Todays Stock Market Thread (DJIA 7784.58 (-234.68; -2.93%) NASDAQ 1282.55 (-36.60; -2.77%)

[newsperson999]

Dow 7,784.93 -234.33 (-2.92%)
Nasdaq 1,288.09 -31.06 (-2.35%)
S&P 500 819.51 -28.25 (-3.33%)

[Vets_Husband_and_Wife]

The only thing you mentioned that I don't agree with is the farm subsidies. He didn't increase the DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, that department should be axed. But I happen to like the accountability factor for education. I suppose you would have "left" it the way it is? (Sarcasm intended)

This President has people worried alright.. and that is a good thing. The DemoCRAPS are frantic. Are you a democrat? (I'm asking that in all seriousness. There is nothing on your homepage)

[not-alone]

see post 337 - it should be in italics. I can't believe stong buys, what do these analyst do? 80% of their income was fake

[Lazamataz]

Could we get an update on that chart? Interesting.

[Dog]

People didn't know the sales were fake until the company admitted it today....

[Dog]

Mail..

[AdamSelene235]

Folks, it's just a Republicrat in office, not a conservative.

Bush is a dream come true for the Socialists. Without Hoover there would have never been an FDR. Bush is setting us up for FDR II.

[Lazamataz]

Mail.

Femail.

[RobRoy]

>>Is it just me or does it appear to everyone else that your average FReeper pays little attention to these market Threads. It's like many FReepers have an economic/political disconnect.<< I'm lurking. I worked, in early 2000, for a dot com trying to get to it's ipo. In the few weeks I was their (seven, as a consultant hired literally on a day-to-day basis) I was promoted to the point where I was responsible for everyone doing the page content, design AND ASP coding, and my experience is strictly MAINFRAME programming and project manangement (that's COBOL DB2 and IMS for those of you in west palm beach). The reason I left was that the more I knew about what was going on and what had been accomplished in the year before I arrived, the more I knew they didn't have a clue what they were doing, even though there were some extremely bright people there (one had written books on project management and design). I realised the whole dot com thing was a sham in those seven weeks. Yeah, those of us that thought it was crazy to by Yahoo et al when it first came out were right, eventually. But we didn't anticipate the "tulip bulb" feeding frenzy that would happen first. Some really did make out like bandits. Those days are over, much like the late '20's are over.

[wardaddy]

You're welcome....but remember I'm just a "retired" daytrader...so keep that grain of salt handy. I told my family members today that we had to stay strong and not panic. I hope I am right.

My own personal leveraging capabilities for real estate expansion has been hit about 20% so far...it's painful but my experience is that selling off in a panic rarely works out. Buy rumour...sell fact. I would only sell un-revivable dogs right now. In fact....WorldCom at 14 cents would be an interesting speculation with "mad money".

[wardaddy]

I'm glad my home is only about 40% mortgaged according to the whimiscal pen of the Davidson County Tax Appraiser.

[wardaddy]

Yep....and lo and behold today this thread has over 350 hits so far.

My take on the Net market was always to buy the "highway versus the stuff that traveled on it". I think with the exception of EBAY, this was reasonable. I did trade IPO pops on every dotcom they rolled out and usually I tagged a few teenies or even dollars here and there and closed out the day stockless. ELoan ate my lunch on IPO opening day. The volume was so heavy that my ECN froze up and by the time I could execute a sell order, the stock had fallen off the bridge. I lost mid 5 figures in about 90 seconds that day. It was the pivotal moment that caused my wife to eventually shut me down. She was afraid to be widowed so young....she was right. I make about the same return position trading with my pro as I did daytrading but damn it was so much fun. The most fun I've had in my professional life since I owned cargo ships. Building and managing warehouses and storage facilities like I do nearly fulltime now is boring and dull and a bitch to deal with zoning and planning commissions and codes but my children and grandchildren will be grateful...lol

I suppose history has proven largely that while subscriber lists and projections can hint at a company's value that they surely cannot stand alone. Got to have a bit more bricks and mortar to the mix.

[Dog Gone]

What the hell happened to oil stocks today??? Chevron-Texaco and Exxon-Mobil were down almost 7 percent!!! How many billions of market value did that vaporize?

It's been going on for a couple of weeks. Look at BP. It was trading at about $53 and it closed today at $39 and change.

That chart doesn't reflect today's plunge which would take it completely off the chart.

