Thursday, October 9, 2008

Call me if it gets *really* bad.

The morning newspapers here (reminder: here = Japan) were all talking "Panic" from the 9.38% one-day drop in the Nikkei 225 stock market average.

What they should have said was "Panic led to..." said drop. The panic, mostly shared fears carried over from markets in Europe and the Americas, led to the sell-off.

See this web log's previous entry about Ovines about now re:panics.

Let us put this straight: no one likes losing 1/11th of the market's valuation in a day, and it just seems fitting that such a result should come a year to the day after the NYSE Dow Industrials hit their all-time high, but we've seen worse here.

The Nikkei all-time high was December 29, 1989: intra-day high of 38,957.44; closing at 38,915.87

The Nikkei hit bottom after the bubble economy collapsed at 7603.76 in April 2003.

Here's a graphic on that.

For comparison, *here* is the Dow Industrials' history. Please look at the period from 1970 to present to compare.

Again, no one should be saying that the market troubles, especially the credit market troubles, across the world are small. But saying these troubles are worse than they are only gives power to the practitioners of Demagogy that wish to rule over you.

3 comments:

Mr. Bill said...

Heck, if you have any kind of liquidity, there are some great deals to be had.

Yes, I'm putting some elbow grease into polishing that silver lining.

L.Douglas Garrett said...

Absolutely.

Even if you are a "trader" type, not a "buy-and-hold" type, there have been several clear opportunties to buy in as a stock floors, ride it up on a bounce and cover your gains with a contingent sell below peak. If you had done so with AIG since the 15th of September floor, you would have had 2 cycles where it has gone from ~$2 to ~$5... even if your contingent sell was at $4, clearing a ~75% gain on each cycle has been quite doable.

Did I mention it hit the $2 floor again yesterday and is on the way back up again? ((grin))

**caveat: you know better than to listen to me about market advice. Heck, when I need advice, I listen to mr. bill.**

Purr said...

which shares should I buy?