I have given up on my fundamental or technical analysis. I say buy some Gold, keep some cash, some real estate and some resource companies and just sit back and watch. No one knows what happens next. I am sure though that there will be a struggle between the fiat currencies and Dollar will export inflation to the entire world.
I have similar feelings ashatet. Last year I put a great amount of time and effort into reading about which were the worst of the worst (FRE, FNM, WAMUQ.pk, LEHMQ.PK, AIG, ABK, MBI, WB) and I did very well by shorting these to various extents. However with the Fed and the US Govt implementing all their crazy programs, there are far fewer rewards for fundamental analysis on individual companies. I feel safer being long gold / short equities and just sitting back and watching the gold/$SPX ratio creep higher, as it has started to do in the past couple of weeks after a big decline from March to August.
can't we just make our own destiny? can't we just decide its a sunny day, and there, it is, sunny? can't we just say there's no depression, and over 15 million unemployed, just those that are being counted, forget about the 22% estimates, and just decide its only a recession? who's fooling whom?
Good call on the holding of gold. But I will tell you what won't happen: a near-term market crash. Why? There a thousands of variables that play into market dynamics, but there is only one that has the largest coefficient relative to everything else right now: Everyone is expecting a crash. There are too many derivatives being held for protection to the down side right now, so we'll trot upwards in a zombie-like fashion. Pockets of volume, but nothing major. Every sell-off being blunted by puts and shorts. Participant greed is reflected in market dynamics; the markets move in the direction where the most people lose. I don't know when people will learn: fighting a tape like this is asinine. It doesn't matter if you're right about economic policy, the market will make you feel you are wrong.
No, I actually get feedback from those trying to finance up projects, profitable projects I might add, and it's very different from 2 years ago. Banks aren't lending for a lot of stuff that they used. I am not talking about stupid residential mortgages, don't give a crap about that. Credit is tight, for an economy that runs on credit. I'm not approving or disapproving the standards, I am pointing to the fact that this economy needs endless credit to show any growth, and the current standards are doing the opposite.
Interesting. Is he first time home buyer? Off-topic but Detroit? WTF are you & he doing there? And what home would be worth even 100k there, let alone 315k?
yep - first-time buyer. People that think Detroit is all $1000 homes are just being foolish. The metro area has homes upwards of 25 million USD. Oakland county is the 3rd richest county in the US per capita.(I'm in Rochester hills but work in the business district) Gross point, about 2 miles from downtown, has blocks upon blocks of million dollar homes.(2002 prices) There is a _lot_ of old money in this area. Detroit as a metropolis is doing bad, but you have a city infrastructure that, as it sits now, can support over 3 million people, with only around 900k in the city limits.(Metro area has around 4.5 million people) I hope we get a few more rough years as people are starting to purchase houses 50+ at a clip - literally buying blocks of the city. Re-gentrification is in the cards. Another interesting tid-bit I found out recently: Detroit proper has the most advanced municipal electric grid on the planet. Apparently it has all this capacity for the manufacturing base that is now eroding. DTE has some weird type of metal they use in the grid too...(on the high-voltage main lines; non-standard metal of some sort)