Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Market Wisdom II

Since I'm (briefly) on an investing advice kick this morning, let me put up this handy chart (via Big Picture) that gives a little perspective on investments ... and how they've performed over the last century in good times and bad.

Since a lot of us are visual creatures around here, it gives you a quick overview about how the stock market has behaved through downturns and upturns going back to the Roaring Twenties. Since the fifties, bear markets have coincided with hard times.

My take-away from this roller coaster year is, you can make fine, educated guesses about where the market is going in the short term, but guesses are what they are. (And of course, we don't know what the market losses are for 2008, since the year isn't over yet. Could be a record breaker, dropping farther than the horrid year of 1931, but we just don't know yet ...)

You are on somewhat firmer ground in predicting longer term trends. And long-term, the market will go up from where it is today. Question is, how long will it take for the beast to climb on the escalator and start rising?

If somebody knows the answer to that, let me know.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

The bush economic debacle could have been dealt with over a year ago if the idiot in chief hadn't been so busy not paying attention.

Reminds me of his "response" to intelligence on what lead to 9/11 on his watch, his "response" to Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Ike, and his creation of a bizarre war based on self created information on WMD.

Just over a month and American can begin rebuilding all the damage bush & co. have inflicted on our country.

Good riddance.

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