back to 1996

Anyone watch the stock market these days, or is it too painfull? The Dow is back to Oct 96 levels! It's currently at 6800. You think the housing market is bad. The high for the Dow was Oct 2007 at 14,146. It's now at 6763. That's a loss of 53%! And the large financial companies are STILL carrying all that toxic crap.

Last year I thought the Dow would bottom around 7500. In anticipation of this I moved all my 401k investments to the safest fixed income accounts I could. That probably saved my 40 to 50% of my retirement savings (what little I have). I thought my predictions were probably on the pessimistic side but as we can see I was actually overly optimistic. Has the Dow bottomed out? It's hard for me to see how it could have. With all those toxic assets still littering the books of the major financial institutions and the economy falling apart faster than a Kia, it's a little hard to believe the bottom is here.

If you really want to be depressed watch Dr. Doom (Roubini)


So who the hell is buying homes in this environment?