Yo Yo Yo Yo Yo

[roxy]

Potatohead, please pass along my best wishes for a continued recovery to Beardrech!

 

My family and I are very happy to hear that he is doing so well.

699059[/snapback]

 

Me too, me too!

[mdporter]

If Paulson is going to buy financial stocks directly, shouldn't this serve to put a floor under them or even cause them to rally? Might be worth a long play.

 

I won't even mention that if they rally the pigs can sell their shares to the government at inflated prices. Oops I just did.

 

[roxy]

Wonder how Morgan Stanley's will go?

   

699065[/snapback]

 

M.S. will be bailed out next week. No danger

[whacked]

Judging by the number of new subscribers to the Wall Street Examiner Professional Edition in the past week we should be somewhere near an intermediate bottom.? It tends to work like board traffic.? The more folks who subscribe, the closer it is to a bottom. But I have to wonder, given the breakdown in the market, if our membership numbers might not also be breaking out.

 

Hope so.

 

Thanks everyone! I appreciate your support!

699109[/snapback]

 

Hi, Doc. Can I call you Doc?

 

I lurked here on the Mark-to_Market forums for months but was compelled to subscribe at this time. There is too much happening too fast not to have accurate, reliable intelligence about the markets and the economy, housing, interest rates, inflation.

 

I needed information. One line from the movie "Wall Street" has stuck with me: "It's my birthday pal, surprise me!" OK, it's: "The most valuable commodity is information."

 

I subscribed for that critical information.

 

I figured, if the free stuff in M2M is THIS good, then the secret stuff must be REALLY good. I need the best information on the planet and I almost subscribed to iTulip but realized I won't find better information than here.

 

I subscribed from gratitude or out of debt, as a partial repayment for the great posts and links I've received by lurking on M2M. I felt a need to give something back for all I've taken from here. Take that for what it's worth. I hope you understand what I'm saying.

 

Another way I'm in debt to the Stool is emotional comfort.

 

It has been extremely EXTREMELY frustrating -- EXCRUCIATING -- trying to warn friends and coworkers to dump their stocks and mutual funds, to no avail. Completely futile... I mean, for 10 years this has been futile.

 

In 1998 I screamed that the NASDAQ was funny money and to GTFO. Nobody listened. It was the "new economy" and by 1999, with the NASDAQ soaring, my "credibility" ran lower and lower, until the obvious crash. I had young co-workers who lost their budding life savings (still tens of thousands) in "WebVan" and "Pets.com". I mean, think about it. Penthouses in downtown San Franciso with 3 Apple computers, a domain name and a handful of TV commercial being flooded with venture capital -- no product, no service, no concept. Nothing but enough investment money that every other TV commercial during the Super Bowl was "www.whacked.com" and absolutely NO CLUE what they were providing.

 

In 2004 I screamed that housing was funny money and to GTFO. Who listened? Housing always goes up. "We have to get in before housing goes out of sight". It will cycle, I told them, you missed the boat. Wait for the down cycle. Who listened? I was ridiculed for throwing my money away on rent. Told I would NEVER be able to own a home if I didn't jump "now". Funny money. Plop. Now California houses are closing in on 50% of peak, scaling back to year 2002 levels. And falling.

 

This liquidity crisis has been the deepest source of frustration for me. With NASDAQ, I just wasn't positive that it wasn't a new economy. I only had my instincts and a graph that was going parabolic to guide me. With housing, I had nothing but my experience in the national housing bust in the early 1990s. And another graph going parabolic, with prices all out of proportions to rents and incomes.

 

But with the liquidity crisis, I KNEW what I was talking about. I was reading Roubini and Janszen and MISH and this forum. And I was screaming "ITS FUNNY MONEY! GTFO!"

 

I begged. I pleaded. Nobody would listen to me. Not even my own mother ( a common malady). She inherited BAC stock from her loving mother, which was bought by her loving father. It is painfully obvious that stock is less an investment vehicle than a keepsake, a family heirloom. You can only remind your mother so long that her banker dad would be saying "sell and protect the fortune I handed down to you." But no! Mothers are like that. BAC was here to stay, even if she rode it right into the ground. (Thank goodness she didn't inherit Lehman or Bear).

 

"Perma-bear" they called me. No, no perma-bear. I was being a realist and reading the tea-leaves. It was not my fault I was bearish on tech stocks in 1998 and bearish on housing in 2004 -- I was only calling the hand as it was dealt to me.

