Amen and amen. Those precious years only come by once. Enjoy them, enjoy the holidays, enjoy all that you have truly been blessed with. Maybe come back to the market in the new year, slowly at first. Best of luck.
Anyone who is buying long stocks in this market trying to pick a bottom is crazy. heck, even guys like Buffet are dropping net worth like no tomorrow. SP500 is headed to 500 and lower. The carnage hasn't even began. If you can not day trade, stay away from this market. It will kill you.
Healthy suggestion. Get away from your source of uncertainty for awhile, it will be here when you're ready to pick it up again.
I feel naked without my money. I never realized it meant so much. I have spent my life on the outside hating the rich. hating pro athletes and movie stars for all their easy money. There was a lot of hate. Perhaps I hated myself too, it's hard to tell, I was having such fun. I've always not been able to come to terms with the nine to five, even the nine to four, I don't mind working all day but I won't congregate with large groups on the Subway or in the train at eight in the morning. I've always liked to work out around 10:30 so that's a problem too... so obviously being a stockbroker came to mind but I hate them so. Again with the hate. If I had to do something real what would I do? I've been around a long time folks. Over twenty years Investing, every day. I've traded my way through every downturn, every year, that has always been my style. I make double ups on the bounces and thus when the dust settles, I actually broke even on some of the worst years without ever going short. Try that at home... and that was the idea- to work from home... daytime baths... great Bravo TV & the Military Channel, lunches out. Alas this time the monster got me. I have no one to blame but rich white men and one black one so I do. These crooked high paid no good bastards have stolen what truly matters to me my money... but I never knew it mattered till it poofed away. There is a big debate in family land about sons like me. Do you give someone $2K a month for a number of years so he can be a production assistant on film crews a DJ a videographer, etc... or do you kick them to the curb and say earn it... and get an eye doctor back. Depends what you want. If you want a sturdy soul to carry on the family name, maybe you don't give them any money. My grandmother did just that leaving a Generational Skipping Trust that was to ignore my dear father and furthermore me. My mom has been there for me with that $2K and at the ripe age of 44 I still count on it! Pathetic me. With no obvious talents- I don't do Word or anything not Mac, I'm fearful of technology, don't interact well on jury duties obviously I turned to the stock market to make money. Thank goodness I have a knack for it... my Grandpa Jerry played the stocks with a ticker in a small office in the North Fork LI long ago and I happened to be a very good stock picker too, over the years I worked up a large account, I felt somewhat invincible until now. Now I miss that damn money. It gave me status enough to meet the doorman's eye and not feel embarrassed that I don't work. Now I'm shifty and nervous someone will take my weekend house away. Retail was great for ten years but like the Mob you can never go back, it's brutal... I'm focusing now on my child and really staring at him a lot at night when he sleeps- he's so innocent, he knows not a whiff of high finance and what money is. And maybe I don't either. It's truly different this time and this market of stocks is really nothing more than paper. There is a huge feeling of disjointedness, of the world is on an edge... I'm at a tipping point, where I can't take losing any more. 40% to %50 cannot become 60% if you know what I mean... so undoubtedly the market will take me there and wash me on the rocks and all you smart ass, small time nickel and dime day traders who hold no damn risk overnight; all you unencumbered wise akers with no idea how to build a portfolio much less seven... all of you will do just fine... It's me and others like me that I'm worried about. We had faith in the system, we were not so cynical. We thought ten years or longer you could leave some stocks and not do a round trip. The end of buy and hold, a fragmented choppy market that always goes down. There's no fun in that. I can't stand the fake inside jargon and the relentless lower S&P targets. You know what? damn it... do you notice what is NOT happening in this bounce?... Not a soul has come on and called another bottom. Like me BURNED too many times, that's of course is when bottoms can be made... so think about that. And I will too. ~ stoney
You're a pretty good writer, why not hit the book trail? Between journals and postings I write a thousand words a day, that's a novelette a month and a full scale novel every six... the thing with me is, I never really stop all the other insanity and figure out what to write, otherwise I'd turn out many books... I'm going to work on that... You could take some career choice tests, not aptitude but interest, see what pops up there, if nothing else it might point to something you could write about.. taking college classes is a wonderful workout for the brain and good for the soul too there Stony.. you could do that, I've done that in the past, it was extremely rewarding.. after the crash of '09 we can get to rebuilding things better than before, meanwhile, time to give it all a rest maybe..
Stoney, 'The Awakening' may turn out to be the longest and flattest trading range in equity markets in a long, long time.
I HAVE A DOG WITH CONSTANT INFECTED ANAL GLANDS! There I feel better. Thanks. Yes BuyLo I am looking for that same protracted agony but we lived through five years before at DOW 10,000 so we are used to it... what I need now is the Great Depression next year talk off the table... Stagnation would bleed the speculators but perhaps give some faith to the folks about to retire or trying to find a job. -Russell wrote the following in his Dow Theory Letters: The market is warning of a coming depression. Next year thereâll be a huge problem of unemployment, job openings will have disappeared, and every business will be going over its personal thinking in terms of who the business can do without. The sentiment in the country will be dark grey to jet black. Fortunes will have been wiped out. Thousands of savings plans and 401Ks will have been shattered. Americans who have never experienced true hard times will be living hard times. Confusion and fear will be rampant. How do I know all this? Iâve been here before, I know the signs..... It's that kind of talk that is driving fear into the heart of the stonedinvestor. What's keeping him going? This past week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average traded about 34% below its 200-day moving average. This eclipses the oversold conditions from the post WWII era. Since 1902 we've only had one period of greater oversold conditions: the Depression market of 1932. We need price discovery in the worst way. We hear through Blackrock that these " toxic " mortgage strips are not that bad that 90% of them are throwing off their interest... but they are being priced like they are near worthless. The original Paulson plan was for just such discovery but they found themselves with not enough time to get the program off the ground. Paulson and Bernanke realized that it was going to take some time to establish a "reverse auction" procedure to buy distressed assets. They wanted to include private buyers bidding along with the government. It appears they did not have the right experts on staff. By any account Lawrence Sumners is a big headed genius- he will have a lot of these answers and so Paulson has offloaded this mess on Obama and team as he plans for his rosy retirement. Quite possibly one of only a thousand or so Americans rich enough to retire now. In forging ahead Paulson made the huge blunder of admitting that the $700 billion would not be enough; it was enough to enough to buy troubled assets in September, but the remaining funds were not enough now.... That does not inspire confidence on any level. The truth as I see it is somewhat murkier... that money may be enough if they had set up the auctions in the first place. What investors take away is the wrong headed notion that the securities are near worthless. ~stoney