Powerful Bull Market...

[brimic]

Hows everyone doing? Is anyone still sitting on their doomsday pile of gold that they were talking about 8 months ago?

[Sylvilagus Aquaticus]

My oil and gas well royalties haven't been this good in years, thanks.

Forget gold. Invest in cobalt. Can't make jet turbines without it.

Regards,
Rabbit.

[grampster]

As a retired person I'm not interested in growth.  I'm looking for stability and fixed returns.  The stock market resembles an EKG, spiking up and down.  It may be a Bull market, but it is not stabile.  
I go against the conventional wisdom as that wisdom relies too much on the past.  Investing and markets are driven more by emotion than reality.  The world we live in today is more emotional, imho, than in the past.  fixed investment are more reliable as a result.  Works for me.

[lupinus]

Personally I believe the best ratio between fixed safe investments and stocks depends on several factors but one should never fully invest in one type of investment

What you want, where you are in life, how much you want to invest, and how much you can afford to loose being cheif among them.

[CAnnoneer]

The reason why people lose a lot is because they want to win much and fast. That can only be done by risky means, ergo the problem. When investors appreciate "expectation values", they will do better in the long run.

Greed is good. Too much of anything good is bad.

[The Rabbi]

Actually the bull market is just the result of "corporatism".  Whatever that is.

Back to planet Earth.
One could almost do pretty well in investing just by looking at posts here and doing the opposite.  This board just about called the top in gold prices right on the money.  By which I mean interest in buying gold peaked about the same time as the price.
Now we'll see whether this holds true with the Dow.  I will buy more long-dated puts on Monday probably.

[280plus]

Well, today I show a three year average return of 9.7% on my portfolio so neither the bulls nor the bears scare me. I DO like the bulls better though.

[BozemanMT]

Think back to January 2000
that's where we are.
The only average going up is the DJIA and it's not broad based, very few stocks are making new highs.

[roo_ster]

I'm in the market for the long haul (relatively speaking: 40+ years from today).  Short-term dips & peaks don't get my feathers ruffled.  When the market is down, I just think of it as buying stock at a discount.  When it is up, I reflect on what I bought at "discount" and keep on buying a diverse basket of stock.  

Mostly index stuff, BTW.  S&P500 index, small-cap dmestic & foregn indicies, etc.  I don't like paying big $$$ for some guy to beat the market one year and lose relative to it the next.

[brimic]

One could almost do pretty well in investing just by looking at posts here and doing the opposite.  This board just about called the top in gold prices right on the money.  By which I mean interest in buying gold peaked about the same time as the price.

Kind of what I was thinking when I posted this thread.  I've made a crapload of money buying long calls on a NASDAQ 100 index over the last week, but I doubt the NASDAQ's run is going to last too much longer.

[Guest]

"Think back to January 2000
that's where we are."

I've been buying more stock every month since then. And the stocks & funds I started buying back in the '70s are looking good, too.

If it keeps going up I might have to sell some. Nah, I'm not greedy, just trying to keep well ahead of inflation.

John

[BozemanMT]

"Think back to January 2000
that's where we are."

I've been buying more stock every month since then. And the stocks & funds I started buying back in the '70s are looking good, too.

If it keeps going up I might have to sell some. Nah, I'm not greedy, just trying to keep well ahead of inflation.

John

Well, i understand what you are saying and normally I'm long too
But
I look around I see nothing interesting to buy.  no compelling stories in anything.  
I see lots of risk
I see an inverted yield curve
I see transports not backing the industrials
I see lots of bad signs and nothing good.
I'm more than 50% in cash right now and not convinced I'm not going further.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I am backing what I say with my own money.

It's a bubble caused by housing and incredibly loose credit.  All booms end in a deflationary bust.  

There's no harm being into capital preservation.

I'm sure in 6 to 12 months, we'll know who can talk smack, you or me.

[The Rabbi]

"Think back to January 2000
that's where we are."

I've been buying more stock every month since then. And the stocks & funds I started buying back in the '70s are looking good, too.

If it keeps going up I might have to sell some. Nah, I'm not greedy, just trying to keep well ahead of inflation.

John

Well, i understand what you are saying and normally I'm long too
But
I look around I see nothing interesting to buy.  no compelling stories in anything.  
I see lots of risk
I see an inverted yield curve
I see transports not backing the industrials
I see lots of bad signs and nothing good.
I'm more than 50% in cash right now and not convinced I'm not going further.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I am backing what I say with my own money.