 

Even a stubborn old fart of 49 like me, can only hold to convictions for so long before beginning to question your sanity. If you've got it all wrong. If the asylum is right after all and you are actually the one in the padded cell.

 

When I found this place, I found a home. So it was great to find a very "bearish" website, not perma-bears, but just reading the indicators that keep coming up "falling market". My own views were frequently reinforced here, giving me great, needed comfort to stick to my guns.

 

I'm not a trader. I hate investing. I want the outcome, I hate the process. I'm just a simple buy and hold for the long run, please let me keep one step ahead of inflation kind of guy.

 

But with the help of this forum and the brilliant posts and links (culled from all the noise, of course) I was able to shield both my retirement savings and my home down payment. Feels good. For every $100,000 I would have had by dollar cost averaging all the way down the rat hole like unyielding friends and co-workers, I am sitting on $160,000. That's a 60% return for doing nothing but putting my money in cash related investments, with my meager 4% per year.

 

The only downside is, now I have the guilt and frustration of not MAKING people listen to me. Who here doesn't know that feeling?

 

The little I've read in Professional shows me that I really should have subscribed a year ago or whenever I started lurking. Saving $40 a month in these turbulent, whacked-out times is penny wise and Krugerrand foolish. I got the full package as a "sampler plate" to cull those services I need from those I don't. No doubt I'll end up addicted to all of the treats on the sampler plate. The fee is nothing compared to the benefit and the potential down the road.

 

Thanks for an indispensable clearinghouse of accurate information. I don't know how you do it. The future is a guess, and those who can dial in on the "educated guess" dominate the future.

 

I hope you don't hear much from me. As a simple transportation engineer with the state of California, I don't have any financial education, training or experience. (I spent the past 12 years in construction trying to both help and police the Contractors that are constructing the various stages of what will be the new replacement for the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, just a fantastic, fascinating job that I really loved).

 

So my plan is to lurk and learn, but now that I have posting rights, I will sometimes be tempted to spout off with some inane comment without any useful information about this crisis or the economy. When I do that, give a tap and squeeze me back into my bottle.

 

So I'll just offer my sincere appreciation and gratitude for you and all of the clever, informed, and informational folks here, and for the accurate, insightful projections you are able to offer, to my financial and emotional benefit. I can't imagine how hard you work.

 

Jim "the new subscribing bottom indicator" Ferreira, from Yuba City, CA (the BIG Cowpie)

 

Sorry, I've never been concise. I can run-on with the best of them. Didn't mean to write a biography. Hopefully it doesn't crash your server.

[Charmin]

Was looking at some agricultural related kind of stocks. These held up fairly well in the last five days consolidating, compared to the freefall going on in the indexes.

 

AG, AGU, CF, CNH, DE, LNN, MON, MOS, POT

Looks like Oct. 6 was an established low for now.

[DrStool]

Doc I respect your opinion greatly. I have a hard time believing the gold market was/is in a mania stage. I have talked to hundreds of people that could care less about gold and think Treasuries are the ultra safe vehicle. If anything the Treasury market is in a mania stage rather than precious metals. My theory has always been that until people loose confidence in the US government or at least its debt you have not seen the ultimate top in gold in dollar terms. You can not conduct effective trade if most of the dollars created are imaginary. Please feel free to discuss this over the weekend.

699148[/snapback]

 

 

Wasn't referring to gold. I was talking about the credit bubble that created this imaginary capital. And yes, Treasuries are driven by panic today. When that subsides, this will go from disaster to catastrophe. All covered in the Fed Report over and over and over again. I bored people silly for years with it. Sorry about that. Just calling what I was seeing.

 

The money supply figures are blatantly false. This money does not exist. That's what this collapse is all about. Recognition. Again, discussed until my subscribers were sick of reading it. They probably thought I was nuts.

 

I have made these points ad infinitum for several years in the Professional Edition. Not going to discuss here. I have rehashed yet again it in retrospect in the current report. I suspect that some of you have it memorized by now.

 

We had the hyperinflation already. We had it in everything except for a handful of consumer goods that the Fed overemphasized. We had it in housing. We had it in food. We had it in energy. We had it in basic materials. We had it in metals, and yes, we had it in precious metals. All fueled by the fictitious capital created by the piling of leveragae upon leverage in the credit market Ponzi scheme. Once the last greater fool was in... KABOOM. Collapse. No more suckers. No more Ponzi. No more fake money created by pyramiding leverage. That leverage machine is now working in reverse. Wealth that never really existed because it was debt, not wealth, can no longer be accessed.

