It kills me that they were right...

[canadianteddy]

Cramer - He never held much credibility with me but when all this market nonsense started Cramer claimed we all have to cut back and realign our budgets -- Look at him -- He is down from 3 vacations a year in exotic locals to only 2 in more moderate locals

Come On

[shotgunner]

Cramer is an entertaining guy, he puts a show that often is more entertaining than 3 to 6 people trying to talk over each other. Sometimes he gets wrong, very wrong. Other times he says things that seem to make sense. Did anyone watch him last night? He talked about the impact the SEC has had in this mess by removing post Great Depression safeguards such as the uptick rule. He also gave his theory for the last hour wild swings especially on the down side. You have to admit the % changes and wild swings in the last hour have been common and seem to be a new phenom.

I expected a correction, hopefully not 50% but knew that was possible given '73/'74 and '01-'02. What I didn't expect was a rapid cascading crash, massive gov't bailouts, short term interest going back to 1% maybe even 0, 5 to 7% swings to become common, and the last hour to be so volatile.

How much of this mess was preventable by the removal of those safeguards? Who gained from their removal? To me the rules of the game were signifcantly changed and the average investor may have been hurt more as a result.

[Nords]

Quote:

Originally Posted by liveitup I blame the news media as much as anyone for scaring the hell out of everybody and putting fear in the marketplace.Let's face it bad new sells.The longer they cry "Great Depression 2",the more likely it's going to happen.They have all but destroyed consumer and investor confidence.Until that is restored,we will continue on this downward spiral.

If I was in the print or broadcast media, I'd also be terrified of a Great Depression 2. If they really wanted to develop career skills in their field, they'd learn webcasting and website programming...

Quote:

Originally Posted by shotgunner You have to admit the % changes and wild swings in the last hour have been common and seem to be a new phenom.

Whenever I see phrases like "you have to admit", I'd rather read a study of the phenomenon. I agree that the media is calling our attention to every little burp & belch of the market, much like alert new (yet clueless) parents watching their newborn, but their focus on recency doesn't make it fact.

If I had a nickel for every time I've seen "This time it's really different" then I'd be ER'd by now... um, never mind.

[ikubak]

I guess the next time I run into my cousin that told me, "The next economic catastrophy is very close" will be happy to tell me how he warned me about this dramatic sell-off. Of course he told me the catastrophy was near 3 and half years ago.

[aaronc879]

Quote:

Originally Posted by shotgunner I expected a correction, hopefully not 50% but knew that was possible given '73/'74 and '01-'02. What I didn't expect was a rapid cascading crash, massive gov't bailouts, short term interest going back to 1% maybe even 0, 5 to 7% swings to become common, and the last hour to be so volatile.

I also expected a correction thinking 14,000 DOW was a little too high. I expected it to go to 12000 or maybe 11000 but not <8000 DOW. That's what happens when the market is based on panic/fear instead of company value/earnings like it should be. There's no question the market is significantly undervalued right now but that doesn't seem to matter anymore. The market was never really predictable but now it's rediculous.
I'm in the accumulation phase so I will continue to hold what I have and contribute the same as I would any other time and hope for the best. It may take a couple years but i'm optomistic that we'll be on the road to recovery and the DOW will likely be nearly double what it is now in 5-6 years.

[harley]

Quote:

Originally Posted by liveitup I blame the news media as much as anyone for scaring the hell out of everybody and putting fear in the marketplace.Let's face it bad new sells.The longer they cry "Great Depression 2",the more likely it's going to happen.They have all but destroyed consumer and investor confidence.Until that is restored,we will continue on this downward spiral.

One of the few places I agree with the doomsayers is when they point out that this market collapse isn't driven by individual investors, so I don't think the media clowns are having that much effect. On the market. They are effecting things like consumer confidence which helps the non-shopping trend. And I definitely believe they are contributing to the general malaise that people seem to be suffering through. But I think the actual drop in the market is due to the credit crunch and the giant institutional investors and hedge funds being forced to sell into dropping prices. I'm hoping that after the hedge funds can quit their selling (2nd Q 2009?) prices will stabilize and the market can either bounce or toil upwards.