So is the DOW going to hit 6000 or what?

[Super Amputee Cat]

My prediction: A 6000 point DOW by September 30th.

Already the DOW has lost over 2000 points during the past two months alone. Not even the 9/11 terrorist attacks have devalued the DOW for such a sustained period of time. Back then, there was already rebound before September was even over.

Kenneth Lay is the REAL terrorist. A corporate terrorist. The lowest scumsucking form of life on the face of the earth.

Let's put a cap in his a**. Sincerely.

 

[nerudite]

I have a sneaking suspicion you are right. I'm afraid to look at deferred comp balance

But... I am getting the itch to buy some more stock. Might as well take advantage while the gettin' is good.

 

[El Feo]

Um, I understand the frustration, but I still put Ken Lay (Bernie Ebbers, and Sam Waksal, and, well, you get the point) somewhere on the evil chain above Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Arafat, and OBL. When Ken Lay buries 3,000 folks under 220 stories of rubble, or chops off a journalist's head for fun, or blows up a couple five-year-olds for a crack at 72 virgins in a whorehouse heaven, I might join you in nominating him for lowest scumsucking form of life on the face of the earth.

 

[GeogPlanner]

there goes the 8,000 mark...

 

[El Feo]

No rally today, that's for sure. This hole's for real.

 

[Dan]

In 1993, I got my contributions from my former employer's retirement fund -- $9,000 -- and started a 401K. On the advice of my financial advisor, the money was put into shares of a small cap growth fund. Looked good, based on past performance ... 20% annual growth rate, even through the doldrums of the lare '80s-early 1990s recession.

My balance today? About $9,000.

When I lived in Denver, it seemed as if it was poor form to have a conversation with someone without at least 25% of the content centered on the financial markets. People had conversations using language that came straight from corporate mission statements ... even the planners! Nouns as verbs, "landscape solution," using the word "product" in place of "houses," that sort of thing. I wonder if stock talk and biz-speak is even heard there today.

 

[GeogPlanner]

ahhh...but you're 20% is a 20 year avg...right? that's the smoke they blow up my @$$.

 

[Runner]

So, anyone up from privatizing Social Security?

 

[Cardinal]

Given the past few months, I have come to believe in the relative safety of commodities versus stocks or bonds.

 

[Dan]

Aside from the IRA, when I played the stock market I tended to invest not in the dot-coms themselves, but rather the ISPs and telcom companies. At least they had some physical assets; buildings, switching equipment, thousands of miles of fiber. A dot-com was usaully just an office with some young up-and-comers and what was thought to be a good idea.

I did really well with Qwest, but it slowed down a bit after the merger with USWest. Rocky Mountain Internet doubled in a day; I dumped my shared right at the peak, before it went back down the next day.

My Iridium stock, on the other hand ... well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Energy and real estate are the way to go now, it seems. Homebuilders like Pulte and Lennar are doing welll they're probably a bit overvalued because folks see them as a safety net of sorts, compared to tech. I'm thinking that a for a good, long-term, hold-it-until-you-retire portfolio, big oil is the way to go.

Retail ... Wal-Mart's building out in the US, but Target still has quite a ways to go. I don't see where Kmart fits in the grand scheme of things.

Tech-wise ... I wonder if any of the video card manufacturers are public?

My job seems safe. Sole planner in a booming small town, working 50 hour weeks. I'm getting a building permit for a single family house every day. Four annexation requests last week. A developer talking about filling up one part of town with $500,000 homes ... but they want to do loop n' lollypop streets, and that's a dealbreaker in a town that requires interconnected streets honoring the existing grid.

 

[Downtown]

We're doing pretty well with our pharmiceuticals, we've had Merck through 2 stock splits, but were temporarily insane when we bought Plug Power at $40. But all in all, we've got 30 years until we retire, so we're really not paying too much attention to the day to day of what's going on. We're starting to think about getting a new house, so we really wish our local housing market would slow down just a little bit!

 

[Chet]

Two words:

Real Estate.

You can make or break it in the stock market, but real estate is a sure thing. And those deferred comp balances? Don't even open the envelopes. I just got my quarterly statement and I lost more than I contributed in the last 3 months. File them and think fondly of them when you greet people at Wal Mart and hand them their cart..