DOW up over 900 points today -- CRAZY

Alright, who sold everything on Friday?

11% in one day, unfreaking believable.

What goes up........

Flagpole wrote:

Well, not really time to celebrate, but damn that's a crazy swing. 5 more days like that and we're all back to October 2007! Woo Hoo!

Agreed... no time to celebrate. However, this swing does give plenty of creedance to Flagpole's advice to just HOLD on. Doubtful we have a bunch of pending retirees on this board. If you're under 60 and in the market, just ride it out for a while.

Not even close to over. Just wait until earnings reports and forecasts. The market rising won't stop the layoffs. We dug a big hole. It's going to take years to get out of it, some are predicting over a decade.

the dollar is worth less and less and you pay more and more taxes on the difference - inflation sucks

Happy days are here again wrote:

What goes up........

What goes down, will climb up....

You people are such bozos.

The Dow goes down one day and one crowd is, "Hey Flagpole, how about THAT". Flagpole crawls into his hole.

The Dow goes up another day and Flagpole comes out of his hole to shout, "How about THAT". The other crawl into their holes.

Tomorrow when it's down 500 it will start all over again.

And then there are the bozos who come here looking for financial advice.

A Confederacy of Dunces.

no comprehension wrote:

the dollar is worth less and less and you pay more and more taxes on the difference - inflation sucks

Bingo. Congress legislating inflation to show paper profits.

Flagpole wrote:

Well, not really time to celebrate

This is correct. We've all been looking for the bounce, what with extremely oversold conditions, an expiration week, and the government's plunge protection team in there using your tax money to prop up stocks. But, the market could not get an accurate cue from the credit markets today because of the holiday, volume was light, and the buying was a bit too orderly. It could continue this week, but let's just wait and see.

Sagarin wrote:

This is correct. We've all been looking for the bounce, what with extremely oversold conditions, an expiration week, and the government's plunge protection team in there using your tax money to prop up stocks. But, the market could not get an accurate cue from the credit markets today because of the holiday, volume was light, and the buying was a bit too orderly. It could continue this week, but let's just wait and see.

Yep. We're still in a very volatile market -- big swings like this (both up and down) don't necessarily make investors confident and calm. No celebrating for me. Besides, if I did that would go against my philosophy (which I never do) of buy and hold. To get geeked about a HUGE climb in one day would be as bad as getting all gloomy about big declines.

One thing that is certain, and that is that MOST bear markets end with a better than equal bull market. Not sure it's time for that to start just yet as I see some bad economic news coming up and layoffs, but a bull market will happen at SOME point in the not too distant future (within 4 years I think).

Here's an interesting graphic on bear markets (not saying it proves anything one way or another; just interesting) -

here is one wrote:

You people are such bozos.

The Dow goes down one day and one crowd is, "Hey Flagpole, how about THAT". Flagpole crawls into his hole.

The Dow goes up another day and Flagpole comes out of his hole to shout, "How about THAT". The other crawl into their holes.

Tomorrow when it's down 500 it will start all over again.

And then there are the bozos who come here looking for financial advice.

A Confederacy of Dunces.

The spirit of your post is 100% right on the money, but where you are wrong is here -- "Flagpole crawls into his hole." I NEVER crawl into a hole. I've been very vocal the whole time the market has been dropping that it's not that big of a concern.

I neither crow loudly nor cry into my beer based on one day or one week or even one month moves or more in the market. Whenever the DOW gets back over 14,000 though, I'll tell people "I told you so" because it won't take 10 years to get back there.

THERE it is!

I told you to wait for it. And there it is. The inevitable dunce response from the head dunce.

Flagpole, I wouldn't read too much into this. It's just the masses locking in their losses. It's called an "inverted asset spread" commonly used by average Americans: buy houses that are 30% overvalued, then leg into the equity side of the spread by pulling money out of their 401ks when its 30% undervalued.

Flagpole wrote:

I neither crow loudly nor cry into my beer based on one day or one week or even one month moves or more in the market.

The existence of this thread (hmmmm...who started it again?) belies this fantasy.

Don't worry though. I'm sure that in your little head, you actually believe this.

malmo wrote:

Flagpole, I wouldn't read too much into this. It's just the masses locking in their losses. It's called an "inverted asset spread" commonly used by average Americans: buy houses that are 30% overvalued, then leg into the equity side of the spread by pulling money out of their 401ks when its 30% undervalued.

True.

malmo wrote:

Flagpole, I wouldn't read too much into this. It's just the masses locking in their losses. It's called an "inverted asset spread" commonly used by average Americans: buy houses that are 30% overvalued, then leg into the equity side of the spread by pulling money out of their 401ks when its 30% undervalued.

And, yet, I don't smell the panic amongst smaller investors. It's more institutional selling that's driving volatility skyward. The retail investor has is still in an "it will come back; it always does" mode, simply ignoring his/her 401k statements for now, which has me leary. Also, quantify for me how it's 30% undervalued. What metric and assumptions are you using?

Flagpole wrote:

Well, not really time to celebrate, but damn that's a crazy swing. 5 more days like that and we're all back to October 2007! Woo Hoo!

This is NOT a surprise.

Sagarin wrote:

And, yet, I don't smell the panic amongst smaller investors. It's more institutional selling that's driving volatility skyward. The retail investor has is still in an "it will come back; it always does"

Where have you been? That's not what the average investor is thinking. In today's world people aren't waiting for their quarterly 401k statements. They go online to view account performance, and with a click of the mouse they can actively "trade" allocations. I'd like to see some real figures on how much activity really occurred. I have a strong hunch that point-and-click 401k re-allocations were massive last week. As hedge funds were forced to meet margin calls on their shaky OTC paper, they were forced to sell equities. Mom and pop Main Street watched their retirement savings dwindle (many of whom should have already been heavily invested in fixed income) and panicked. The capitulation point had been reached.

Some of the biggest rallies ever in the market have come in the middle of bear markets (Anyone remember Jan 3, 2001 when the Fed made a surprise interest rate cut and the Nasdaq rose 14% in one day?). Sure bull markets do tend to kick off with huge rallies. In October 2002 the Dow shot up from 7200 to 8200 in four trading days at the start of the rally. In August of '82 you had the Dow rising a record 38 points (about 5%) in a single day right at the beginning of the rally. But I'm not confident that this is the bottom yet as finding a true bottom tends to be a process that occurs over months and you'd be hard pressed to find an example of a v-shaped stock market bottom like this. We may trend higher in the near-term given the highly over-sold nature of the market but I would expect to retest last Friday morning's lows (~7800 level on the dow) and eventually retest the 2002 lows of around 7200, perhaps in the late winter/early spring after we come off of a bear market rally.