Bottom’s up for stocks?

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

Betty

http://www.my-foreclosures.info

You’ve got to be kidding. The “experts” have been predicting this “bottom” pretty much monthly since the crisis hit. It is clear that this is nothing but wishful thinking, and that “expert” means nothing more than “cheerleader”. There is no evidence whatsoever that we are anywhere near the bottom. Alan Greenspan pointed out that this is a once in a hundred year economic meltdown. That means it should be compared to the Great Depression, not the cyclical post-war recessions. The market collapsed in ‘29, and again in ‘33, finally losing more than 75% of its value. It didn’t recover again until the ’50’s.

The layoffs are just beginning. And this crisis is worldwide. The entire world economy is going through the most violent contraction since the Great Depression as we are forced to pay for the trillions of dollars in fictitious value that was created in the last 2 decades in the form of the now notorious “opaque” (read, “unregulated”) securities, most of them nothing more than pyramid schemes. The market is not collapsing because of “sentiment” or “fear”; it is collapsing because the real economy is collapsing.

Bottom ?
Here we go again. Traders buying stocks trying to convince naive crowd to rush back into this useless pyramid scheme.
And Paul is always here: ready to help

What happened on Wall Street is a disturbing example of a global problem consisting of greed, fraud, lack of regulation and unwillingness to tackle the hard issues. Rulers and leaders are unwilling to take the candy from the baby because the baby will throw a tantrum!!
Tough luck!!!!
What we need is legislation against people who have grown very loud and powerful and rich. Sadly tens of thousands of people now depend on jobs linked in some way to this fraudlent way of doing business. Many other jobs will be lost when the world economy adjusts.
Let this be a lesson for all time.
Money and growth can’t be made out of nothing or rubbish book-keeping.
If it is too good to be true, then someone is ripping someone else off.

I don’t think the bottom will be reached until late in 2010, when there will have been far more foreclosures, much higher unemployment, many more bankrupt small businesses–those not too big for the feds to allow to fail. That bottom will have the Dow under 2500.

Dow 7500 could be near The Bottom, but don’t fret if you didn’t get in because The Bottom is most likely to be revisited again and again over the next year or so.

We are in a long term bear market not unlike Japan has been in for decades. If the current silly rally hits Dow 10,000 I will be looking to reduce my 10% stock exposure to even less. I’ve been bearish for over 4 years but not a stock market timer – perhaps its time to play these silly rallys with my 10%?

In addition to Bush and Paulson, even Obama acknowledged that the worse is yet to come. Either they should not be trusted or the market is just behaving like a casino!

I say no.

We have not changed any of the fundamental problems/causes. We are still consuming more then we make. We are still spending more then we earn. Our government is till borrowing money it can’t afford to pay back.

We’ll see what happens next year when job losses are really sinking into the group mentality, when the government has to float (how many now?) trillions of bonds, when both the newly retired and the newly laid off start cashing in their 401k’s, when the luster and hope that a new president brings grinds down into the reality of actually bringing about change. And more.

You never know. I suppose it could be on its way up now. But I’d bet on yet another new low before its over.

We will retest the high 700’s on the S&P again, as well as the high 7000’s on the Dow. Q1 will see a lot of sideway volatility between 800(0) and 900(0).
There is still plenty of bad news for 2009 to come.

We are certainly getting there but not quite “bottomed out”. There are still many foreclosures to come, which trickle down to every industry. Sit tight through next year.

I was looking for Paul on the bad days and he was nowhere to be found…Sure stocks are going through the roof from here…

In my opinion junk bonds should rally first then we have a proof credit market OK

I believe we are bottoming now and just bouncing back and forth of the floor. We have had a ton of bad news priced in and then the hawks swoop in for the kill evertime. This tells me that people are still willing to buy in a bad environment. Seems like bottom is DOW at 8 or so. I don’t think we will recover anytime just bounce of the news for some time.

too soon to tell.

I believe that the bottom lines of many companies will improve by extensively cutting payrolls and outsourcing. Perhaps we are near a temporary bottom?

Maybe. Charts show an inverted head-and-shoulders (750 head, 840 shoulders) that could have been the bottom; we’ll see. Daily new 52-week lows are still a bit high for me.

Fundamentally, I think the whole thing of crashing has been overblown. Lehman lost all their money; they’ve been liquidated. Auto, financial, and homebuilder stocks have been written down to the levels of their true worths, which were zero in many cases. Failed/failing finance companies have been closed or merged. There’s more to go; weak will die, strong will survive, but we’re nearing the end.

It’s time to get back to basics: food, clothing, and shelter. Everything else is social, health care, entertainment, etc. which means discretionary. Even if GDP drops a few percent, this does not justify a 50% stock market drop.

Bush and Cheney should resign today so that our new team can take over and get moving immediately. No more bank bailouts; in fact, let’s demand our money back from Citi, etc. and invest it in the real, Main Street economy, the one in which we all live.

A rally is long overdue; happy holidays.

no way too much bad news still to come

Not yet but it’s gotta be close.