Posted on 10/24/2005 2:27:46 PM PDT by advance_copy
NEW YORK (AP) -- Wall Street staged an impressive rally Monday after the nomination of top White House economist Ben Bernanke as the next Federal Reserve chief, with the Dow Jones industrial average soaring nearly 170 points. Strong quarterly earnings from drugmakers and lower oil prices bolstered the gains.
Stocks were already advancing when news came that President Bush picked Bernanke, chair of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, to succeed Chairman Alan Greenspan when he retires in January. Bernanke was widely seen as continuing Greenspan's policy of fighting inflation.
Meanwhile, upbeat profit reports at Merck & Co. and Schering-Plough Corp. eased earnings concerns prompted by Pfizer Inc.'s weak forecast last week. Encouraging results from American Express Co. late in the day also lifted stocks.
At the close of trading, the Dow climbed 169.78, or 1.66 percent, to 10,385.00, its largest single-day gain since a 206-point advance April 21.
Broader stock indicators also rose sharply.
(Excerpt) Read more at biz.yahoo.com ...
Added to my list.
"It's not how much you make it's how much you keep." Martin Zweig.
And: "Buy until you puke or puke until you buy. -or- Sell until you puke or puke until you sell."
Well I am neither. I am a speculator who knows that the market is like a shark and its prey, both have to move to live. I'll move AFTER the market starts to move. I have made good money in the FOREX and I expect I'll continue to do so as long as I follow the major trend.
Don't forget one of Will Rogers' most famous quotes: "If you want to make money in the stock market, take some money out of the bank and buy some stocks. And if they don't go up, don't buy them. There is a hell of a lot of truth to that even though he was obviously joking. If they start to go up THEN you buy them.
What a misinformed and backwards statement. I have $1,000 that says the price of oil will be cheaper in the future than it is now. Any takers?
Some of you know what I'm talking about and some of you don't. The man who made that bet in the '70's won it. He'll always win it.
Never mind that the current price makes some extraction methods feasible. Never mind that the current price makes alternative energy feasible. Never mind that the creative juices of the free market will never let the price of any commodity go to the moon and stay there.
Any commodity in a free market is subject to the forces of ideas, intelligence and technology. Willie, you would bet against all of those, denying the history of capitalism. Shoot yourself in the foot Willie. If you miss it's because that is your destiny. You missed.
"I mean, I can't possibly decide what to think until the "conservitive intelligentsia" send me my cues."
For some lame brain previews, just read the garbage posted by the GW bashers on Free Republic about this man.
Same old crap..."Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."
~ The Wizard of Oz
Where have we heard this before?
Peering through the fog of my memory I remember something mentioned about this in Econ 101, or was it Real Life 302...:)
The fact of the matter is that if the price of a commodity reaches the point where it is prohibitive for the masses to consume the commodity, they will reduce their consumption, thereby reducing demand, thereby reducing the price of the commodity.
At the same time, the high price of the commodity encourages speculators to find more of it to sell at the high price. Greater supply + Lower Demand = Lower Price.
Simulaneously, the prohibitively high price of the commodity encourages the entrepreneur to invent/develop an alternative to the high priced commodity which performs the same function but at a lower price shifting demand to the alternative commodity. Lower Demand = Lower Price.
These forces are currently at work on the price of crude oil/gasoline. IF the price stays up long enough for speculators to find more supply and/or entrepreneurs to successfully develop alternatives to gasoline, the price of crude oil and gas could plummet.
On the other hand...I could be wrong.
Which explains why OPEC and the Oil Industry act in unison as a
cartel: A formal agreement between businesses in the same industry, usually on an international scale, to get market control, raise the market price, and otherwise act like a monopoly. A cartel tends to be unstable because the artificially high prices it sets gives each member of the cartel an incentive to "cheat" with a slightly lower price. When only one member of the cartel lowers the price, it can make oodles of profit by taking customers away from the other members. If they all cheat, the cartel falls apart. While cartels damage efficiency, they're power is often short-lived because of this cheating. Like collusion and other techniques of market control, cartels are illegal in the United States.
Since cartels are illegal within the US, the industry naturally prefers to import oil as "free trade" rather than exand utilization of our own resources.
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