mgabriel01: The general semtiment is persimistic because there are good reasons to be persimistic. Being a contrarian in this case is foolish unless you have a good reason to be a contrarian. The only hope the market does not collapse tomorrow is an immediate rate cut. Ben Bernanke effectively already said he is going to cut aggressively. I don't see why he can't move the already planned damn cut ahead a few days, just because he wants to save face?
I see a lot of people worried tomorrow will be ugly, but I don't see any saying they will sell. Kind of odd that the market would be so kind as to give us advanced notice of the exact day it's was going to crash, don't you think? Maybe we will, maybe we won't. Maybe we'll plunge and rally back. Maybe we'll plunge, rally back and then plunge even more. Maybe we'll plunge and keep plunging. As a trader, I find I make a lot more money when I keep an open mind and don't get to locked into a narrow mindset exclusive of other possiblilites.
the '87 crash was populated with disbelievers all the way down but the US was not in as bad a credit shape as today this crash will be merciless sparing no one an opinion of course and I could be wrong
'87 crash was made worse by portfolio insurance and it recovered because the economy was not so bad as to justify the discount created. This time it's the other way round we have a property/credit bubble driven recession. Slower 2-3 year bleed than in 99-01 as the economy was driven to a greater extent than now by stock market gains then and systemic not localised and thus not containable as was'98. Think 1929, think Nikkei in 1980's.
And stock valuations were ridiculously high in '87....as bad or worse than 2000. Stocks aren't "cheap" now, but they don't have to drop as far this time to start screaming "buy"!
As I write this the Hang Seng is going for -8% today. I see a lot of stocks that look like their going for 0.00
Well looks like we either get an immediate rate cut, or see the market totally collapse tomorrow. I also have a bad feeling that even a rate cut will not be enough to save the market.