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Posted on 12/28/2014 8:22:56 AM PST by expat_panama
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Weird, all our doom'n'gloomers have disappeared! Usually the pundits are warning about the big upcoming market crash but look at what the latest "expert" predictions are for 2015 stock market returns:
Outlook 2015: Year Ahead Reports & Analysis Our 2015 year-end target for the S&P 500 is 2200, putting returns on a more-normal pace of 6%.
Barron's Cover Outlook 2015: Stick With the Bull Wall Street’s top strategists expect the S&P 500 to rally 10%
Markets Wall Street bull: Market will rise another 14% in 2015
Add to this the fact that we're still overdue for our longer term growth cycle points to even more optimism.
Of course there's always the contrarian approach that says upbeat sentiment is a negative sign, so let's be fair to our cautious side and post these stock warnings;
----Don't Hold Your Breath for a 90s-Style Boom
----Seven Shocks for the Markets in 2015
----What the Fed Will Decide About Rates In 2015
Continuing that line we got more boosters who are into precious metal hedges --3 Reasons to buy gold FM trader Brian Kelly outlines reasons to buy gold going into 2015. Tim Seymour disagrees with the commodity's bull case. CNBC Videos. That plus the possibility that the lackluster 2014 was just basing for the next uptrend. This is the thread where folks swap ideas on savings and investment --here's a list of popular investing links that freepers have posted here and tomorrow morning we'll go on with our-- Open invitation continues always for idea-input for the thread, this being a joint effort works well. Keywords: financial, WallStreet, stockmarket, economy.
Appreciate the link to the Boglehead's site, it's always good to stay current on what is happening in the financial world.
I never got into the tech bubble.
When I stopped working in ‘99 (we were on track with our savings and it made more sense at that time for me to be at home), I just left my 401(k) with my former employer. Usually not smart. I had no idea what to invest in. I had some in a large cap fund, and I had some in the stock of my former employer. Well, my former employer is NOT a tech company. It’s a decent sized, fairly old American company. Turns out my employer’s stock is now worth >$60/share. I paid $4/share. Not bad for a non-tech stock. I’m selling some tomorrow to put into a low expense ratio total U.S. stock index fund.
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Markets | Yesterday | Futures (3 hrs. before bell) | ||
| metals | Dipping w/ gold down to $1,145 and silver $15.81 --into overnight rebound | 0.49% | |||
| stocks | S&P record high in rising volume. Then again, volume is still half recent averages and the index surge is so little that it's practically flat. | -0.19% |
Pundits have been lurking this thread:
If all these “experts” are so smart, why are they still working, instead of enjoying life on their yachts off the coast of France?
It's a pundit market place, and it works well for selling opinions. The only problem is it doesn't work all that well for seeing reality.
Here ya go. No longer do you have to do any thinking to invest.
Investing in the ObamaFund; Treasury rolls out a new savings plan without a Congressional vote
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3241943/posts
The flip side of which is that perhaps we should pay attention to none of them individually, but do incorporate what they all say into your own peculiar situation.
U.S. M&A Seen Staying Robust In 2015, Fueled By Oil Oil hits five-and-a half-year low below $57 on supply glut
Brent crude oil fell to a 5-1/2-year low below $57 a barrel on Tuesday as a global supply glut outweighed concerns of lost supply from Libya where battling militias have closed ports. Brent fell $1.14 ...
Bargain-seeking investors have turned bullish on embattled energy stocks, plowing record amounts into the industry. More than $3.16 billion went into exchange-traded funds holding stakes in Exxon Mobil ...
Exactly —me I like checking the NYT and the BBC everyday; I don’t believe what they’re saying but it’s good to be aware of what they’re throwing at people.
The idea is realism —EVE is right that bad people can come from nowhere at anytime, but EVE is wrong in that in life we got soo many more ways of protecting our selves and enforcing contracts. Then again, I understand that EVE’s changed quite a bit over the past year I’ve been dormant so they may have fixed what I had problems with.
