I think at this point the fall in the market is driven entirely by fears about credit, and that fear just feeds off itself. I don't see a bottom yet.

Wow, I forgot I mentioned that. Why am I not running the Fed?? And to put the shine on the apple I got completely out of the market during the week of July 22 as I got ready to buy a summer house. I wish I was an economic genius or something and did it because I knew what was coming. Truth is I needed all my cash. Stocks were all in weird Biotech/Apple/Nintendo/ which have been hammered the most since. One of my biggest biotechs is now trading at less than 2 bucks. (I would have been severely hosed and not able to buy a chicken coop today.)

Completely opposite to what I usually do with stock. Buy high and sell low. I'm taking a break for three years since I don't have two nickels to rub together. (Kids in college to fund.)

When I wrote that I said there would be nowhere to hide but I was wrong. Cheap houses. It is a buyer's market. I still have the call back from the realtor on my cell phone setting up an appointment. "It's really busy everyone wants to see it." Hilarious.

There is no reason to believe the cat has bounced or it is on a cliff edge and we haven't seen a real drop yet. Totally uncharted waters. There is no reason to believe the volatile up and down free fall will not stop until say Spring of 2010. There are two many bombs set to go off and the tools to defuse them are gone.

What is the Fed going to do when the other shoe drops and the ten trillion dollar debt starts hyper inflating? Can they lower rates? Sorry, already at 1%. The only thing they can do is print more money which they will do but double digit inflation has to happen. There is no other way to get out of a ten trillion dollar debt. You have to make it worth less than it is. This is something Shooshie has pointed out for years and it will happen. Unless your income is tied to inflation hold onto your hats. A 14 % raise will mean you are back pedaling. Sucks but do you have to be over 50 to remember inflation? 70's and stagflation will look like a picnic compared to honest to god hyper inflation.

The US savior is a new economy. Biotechnology, stem cell, nanosphere, nanotechnology, green tech, solar, wind. Start buying stock in IPOs with MIT scientists on the board and nano something in the name. It will be like buying Polaroid in 1950. Stay away from ethanol, biofuel.

It won't take long. Six years and we will be laughing about all the money we wasted buying oil to fuel cars. The nanosphere batteries will be 700 bucks a fill up but flipping burgers at Mickey D's will be $650 an hour.

i jumped out in August with AAPL in the $170s. i felt horrible because i was just sure it was going to turn around and head back up but i needed the money for Europe. i would have now been sitting on less than 1/2 my money and instead have wonderful memories to last a lifetime. and the money that is left over bought a new Civic hybrid (which amounted to what i would have lost had i just left it all in AAPL). we both had very lucky timing.

I'm consider converting to your religion! Your god has been good to you.

and

Your waterfront home -- Apple helped move you in!

[edit]There were two bombs but my brain decided not to talk about the second one so "too" is better. Also described health of cat. It's a dead cat. Strap it on a bird perch and squeeze it so it chirps it is still one dead cat. Dead cats bounce but necrotic and debreeded feline can actually slide down a drain without even a meow.

ps. if you are too late to edit you can type away forever, submit and THEN it tells you it is too too (two toos) late. With the cat description I was trying to find out how many words you can put in the "reason for edit" box.

Schrödinger's??

Ha, no, this cat would be simultaneously dead and dead.

My prediction. The dead cat has finished bouncing and we are going up. Today was not dead cat. "It's alive!" We are going to have even higher unemployement but the market is the first to start recovering and I smell it.

Feel free to bring this thread back up when the market tanks another 30% in the next month.

Interesting. My advisor called today and we had a long chat. The market of late has been driven by fear. He figures we're near bottom and he also said he wouldn't be surprised to see the market rise fast. He also said the markets will go up long before unemployment gets better.

um... he's steered my portfolio pretty good, all things considering. Wishful thinking?