dirty and very very naughty is best..

breaking breaking breaking........

ahhhhhhhhhhhh..i swear i hear breaking in my sleep!!!


:banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :rant:

fly

to a point distraction, and to a point hipocrisy

why am I not surprised?

It went over $700 today.

Even with people selling gold to cover their losses, Gold went up.

Bad sign.

Considering the very sick state of most of the rest of the US economy, the DOW 30 should be around 9750.

That's still a bullish outlook considering what happened to the Nikkei Stock Index after the Tokyo land bubble burst in 1990. If we experience anything of the same magnitude of loss, the Dow would fall to about 4000:

and that is what has me spooked

What I am amazed at is the fact that we still have many bulls literally buying the shit that all is well

And a drop like 1929 will not be good

Due to trading curbs though it will not happen in a single day

If the markets want to to collapse, they will. Trading curbs would just spread out the process, but true crashes follow the same dynamics. You're right about the liquidity problems, it's a common factor in all really serious market drops.

The Fed can drop rates again and again, but if nobody wants to trade cash for equities, might as well buy mattress futures.

egads, the mechanics are the same.

I've also seen the table compared to '87 and it wasn't nice either

By the way, due to the curbs I expect it to last a few weeks... insted of a day, on the outside

But, that doesn't give one much reason for optimism, either. The only saving grace was that the cross-market contagion was contained, and the other U.S. equity and bonds markets didn't get pulled down nearly as steeply.

Again, however, there is that sickeningly familiar shape to a classic market crash. Technical analysts call it, "head and shoulders". Notice that these things happen in stages, rather than all at once, overnight:

see the table for 1873 it would look similar

Why some people say that the market is akin to studying quantum mechanics

;-)


I wonder, do they have the charts going that far back? Would be an interesting mental exercise

plus the Kondratieff Wave theory,

Kondratieff Wave
http://www.angelfire.com/or/truthfinder/index22.html

Interesting, eh ?

More than just interesting, notice something interesting about the 1830s, 1870s and 1929

Look closely

Though 1929 is the bigest spike... and there is 1857 too

Holy shit

If we had cycles and we do... we are overdue

Again, double tops, and then a plunge with a bounce before another big loss.



IMF sums up the causes of the '97 Crisis as follows (some things don't change): http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/1998/06/imfstaff.htm

Several factors—both domestic and external—probably contributed to the dramatic deterioration in sentiment by foreign and domestic investors:

* a buildup of overheating pressures, evident in large external deficits and inflated property and stock market values;

* the prolonged maintenance of pegged exchange rates, in some cases at unsustainable levels, which complicated the response of monetary policies to overheating pressures and which came to be seen as implicit guarantees of exchange value, encouraging external borrowing and leading to excessive exposure to foreign exchange risk in both the financial and corporate sectors;

* a lack of enforcement of prudential rules and inadequate supervision of financial systems, coupled with government-directed lending practices that led to a sharp deterioration in the quality of banks' loan portfolios;

* problems resulting from the limited availability of data and a lack of transparency, both of which hindered market participants from taking a realistic view of economic fundamentals; and

* problems of governance and political uncertainties, which worsened the crisis of confidence, fueled the reluctance of foreign creditors to roll over short-term loans, and led to downward pressures on currencies and stock markets.

External factors also played a role, and many foreign investors suffered substantial losses:

* international investors had underestimated the risks as they searched for higher yields at a time when investment opportunities appeared less profitable in Europe and Japan, owing to their sluggish economic growth and low interest rates;

* since several exchange rates in East Asia were pegged to the U.S. dollar, wide swings in the dollar/yen exchange rate contributed to the buildup in the crisis through shifts in international competitiveness that proved to be unsustainable (in particular, the appreciation of the U.S. dollar from mid-1995, especially against the yen, and the associated losses of competitiveness in countries with dollar-pegged currencies, contributed to their export slowdowns in 1996–97 and wider external imbalances) (see chart);

* international investors—mainly commercial and investment banks—may, in some cases, have contributed, along with domestic investors and residents seeking to hedge their foreign currency exposures, to the downward pressure on currencies.

seen on MSNBC at noon today. :(

I went... WTF?

Catchy headline, but hardly gonna do any good... in the curent near panic

It will be interesting to see what happens Monday.

than the hit I would take leaving it. :(

...I'm up 20% this week!!!

I've been waiting for quite a while for teh opportunity to gloat at the bubble headed economists. The DOW will be heading down.

http://www.bobrivers.com/asx/49-769_3.asx

So, I don't gloat, either. It isn't just rich assholes who loose out. :(

That by itself is not amusing, but I think the market is way overvalued, even with the dollar that has lost 30% of it's value over the past four years. Time to let the air out of this hot air balloon. It's really the only way. There is no soft landing. The big mistake was to not let this happen back in 2000 or 2003, but the FED had to go to 0% interest rates, which just prolonged the inevitable, making the ultimate crash that much bigger. All in my opinion of course.

And with the economy so intertwined, maybe we won't see a recession when the day is done.

Anything's possible.

The FED? Well, it wasn't me anyway. The worst thing that could have happened did happen. Drop interest rates to zero, causing a huge bubble in the housing market, which led to everyone tapping into their home equity via low interest home equity loans, and voila!, a virtual booming economy. But, now we have to pay the piper for this bit of drunken revelry. The cheap credit is drying up, the GDP, 2/3 fueled by consumer spending based on home equity loans is drying up. So, the only wonder has been what has taken it so long to get to this point. But, it really has to run it's course. The debt has to purge itself now. Bankruptcies, personal and corporate have to run their course. The highly leveraged real estate and stock markets have to unwind.