It's a bubble caused by housing and incredibly loose credit.  All booms end in a deflationary bust.  

There's no harm being into capital preservation.

I'm sure in 6 to 12 months, we'll know who can talk smack, you or me.

You have it exactly right, imo.  Currently the market is reacting to lower oil prices and a lessening of inflation.  The market is not seeing these things for what they are: slowdowns in the economy.  When the economy slows, companies make less money.  Seems obvious I know.
I've bought some drug stocks and consumer non-cyclicals.  Cash is also good.

[Guest]

Well, dang, just because I'm always buying something doesn't mean I'm not sitting on cash too. The stuff piles up if you don't spend it as fast as you make it.

If we were playing Texas Hold 'Em here I wouldn't be all in either.  

I didn't mortgage my home during the boom years in order to play the market and didn't borrow against it to play the real estate game. Some people laughed at me, but I was happy being debt free.

I'm cheap and conservative. I do see a lot of people cutting back on their real estate investing and moving their money into the stock market. Who knows what will happen.

My parents have most of their money in CDs and such, but I suppose 5 to 5.5% looks good when you're in your mid-80s. Actually, it's starting to look good to me - OMG I'm getting old!!!!

John

[Antibubba]

Funny, but when you said "Powerful Bull Market" I assumed you meant the run-up to Elections.

Bullish, indeed.

[Standing Wolf]

Well, heck, it just means the gap between the rich and the poor is widening.

Oh. Wait. Sorry. There for a minute, I thought I was a brain-damaged leftist.

[CAnnoneer]

it just means the gap between the rich and the poor is widening.

This makes me distil that there are two schools of thought about how to decrease that gap: make the rich poorer (by taxation) or make the poor richer (by teaching them how to be more successful). Interestingly, the leftists always seem to favor the former. I wonder why

[280plus]

The object, IMHO, would be to meet in the middle somewhere. Like maybe we could invest more in education.

[brimic]

The object, IMHO, would be to meet in the middle somewhere. Like maybe we could invest more in education.

You will always have the same "lead the horse to water" problem.  Some people don't want to learn and will always be the turds that sink to the bottom of the pool. Others have a thirst to learn, and will continue to seek knowledge all of their lives- these are the cream that tend to float to the top. You can't outwardly change a turd to cream- it has to happen willfully from a person's inside. Pushing the cream down will only make the cream want to move harder to the top, pushing a turd up will will just give it more potential energy to help it sink to the bottom again.

[Guest]

Investing more in education isnt necessarily going to help. Lets imagine for a moment that everyone in the country has a bachelors degree. Well, someone is still going to be the fry jockey at McDonalds and now he is a philosphy major, it will just take a masters degree to get even a decent job outside the trades.

[Antibubba]

Investing more in education isnt necessarily going to help. Lets imagine for a moment that everyone in the country has a bachelors degree. Well, someone is still going to be the fry jockey at McDonalds and now he is a philosphy major, it will just take a masters degree to get even a decent job outside the trades.

It's worse than that, even.  When you must have a Bachelors, then everyone will, and the standards for getting that degree will descend so that anyone who attends college can bet that Bachelors.  That frycook most likely majored in Communications, and may have taken Intro to Philosophy his Junior year.  That's where we are now.

FWIW, I have a B.A. in Philosophy.  There was a time when the words Fry cook and Liberal Arts degree would not have been in the same sentence, let alone in a trite punchline, together.  But since a BA is practically required these days...

[280plus]

Nah, someday soon someone will invent the totally automated fast food joint and fry cooks will be either a novelty or a thing of the past.

Good points though. I think I kinda meant more like education in terms of teaching more to save and invest their money wisely which might help narrow the gap. Besides, aren't we STILL producing barely literate HS grads in certain areas?

I know what you mean about the turd vs the cream, it IS a bit too hopeful to think that the majority WOULD be interested in more education. Some people are just dumb and happy and like it that way. I was married to one for a while so I have first hand experience. The most famous line out of her (that I recall) was, "It's either me or college."

Yep, got me a Bachelors.

[Dave]

Not much of a bull market, considering that even using the Fed.gov's watered down CPI numbers, the Dow is still 17% off it's highs when adjusted for inflation. This is merely a cyclical bull inside a secular bear, and the Fed and the PPT are working overtime to keep the game going. The fundamentals are terrible. People who think the US economy looks healthy are no different than the people who think a chubby boy who eats nothing but twinkies looks healthy because he has rosy cheeks.