Tuesday, October 07, 2008

As bad as 2004!
This chart shows that the Dow has fallen from almost 14,000 in July to 9,500 today. That's scary, but we turn out to be back where we were four years ago. If you didn't buy this year, how bad is that?
Posted by Chris Fountain at 4:42 PM

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think it's terrifying that it was 4 years up, and just 3 months to go down. It isn't the magnitude of the Dow's movements, we have seen corrections OVER TIME, but it is the speed with which this is happening that is so unusual, and unprecedented.

4:49 PM
Chris Fountain said...

Oh heck, my father was around for 1929 and he not only found work that fall, he kept his job until the outbreak of WW II, when he joined the Navy. Take a look at that chart, though, for another interesting sight: the DJI was pretty much flat for decades. Still, people made money and some prospered, even without huge volatility. Maybe we'll get back to investing based on a company's fundamental merits, rather than playing with blips on a computer screen where a "long" position is one bought at 9:00 am and held onto until noon.

5:02 PM
Anonymous said...

Thought you would like an interesting statistic from a friend who is a mortgage broker. In September he and his partner closed 6 loans between them. Their best months of 2005 they were closing 120-130...EACH. It is tough slogging for a lot of people these days.

7:03 PM

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