 

The game is over. I simply do not believe that the system can be reflated given the deflationary spiral that was an inevitable result of the credit Ponzi scheme of the past 14 years.

[whacked]

Has it occurred to you that we already had the big inflation?

 

It has to me.

 

If they continue to fund these bailouts by borrowing rather than printing, we face a crushing deflation.

699127[/snapback]

 

The deflation vs. inflation end game is the one I am tearing my hair out over (the bit of it left anyway). That is the $64 Trillion question and the one I would most like to know. Knowing that would set a guy up to put a lot of chips in the basket.

 

I have only started reading up on that crucial question. Guys like Eric Janszen, Gary North, Doug Noland and Peter Schiff seem convinced we inflate hard. Yet Roubini, Paul Kasriel and Shedlock think we deflate without high inflation. (Please correct me if I misunderstand their positions).

 

Inflation vs. deflation endgame. The answer is: nobody knows.

 

There is no discernible consensus.

[potatohead]

Gold isn't money, it is gold. When people think of money, they think of the US Dollar. They do not consider anything else money because for their entire lives they have known that the dollar is money. This is worldwide. The dollar is real money.

 

Gold is something that can be traded in for money, like an aluminum can, a glass bottle, or a chunk of silver.

 

Maybe 1% of the US population considers gold money, and sadly, they are in the minority.

699149[/snapback]

 

But Doc says most of the dollars created are imaginary.....

 

In any case, it is not what we think as Americans but what the foreign holders of dollars think......as far as I checked we are still borrowing from them.....and by the way rest of the world has been trying to diversify away from dollars.

[joe3pack]

hey, whacked, bienvenido. as someone who knows just enough medieval history to be a danger to himself, i find it fascinating that your family acquired BAC shares in the age of dwarves and elves.

 

i hear you about the deaf family ears. my parents and parents-in-law are just ecstatic at having a physician in the family, and they don't listen to a word of my medical advice.

 

yup, doc stool's the man. and there are others here with killer timing, too. heck, for all we know, you might be one of them.

[roxy]

financials ready to charge

[DrStool]

or maybe like this...? (couldn't figure out how to embed)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMrQLz2nTMk

699155[/snapback]

 

 

Like this-

[flash=425,344]http://uk.youtube.com/watch/v/Fkrl20_kMRY&NR.swf[/flash]

 

Hi, Doc.? Can I call you Doc?

 

I lurked here on the Mark-to_Market forums for months but was compelled to subscribe at this time.? There is too much happening too fast not to have accurate, reliable intelligence about the markets and the economy, housing, interest rates, inflation.

 

etc...

699163[/snapback]

 

Welcome whacked! And thanks for that heartfelt post! I have to share a connection with you. My great uncle, Julius Adler, was the chief engineer in the Streets Department for the City of Philadelphia in its golden age in the 1920s. In 1926 he was the City's oeversight engineer in the construction of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge.

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...1601_Market.jpg

[roxy]

You know things are bad when a day where the Dow loses 1.5% feels like an up day.

699091[/snapback]

 

You did not forget that financials were up 10%? It was an up day

[DrStool]

You did not forget that financials were up 10%? It was an up day

699173[/snapback]

 

In that sector. Was I talking about that sector? No. I specifically said the Dow. The Dow. Not financials.

 

Sheesh. <_>

[Dharmaeye]

Gold isn't money, it is gold. When people think of money, they think of the US Dollar. They do not consider anything else money because for their entire lives they have known that the dollar is money. This is worldwide. The dollar is real money.

 

Gold is something that can be traded in for money, like an aluminum can, a glass bottle, or a chunk of silver.

 

Maybe 1% of the US population considers gold money, and sadly, they are in the minority.

699149[/snapback]

 

I beg to differ. Please study long history of turmoil. There have been many posts on this site who credit gold for getting there parents out of the frying pan.

If it is a barbaric metal , we are barbarians.

[roxy]

Yes, the price of oil has really come down and will continue to fall (maybe) as the speculation money dries up. The price of everything that uses oil will also fall. Farming, air travel, deliveries, etc.

 

The big question is how the US/world economies would handle deflation, since they are all built on inflation. The fall out from the market crash may be much worse when people start losing jobs. After crushing market losses and no income from a job, what's joe 6 going to do? Go bankrupt.

 

Ugly cascade effects possible.

699129[/snapback]

 

obviously.