In the meantime tho there are soo many great games out there —after a year of Skyrim I’m finding Elite:Dangerous one heck of a lot of fun.
Will Politics In 2015 Catch Up With The Economy?
Good question. The GOP look like idiots constantly saying how bad the economy is in spite of the mountain of evidence to the contrary (and the conspiracy theory on the numbers is just foolish). There are absolutely things that are a huge issue: wage stagnation in the middle class is the main one. But constantly running solely on tax cuts isn’t going to get the job done. There needs to be a focus on “creating an environment for economic growth.” That is going to have to be the message for 2016 or we are going to be looking at President Hillary.
(I understand we're talking about--Will Politics in 2015 Catch Up with the Economy?) The so-called evidence of "Middle class wage stagnation " is so foggy that it's not useful for policy and only good for politics. Incomes are in fact up, & my bet is that the middle class is fine w/ incomes. What's more clear is that the shrinking workforce is leaving ten million w/o jobs and another 3 million demoted to part time.
...constantly running solely on tax cuts isn’t going to get the job done. There needs to be a focus on “creating an environment for economic growth."
Yeah I'd agree that the ongoing war on business has to stop, but the first clear sign should be an end to punitive crushing taxation. We don't make the 99% better off by attacking the 1%. The republicans make a bad choice when they abandon principle for vain hopes of gaining media favor. Running Jeb Bush would just guarantee a President Warner.
I can make a case for cutting the business tax and eliminating a lot of the deductions. But the fiscal issues are not going to be solved on the taxation or on the spending side. It can only be solved via growth.
After what I’ve seen the last 20 years in the way the “1%” in the corporate and political world don’t ask me my opinion of taxation of the “achievers”.........
When it comes to suddenly shifting volatile prices, there really seems to be a ‘zero-sum’ situation. We’re really not talking wealth creation here. That said, I’m happy for the world in general and as for Russia and the Midleast, well maybe I can offer them a generous helping of my very best ‘moral anguish’.
That should do it...
It's not hard to show a strong correlation between tax-cutting and growth. OK, so there's a 6-12 month lag there but it's still pretty solid.
I predict the return of the New, New Communism aka smart cities:
“We all know the symptoms of a bad day. You’re stuck in traffic, stranded with a dead phone, or slammed with a busy schedule; nothing is going according to plan. Unfortunately, the cause of our most stressful days is often the same: people aren’t good at predicting the future.”
Their conclusion is sound, so far, but read on.
“For everyone’s daily schedule to go according to plan, we need to balance our behavior on a large scale. When your activity is in harmony with the people in your community, problems dissolve, sustainability becomes natural, and life is more comfortable. That’s what living in a smart city is all about.”
People aren’t good about predicting the future. If only we had an elite group of central planners who could run things for us. We could call them Planners or Futurists or something and they could tell us what was going to happen over the next 5 years...
http://qz.com/312865#1/smart-cities-are-coming-heres-what-they-will-know-about-us/
It’s sponsored content by Hitachi. Maybe they can do for us what they’ve done to Japan?
[shudder]
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Markets | Yesterday | Futures (3 hrs. before bell) | ||
| metals | Gold bounced back almost to $1200, silver over $16.--now at $1,198.70 and $16.21 | -0.40% | ||||
| stocks | Indexes off a half % in mixed volume --technically a distribution day for NASDAQ | +0.14% |
Many of us are on vacation: here's some idle browsing:
Brent falls towards $57 as demand concerns outweigh supply disruptions euronews - 7 hours ago SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Brent crude prices edged towards $57 a barrel on Wednesday as weak Chinese manufacturing data and demand concerns outweighed supply disruptions in Libya.
Fed should heed market view of deflation risk: Minneapolis Fed chief
Gold will sink to just 3 digits: Sullivan predicts CNBC's Brian Sullivan looks toward 2015 and shares predictions on gold, the Dow, IBM and more. CNBC
That’s whack! Kind of scary that there are people that think like that and they are so close to the levers of power.
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