I have been betting that our real estate market will continue to crash along with our dollar and oil will continue to rise and all of sudden oil is on the way down in a dramatic fashion and the dollar is rising on nothing but negative US news (a bit fishy if you ask me)… but yet the price of oil seems to have lost its’ luster.
… I feel my chances of making money on stocks and real estate are more like playing a game of Russian Roulette. Maybe my baseball cards I used to collect when I was young will start becoming valuable again?
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Major papers (LA Times, WSJ) report that dollar went up recently because the market predicts that Europe will also enter a slowdown/recession. As a result European central banks will have to lower interest rates to encourage growth. Both makes European currency less attractive against the dollar.
There was a bubble in commodities. Part of it was speculation (prices keep going up, so people put more money in expecting it to go up, sounds familiar?), part of it was investors running from the stock market and the dollar, they have to park their investments in something. There have been knowledgeable people writing about commodities bubble (gold, not oil) since 2006.
I remember in 2001 that investors ran away from the stock market (tech bubble) and a lot of people decide to put money in a safe investment (housing). In my uneducated opinion that was the start of the housing bubble that got further exacerbated with more easy credit.
It is easy in hindsight to determine when the top and bottom was, much harder to predict the future. Attempting to time the top or bottom are extremely difficult, specially when the market can’t decide and swings on a daily/weekly/monthly basis. If you are betting on currency/commodities, you have to realize that you are competing with professionals, who have more time, background and understanding than you do, not that they don’t panic and act like sheep as well.
If your are confident of your model, then I would to make it applicable over a longer horizon, over a year or two years certainly, and stick with it.
Personally, I take Warren Buffet’s advice, who councils individuals and trust funds (including those of institutions like Harvard) to put their money in index funds. Mr. Buffet points out that most professional managers trail the market, and that is before their management fees. You will never get super rich this way, but you will sleep better at night. I have more confidence in the U.S. stock market than any other capitalist system. With all the problems, we have more transparency (hopefully this is not misguided myopia) than anywhere else in the world. I figure that if the stock market does not go up over a 10-15 year period, then I have more important things to worry about than my nest eggs (like finding food to feed the family and beating the roaming bandits at the door with a shot gun).
Slight political tangent, if you want the dollar to go down long term, vote McCain, otherwise vote Obama. (no-tax and spend is worse for the dollar and our deficit than tax and spend) Sorry, could not resist that.
