My account statement over the last month says otherwise. Talk opinions all you like, but the only arbiter is P&L. In a bull market, a trader's job is to get long, and stay long until the bull market is at an end.
An enormous amount of customers opened brokerage accounts at my firm on Friday. Most of them were people who had never been in the markets, or had not been in the last 2 or 3 years, a few said they had been out since the dot.com bubble.. Now a lot of this activity was because of the upcoming GM IPO (I live and work in Michigan) but a lot was from those who wish to chase this market. This makes me wonder if a lot of the public nationwide believes that the ship is sailing without them? Remember that the average person does not have a deep understanding of economics and monetary policy, they just want to place bets. For a lot of my customers the movement in popular stocks like AAPL, C and F gets them both excited and angry... and they just cannot stand hearing how much higher they are each day. For the average unsophisticated retail investor that I see, this is a lot like a trip to the local casinos. The dice are hot and they have no bets on the craps table... the pull to throw chips in is irresitible. This is especially true since some of them have like $200k in CDs paying 1% or less.
Yes, that is part of the intent of low interest rates. Capital is forced to take risk in order to achieve yield. The markets are being marked up to stimulate further participation by the public. A protracted bull phase will continue until this is achieved. +1
He was only refuted in your opinion. I heard all these things as a young man looking for a job in 1982, when the stock market was screaming higher while unemployment continued to climb: a couple of years later, everything was fine. Under Clinton, the whole economy was going to collapse because he raised tax rates at the upper end. We know how that story ended. There's always a reason for someone to complain that the whole economy sucks so why is the stock market rising? Either you learn to ignore it and make some bucks or you don't. Not my problem if you continue the same behavior. But to say he was refuted? Honestly.
The above was addressed to MK Trader specifically, from a couple of pages back. It could go for the rest of you guys who are whining on about the economy as well. Also, one more time: run some stats on bull and bear markets. Simple stuff. If you're perceptive, you'll figure out why those left behind are always saying it's manipulated.
I put two of your paragraphs in italics because these are the most cogent in my opinion. In particular it will be interesting, to say the least, how much further the US will be permitted to weaken the dollar without a substantive response from our international competitors. They surely will respond if this path the US is on continues much longer. Could there be a renewed effort, or just the threat might be enough to scare the begeesus out of Bernanke and Geithner, to move to the Euro as the reserve currency, or possibly price internationally traded commodities relative to a basket of currencies with payment accepted in any one of the component currencies. The possibility of this happening has been considered to be quite remote, nevertheless the Russians and Iranians have been overt in their calls for abandoning the dollar as a reserve currency, and I have to think others are wanting to move in this direction as well. Because of this threat, if I was a central banker i'd certainly be trying to covertly get rid of as much dollar denominated paper as possible. I wouldn't want to be holding any more dollar denominated stuff than I absolutely had to. If that is the mood of central bankers, then once they have divested, which will be difficult without taking a bath, their interest in supporting the dollar is certainly going to wane. And your comment with regard to inflation is right on the money. The official figure significantly understates inflation. That makes we wonder if the Fed's stated concern that we could slip into deflation is a smoke screen for the real reason for QE2. Perhaps the real reason is that we have no way to service debt other than via inflation. But were you one of the US creditors, would you want to hear that? I hardly think so. Yet it is patently obvious that's at least in part that's what is going on. I have said this before, and many disagree with me. I'll grant that Fed policy under Greenspan was derelict and disastrous. Nevertheless, Bernanke is no fool. His hands are tied, however, by irresponsible fiscal policy. Monetary policy is captive to fiscal policy. You can not correct for bad fiscal policy with monetary policy alone. If there is no significant improvement on the fiscal front in the next few years, then the future is bleak indeed. In the U.S. as in other nations, it takes a crisis to get enough movement in policy to overcome fiscal inertia. I think that when push comes to shove there will be a fiscal response because the alternative will be unacceptable even to the U.S. congress.
I've been trading only a small fraction of the cash in our retirement accounts and the portfolio's up 14% this year. I look to buy fundamentally sound stocks on any significant dip. Since there've been no significant dips recently, the chase is on. A couple of my friends forwarded me financial newsletters recommending they start buying stocks if the market broke out to new highs last week.
you mean with the huge bust? and then another one? honestly even money printing has its limits. QQQQ is up+25% in 2 months. This rate is much higher than in the latest moments of the Tech bubble. Another 25% by the year end and it's over for US