Some Humor for a Funny Market

Just a few jokes being passed around the trading circuit.  They’re kinda funny actually!  :)  Enjoy!

A young stockbroker decided to take a day off and visit some of his professors in his old school. When he made his way into the entrance he noticed a dog was attacking a small child. He quickly grabbed the dog and throttled it with his two hands.
The next day the local newspaper reported the story with the headline, “Valiant student saves boy from ferocious dog”.
The stockbroker called the editor and strongly suggested that a correction be issued and that the paper will tell the readers he was a successful Wall Street broker and not a student.
The next day the newspaper issued a correction and the headline read, “Pompous stockbroker kills school mascot”.

Two women were walking through the woods when a frog called out to them and said: “Help me, ladies! I am a stockbroker who, through an evil witch’s curse, has been transformed into a frog. If one of you will kiss me, I’ll be returned to my former state!”
One woman took out her purse, grabbed the frog, and stuffed it inside her handbag. The other woman, aghast, screamed, “Didn’t you hear him? If you kiss him, he’ll turn into a stockbroker!”
The second woman replied, “Sure, but these days a talking frog is worth more than a stockbroker!”

Today’s Stock Report:

Helium was up, feathers were down. Paper was stationary.
Fluorescent tubing was dimmed in light trading. Knives were up sharply.
Cows steered into a bull market. Pencils lost a few points.
Hiking equipment was trailing.
Elevators rose, while escalators continued their slow decline.
Weights were up in heavy trading.
Light switches were off.
Mining equipment hit rock bottom. Diapers remain unchanged.
Shipping lines stayed at an even keel.
The market for raisins dried up.
Coca Cola fizzled.
Caterpillar stock inched up a bit.
Sun peaked at midday.
Balloon prices were inflated.
And Scott Tissue touched a new bottom.
And batteries exploded in an attempt to recharge the market…

Hee hee hee…  I know, I know, stock traders aren’t very funny.  It’s a good thing I’m an artist

Dow < 7000?

So this morning we opened the Dow at 7056, and right now, we’re trading at 6936 at 7:05a PDT.  You do realize that just a little while ago we were trading at double this, right?

That’s crazy to me.  Just crazy.  That’s like flipping a switch.  Just gone.  What happened?  I turned my head for a split second and now we’re trading below 7000?  Most of my friends probably don’t understand really what that means.  I mean, heck, I didn’t fully understand what that meant until recently, and I do this for a living now.  I mean, my friends know it’s bad, but they don’t really get it.  I’ve said that I don’t really know what normal is, or was, and that this madness was the only thing I knew, but now I get it.  We’re in serious trouble.

A few things have shaken me in my boots in the last few days:

1. I heard on NPR this weekend, Planet Money, that the national GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is now 100% of the national deficit.  100%!  What??  What does that even mean??  Well, it means that anything we’re making, goes towards the deficit, basically leaving us with zero profit.  The scariest part of this is that the last time the GDP was 100% of the deficit, was in 1929.  Yes.  That’s right.  The Great Depression.
2. I literally, just went to check my email for a few minutes (it’s now 7:14a, and the Dow is at 6897.  Below 6900!  It just keeps going…
3. I got to my computer this morning to start working, and like I do every day, got my cup of coffee and sat down to read my financial reports and newsletters and such.  Well, one, that I just happen to like very much, and tends to be very right, now predicts a Dow low of 5000-6000 before a significant bounce back.  We’ll have a few small corrections throughout this big downward move, but they’ll just be traps set for the bulls who think that they’re right.  SCARY.  Better yet, he said that if we lost the same amount that was lost in the GD, we’ll hit a low of (brace yourself), 1500.  What??  Wow.  Considering that a few months ago we couldn’t believe that we would hit 8000, well, these ideas are a bit scary.  Especially because we’re not moving up at any significant rate.

So what now?  Well, we sit and wait.  And hold on.

