<p>LOL. Good thing you have the champagne on ice. It’s raining and cold here today…might be one to sit and watch the ticker. Like being 9 months pregnant, I swan.</p>
<p>Getting out my Waterford Champagne flute, giving it a polish with my Irish linen, in preparation…</p>
<p>Sorry qdogpa…you better put that champagne away…</p>
<p>Looking a bit grim for today,lol…placed the champagne flute back in china cabinet…</p>
<p>Lol…</p>
<p>I’ve never had so much fun watching the Dow fumble around. Whew. Time for a glass of three buck Chuck. Cheers!</p>
<p>The unwinding of the market seems very orderly, no panic…and this ,imho, is attributed to the fact volumes are very low, and many investors are choosing not to play at all…if retail were to come back, the professionals will pull the rug out from them again,and retail finally knows this…</p>
<p>[The</a> Post Bulletin : Americans are steering clear of stock market](<a href=“http://m.postbulletin.com/postbulletin/pm_105561/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=GhwbbUni]The”>http://m.postbulletin.com/postbulletin/pm_105561/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=GhwbbUni)</p>
<p>Thanks for the link, justifies my thoughts…when the pros aren’t able to fleece John Q Public, what will happen?</p>
<p>They merge to cut costs or go out of business.</p>
<p>It doesn’t seem so long ago, when investing was just that,investing…now the focus is so short term, that the average investor has no chance…the movement of money is so fast,one gets whipsawed…bell weather companies that can maintain market value are becoming fewer and fewer over the long term…</p>
<p>My favorite private companies near where i live are Trader Joes and Wegmans…2 companies i would invest in ,they dominate and quicklyntake market share from other markets…I see Wegmans taking some share from Whole Foods, when they open their new store next year</p>
<p>So what if other companies focus on the short-term. You can certainly focus on the long-term.</p>
<p>True to some degree, but being long term on former bell weathers like Sony or Best buy haven’t worked…or GE or Cisco,et al. ;)</p>
<p>dstark:</p>
<p>I don’t get what you’re trying to say about the ecri call in 2008. Let’s look at this in more detail. The recession started in December 2007. Their call was made in March 2008nearly 9 months before the NBER called it and probably before anybody else made the call. What was the S&P at in March 2008? 1385 What was the S&P on December 1, 2008 when the NBER made the call? 816. I think if investors heeded the ecri call when they made it which most investors didn’t, they would have saved some money perhaps? I don’t care if the call is late. The only thing that matters is whether I make money or not and don’t lose it.</p>
<p>You can hold stocks but you have to watch them. When the fundamentals of a stock that you like no longer apply - as with Sony and GE, you ditch them.</p>
<p>So long term is not really lng term? There was a time where holding long term actually worked…my best long term holding,over a decade ( probably 15-+),has been Annally Capital, formerly Annaly Mortgage…not many beat their return over that time frame…</p>
<p>China lies… PMI drops from 57.1 to 54… And i don’t believe that number…much lower…when the world catches up with the fake BS coming from them, watch out below…google ghost cities china…wow…</p>
<p>Long-term is fine, as long as management aligns with the type of company that you want, they are making good products and executing well. I’ve been in my company stock for 16 years now. They have had their ups and downs with far more ups than downs and have hit a few speed bumps but the overall direction is good.</p>
<p>I’ve held PVX and now PBA for a long time.</p>
<p>I only got into individual stocks for trading and more varied investing around 1999. My previous experience is with company stock and mutual funds. So the only things that I would have had are company shares and I’ve only worked for two companies since the mid-1980s. The first one was dog (stock-wise).</p>
<p>The ghost cities thing has been known about for some time. I work with someone from China - her family is similar to what we’d consider middle-class here (as in $80K-$250K). She has a lot of western tastes mixed with eastern culture. It’s a bit hard for me to imagine as my image is back from the 1980s when I was there for a few weeks. There’s a ton of wealth in China today and I think that the government can put their foot on the accelerator or take it off when they want to.</p>
<p>Doct…Whatever…I don’t have time for these games…</p>
<p>Who thought Sony would be worth less then a case of beer per share? Or Ge…nobdy knows what happens to a market leader beyond a few years… Lomg term is now 3 years , when istarted investing it was a decade at a minimum</p>