From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Thu Aug 08 2002 - 13:47:59 MDT
Reason wrote:
>
> --> Samantha Atkins
>
>
>>>Phil Osborn wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Looks like a good time to start considering putting
>>>>some money on the market. Of course, the more of us
>>>>who invest, the more those stocks rise, right?
>>>>
>>>>Who knows how many eager would-be bulls are out there
>>>>just champing at the bit waiting for the hot tip from
>>>>the bright guys and gals at the cutting edge?
>>>>
>>
>>My advice, for what it's worth, is stay the hell out of the
>>stock market except to get rid of existing stocks and sell short
>>(if you know enough to do so). The worse is, imho, very far
>>from over.
>>
>
> But of course the best advice is to diversify more than you already are,
> whatever the market is doing. No reason not to take the long term view.
>
If we are headed for a Great Depression type scenario, which
would not surprise me, then simply widely diversifying would be
disasterous.
> There's the school of thought that says it's all over (for various good
> sounding fundamentals reasons) and there's the school that says we're headed
> for DOW 4000 (for various good sounding fundamentals reasons).
>
I am more of the DOW 5000 or so school with many secondary nasty
economic consequences.
> My 2c: historically speaking, the markets are way high. Companies average
> P/E ratios of twice the historical average during boom-bust midpoints. So
> either you believe that the effects of certain fundamental general
> improvements in technology mean that businesses now merit this higher P/E
> valuation, or you don't. If you don't, then you should act as if the DOW is
> headed for 4000 sometime over the next couple of years. If you do, then
> we're done with the worst of it.
Good. I believe that even great technology + stupid business
models + greed insufficiently tempered by intelligence +
snowball effects gave us a grossly inflated economic bubble that
is not through popping. I think it will take years to clean up
the aftermath. Trillions of dollars of investment income, the
very stuff essential to beginning and growing new businesses and
the accumulated savings of the world, have been blown away.
That has very serious and somewhat predictable consequences
.
- samantha
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:15:57 MST