But what about the aftermath?  I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.  I saw a thing on Oprah about all the houses that get foreclosed, and this guy’s company who gets paid by the banks to clean them out of all their belongings.  Things that people just leave because they can’t afford movers, or have nowhere to put their stuff, etc.  I mean, these houses looked like they were hit by tornadoes inside.  So, this guy “trashes out” 15 houses a day.  He has 76 workers who just wipe everything out, and throw it in a dumpster to be hauled to the landfill.

The landfill.

He was explaining to Ann Curry about how he gets some flack for throwing all of these good possessions into a dump instead of reusing and recycling them for other people.  He said that he feels guilty about it all the time.  Every day he calls all of these donation sites and companies, and is later forced to throw these things away because the charities can’t keep up with his work.  They’re overstocked.  Since when have you heard of goodwill centers all being overstocked.  We’re short in food banks and over capacity in homeless shelters, and our goodwill is overflowing.

So it becomes garbage. All this stuff is tossed.

So in two years, we’ll have landfills overstocked with non-biodegradable items, for my generation to clean up.  The number of actual products made, and bought, I’m sure, will be greatly reduced.  My generation will buy one house in their lifetime, and stay there for a long time.  We’ll  move closer together to save money, we’ll invest more wisely than our parents, we’ll utilize natural entertainment and products more-so than before.

But overall, the market will go back up.  It will climb again from wherever it decides to stop.  I think, and hope, it climbs up at half the pace it did before this big recession hit.  Slow it down.  Sloooow dooown.  What’s the rush?  Where are we trying to go?  I think my generation will be looking for stability rather than an immediate satisfaction.  At least that’s what I’m hoping for.

But then again, if you read this blog at all, my patience is something I have to work on.  Maybe this will force it into me, and us.

What’s the Market Like?

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It’s Been A While

It’s been a while since I’ve written here.  Sorry about the delay.  The last time I wrote was around December 18th or so, and that’s about when the market dropped off for the Christmas and New Year’s weeks.  Then when we came back into the year it got crazy.  We have a new President now, we have banks begging for forgiveness, more than 600,000 layoffs in a month, a new bailout plan trying to find a middle ground, another war in Gaza and Israel.  I guess it’s been an eventful 2009 so far.  I promise I’ll try to be better about the blogging. 

S & P 500 Daily Chart Since September 2008

As for my trading, it is HARD!  HARD HARD HARD!  There are days that are good, and of course, days that are bad.  But MAN!  It is HARD!  The market keeps bouncing back and forth and being really whippy and indecisive, so it’s hard to catch a break at all.  The market usuaing moves up, or down (obviously).  But the overall movement is called a trend.  That trend usually lasts for a while, like months, sometimes years.  What we’ve seen since September really, is a cliff and a sideways movement.  It’s a patter we’re all familiar with, but in the short term: a triangle.  I don’t think people are too familiar on how to deal with the triangle in the monthly time frame.  That’s what makes it so hard.  In these conditions, stop losses need to be placed tight in order to catch profits, but then they get taken out and don’t really get the whole of the move you were aiming for.  The hardest part though, is that I don’t know any different.  I haven’t been a part of a “normal” market.  This junk is all I’ve ever traded in.  That sucks.  People keep telling me that everyone’s getting chopped up right now, and everyone’s having a hard time, but the big move is coming and that’ll make up for it.  Then the market will correct and trend again.  I mean, I don’t even know what that means.  I’ve never had the experience to see a trend that lasts for more than 1 day.  While the experts are seeing something they’ve never seen before, I’m experiencing the only thing I’ve ever seen, and waiting for the thing they know so well, but I’m a stranger to.  Will that help me out?  Is that all I need?  A good trend?  Or is my trading as good as it’s going to get?  I mean, does it rely that much on the market trend?  I’m trained well enough that I’m able to see that the market will trend again.  It’s just a matter of getting there in one piece that’s the hard part.