From another perspective, it's an opportunity to wake up the electorate to what's going on. They've been asleep in the Matrix all these years, fat and happy with their 401K plans reaping the (virtual) gains in the stock market. The rude awakening that's about to happen will hopefully make them smarter (a bit poorer perhaps), so we can throw out the Federal Reserve crooks and Wall Street shysters that have been ruining the country. The silver lining in an upcoming depression is the opportunity to change the system. Like the New Deal in the 1930's did, we have that opportunity soon approaching. In that light, we should consider candidates who are best qualified to lead us through a depression and an environmental crisis. No spoilers from me, but I have one or two people in mind.

I've been investing in canned goods and pastas, and the freezer has meat and produce. We may not have any money, but dang it, we shall have food. I need to put in my winter garden this weekend.

And I can teach all you DU folks who wind up broke a course on "how to live on very little"; I sure have enough practice.

The well-to-do invest in the markets, the poor invest at the market.

In answer to some of the posts on "the market isn't all that bad", back away carefully and check out the really big picture. The US is broke, and in debt to all the rest of the world, our ground military is broken, and we have not yet seen all the ARMs reset. The Big Picture tells me that the manure is going to hit the ventilator, and the longer it is put off, the bigger the splat. Time to get manure-repellent suit.

Nice post! I wish I could have a Winter garden here, but it's too cold. The tomatoes are still going strong though.

This reminds me of a wonderful Peter Sellers movie, "Being There". This part in particular:



http://www.dailyspeculations.com/dailyspec_archives/nov2005/nov2005a.html

Our capitalist system goes in cycles, just as in this movie, regardless of which cycle theory one subscribes to. The one that I like best is the Kondratieff cycle. Heading into the Kondratieff Winter soon I'm afraid. Brrr! It's going to be a bear of a Winter.

the rich move money from market to market, and worst case will not be able to buy a second boat this year

As to a recession depresion coming, agreed, but there is a big difference between the two

Chances are we are already in the early stages of a recesion... (and the happy numbers for the christma season will be another mirage created by the dept of truth...) but I do hope we can avoid a depresion.

:scared:

Bonds did well last time, but gold went down with the stock market.

Now gold is past 700 -- a sign that investors are looking for a safe haven.

we switched a lot after 2004 to gold and I have yet to regret that decision

So it does not have explosive growth...

;-)

But when everything else is falling apart, it's still there. Not a bad thing to have as insurance.

after this period is over I am sure we will move it to a higher risk place

"when everything else is falling apart, it's still there" is a classic false statement by a short-sighted investor with no feel for the history of the market

humans live relatively short lifespans and have relatively short investment horizons, when an investment goes for 25 years as gold did, without doing anything to keep up with inflation, you've had huge losses in real terms -- with gold of course you have storage costs (you pay for the safety deposit box instead of getting interest payments from your money market or dividends from your stock) so you're in the hole just to begin with

and then for gold to go as long as it did, almost 25 years doing zip -- that's the difference between someone being able to retire or not being able to retire -- the gold from 1980 to the early 2000s wasn't an investment at all, it was a money loser

and 20-plus years is a significant chunk out of working person's life, to lose that, could well mean a person would never be able to retire

buy gold if you like, but looking at a short term gain over a trivial no. of years and claiming it's a good investment is just...it's just irresponsible

in the same time frame i've made a HUGE win from investing in latin america fund, you know what, i am still not going to tell people to put money they need to invest in latin america fund, just because i "won," it's playing craps...as is buying gold and thinking it is good against inflation when we have just seen a long period of time (reagan/bush/clinton) where it didn't hold its own against inflation

is human memory so poor and ability to research so weak that we truly never "get it" about gold?

it has only a small place in a smart investment portfolio, the part given over to money you can afford to screw around with

but you know what I take the republicans, in particular Norquist, at their word

As I said, once they loose power and all access to it, we will change our SHORT TERM capital preservation strategy

Nor is all in Gold.

What do you think some of us are that stupid?

Don't answer

But at this point my trust in Government Securities, with this crew in charge, IS NON Existent

Now as to emerging markets, Turkey

And in our case it happens to be stocks, not the actual metal.

Since the decade began though, the stock market overall hasn't done too well. Gold has done better.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/08/business/08chart.html?_r=1&ref=business&oref=login

SNIP

The charts show the progression of stock market returns through the decade since the new century began — big losses in 2001 and 2002, followed by recoveries.

The inflation adjustment is based on the Consumer Price Index, which is a widely followed but imperfect measure of inflation. The other charts show how the stock market has fared during the decade measured against values of other things that most people buy — and that have done very well in this decade.

The first is wheat. At the end of 1999, wheat futures were trading at $2.48 a bushel. By the end of August, that price was up to $7.67, as demand from India helped to send prices to record highs. Even after adding all the dividends received since the end of 1999, stocks bought then are worth 63 percent fewer bushels of wheat than they were.

A similar story is told in oil, where a barrel cost a bit over $25 as the 1990s ended, and nearly three times as much now. Measured in oil, stocks are down 61 percent. Gold has gone from under $300 an ounce to well over twice that figure. Measured in gold, stocks have lost half their value.

SNIP

How can anyone believe this shit?

manna from the sky

You can fool some of the people ALL the time!

Now if they gave the REAL reason that drove this today they would be red faced (Negative employment numbers for the first time since the Emperor took over)

Whether you are in the market or not -- when deregulation permits speculation instead of long term investment -- EVERY American will pay in the end -- while the speculators will bail out with their pockets full.

:(