These are enormous oil companies, and so we're talking tens of billions of dollars of market cap disappearing, daily!

There's no good reason for it in terms of the industry. Oil prices are pretty solid, and with the weakening dollar, they'll probably rise. I think they're simply being caught in the mutual fund redemptions that are going on. Investors are selling their mutual funds and the managers have to unload stocks to pay them.

It's not terribly sustainable, though. Most of the big oil stocks pay a dividend, and at these stock prices, the dividend is paying more than some CDs. When investors notice that, they'll prefer to buy these stocks instead of CDs. They pay more, plus they can appreciate while a CD can't.

That's where the bargains are in the stock market today. Look for a stock that's paying a dividend higher than what you would get if you cash out, as long as that dividend isn't likely to be cut.

[Afronaut]

If anyone would be as dumb as attempting to pick the bottom of this market you must accept the losses that you will incur. This is so far from being over that it is downright frightening.

The Pro's only buy when there is someone to take the other side of the trade when they sell. Who is waiting to do that? Ask yourself this 100x's and you will get the picture. There is no 2nd or 3rd tier buyers....All the reasons are gone.

Who will buy the short term rallies? Yahoo's that’s who, and they will get there heads handed to them. The Market will spike up and get smashed back down so fast your socks will fly off your feet.

Be patient. Wait a couple of years. Only a fool would buy a Train wreck. Stick a fork in it.

Who bought the top? Anyone here? Honest now....

[dennisw]

We also got some negative interest rates in the Great Depression.

[bvw]

Like many others, I really love that graphic. I think it is up the the level of that Professor Edward R. Tufte teaches in The Visual Display of Quantitative Information.

And trained as an undergrad physics major I also love dimensionless analysis -- that you get by using ratios where the units cancel out. Like Price/Book. I wonder about inflated book values, that in a deflation books not only go down, but the fraudulent part of them also goes down. While the lower orb -- below the box -- of 1931 and 1932 represent a pendulum overswing into disdain for real value, just because it is in a stock, I wonder what the final take on fraudulent book value will be?

And bad books mean bond defaults. I wonder how bond defaults are factored in the bond yield shown?

[arete]

He buys less glamorous companies, businesses that are run as businesses

He made a special deal with LVLT. He gets 9%/yr on preferred stock. It is a converable so he also will trade it for a piece of the company later.

Richard W.

[snopercod]

By my calcs, CVX is paying 4%, XOM is paying 3%, and BP is paying 3.6%. Still not all that great.

But the P/E ratio CVX is 30+, XOM's is 18, and BP's is 60! Not good. Historically speaking, the price should fall to 1/3 of today's values to make the P/E's assume "normal" values.

BTW, my Mother is still holding her Arco shares that she bought in 1951! Of course they morphed into Amoco, then BP, but she never sold them. [I advised her to sell two years ago, but she didn't] She would always say, "What do I care if the market is up or down, as long as they keep paying dividends." (Of course that philosophy didn't work so well for the AT&T she bought around the same time.)

[steveegg]

At this point, it's impossible to say whether 8/16 would be a good day to get back in. If there aren't a bunch of CBD (Cooked Book Disease) time bombs out there, then it sure would be as the Rocketship Dow takes off. If not, then I honestly don't know when it will be safe to head back into the market as things will continue to free-fall. BTW, all I did was extrapolate losses that may or may not continue (though I fully-expect them to do so in advance of that date).

I expect October to be its usual self. If there is a bounce back, October would be a logical time to consolidate the gains (say the indexes off 1-2% from the start of the month). If not, then the thundering herd of lemmings plunging off the cliff isn't going to stop or even slow down just because it's October.

[RightWhale]

Convertible preferred is looking pretty good right now.

[steveegg]

You sure didn't inspire confidence with that one. Of course, the folks that have cooked the books thus far haven't done so just to go get some chump change from the bank; they've done it to drive up earnings, and by extension, their stock prices and their ability to snap up companies (you forgot to mention the "small-fry" that actually touched off Enron's demise, Rhythms).

I'm not nearly as heavy into stocks as you (just my 401k), but I've taken a broad-based hit myself (2 of my funds lost over 20% from Q3 2001 through Q2 2002). I pretty much agree with your assessments of the 4 companies that you mention, though I believe the AOL end was the "bad boy" (not that TimeWarner was a saint).