Greece had rioting in its streets near its parliament. As these events unfolded on TV, the DOW dropped 1000 points in a matter of minutes. The American stocks didn’t stay down at -`1000 for long. It came back somewhat, if we call -330 a come back. Investors might want to check their assets.
A work related call prevented me from seeing the entire free fall. Where is Formerly Anonymous to do some interpreting for us? We can’t say he hasn’t warned us of impending doom.
UPDATE: The DOW is hovering just under 300 down. Fox News is saying they just got word that there was a bad trade on Proctor and Gamble. (whatever that means) Who knows. All this is beyond my pay grade.
The market does not beat them. They beat themselves, because though they have brains they cannot sit tight. ~Jesse Livermore
Today was a good day. Tommorow looks good as well. I’m pretty happy that the Euro and EU is getting crushed.
And, we all know it was Bush’s fault.
“I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies but not the madness of people.”
Sir Isaac Newton after losing a large sum of money in the South Sea Bubble, which was the housing and financial markets bubble of his day.
No Marin, today was NOT a good day. Hundreds of thousands of people lost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
To say that any president, Bush, Obama, Clinton or Nixon had anything to do with it shows financial ignorance and it is best not to even make remarks if that is the extent of your understanding.
What if I had a position in gold or in the US Dollar? Today would’ve been a very, very nice day for me. 🙂
I could also just not like the EU. I could maybe make money off international imports (dollar is strong making it go further).
Or, of course I could just not like the EU and feel whats bad for them is good for us (zero sum).
That I made a few bucks today makes me financially ignorant. I’m ok with that. Thank you.
I don’t recall if I told this story here, so forgive me if it’s a repeat. We stayed at a bed and breakfast in northern London late last summer. The B&B owners had wildly differing ideas about the state of things in England as well as in many European countries. The wife is American and very strong supporter of the public health service. The major selling point for her was that if any one of her guests became ill, they could get care, and it would be “entirely free.”
Her husband, from Scotland, felt the exact opposite. He felt that the flood of illegal immigrants (in England’s case, Poles being among the most numerous) was bankrupting the economy, and that the PHS was inefficient and unsustainable in the long term. His outlook for many of the European countries was pretty grim, to say the least.
Greeks are very used to many entitlements that are bankrupting their nation, and yet they are rioting to protect those entitlements even though there is no cash to pay for them. It’s a frightening situation.
Prelude perhaps?
Marin, perhaps ignorant was a poor choice of words, how about selfish?
On the other hand, maybe you should diversify.
I’m 33 and lack off spring. My (investment) risk profile can be higher than normal. 🙂
Selfish? Now, that is a compliment I can live with!!
I do have a small hope that Greece ‘suffers’ so that they understand how badly they’ve put themselves in the hole.
– Beware of Greeks bringing “gifts”.
– 401K = Arrragh!
– Think a party named “Liberal Democrat” would fair well in PWC?
“Beware of Greeks bringing “gifts”.@Poor Richard
Best line all day! Images of “burning” Laocoon running down the beach…
It never pays to put all one’s eggs in one basket.
I am just glad I didn’t know the 1000 drop was happening. It had come back up some by the time I noticed what was going on.
I’m doing my best to fight the urge to change my user name to Cassandra to capitalize on the Greek theme here. I’ll do a post on one of the topics below, Moon-howler gets to pick. (There’s just too much material to cover everything that’s going on right now.)
1) What happened yesterday? (Or at least what I think happened)
2) What I think is going to happen next?
3) What can we do about it?
4) What does Greece have to do with topless lapel pins and baseball?
In the meantime, fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy ride today. (Not necessarily down, just very high volitility until we get to the weekend when people can cool off and analyze what happened.)
FA, do you think the elections and move towards a conservative govt in the UK will factor into volatility today?
I’m still very gleeful about what is happening and how people are getting crushed. Maybe it’s wrong to smile at misery but it feels GREAT.
Marinm,
The short answer is no. In fact, the UK elections were a (very small) part in the mix of news that is causing this turmoil. There are two things to keep in mind with the UK elections. First, it looks almost certain that there’s going to be a hung Parliament and there is even a chance that Brown could stay as PM if Labor and the LDs form a coalition. Brown staying in as PM with a hung Parliament would be a disaster. Second, even if Cameron becomes PM, don’t expect him to be another Thacher or even Major. I don’t know if the Brits have the term TINO (Tory in Name Only) but if they don’t, they need it for Cameron. He’d be better than Brown but so was Blair. The UK needs strong leadership right now and none of the three major candidates fit the bill. Cameron is the least bad, but that’s not saying much.
As for the schadenfreude, it can fun to see people get comeuppance, but keep in mind there is a lot of pain yet to come and a lot of it is going to fall on people who didn’t deserve it. A few billion in bad spending in Greece has wiped out hundreds of billions in the US. And if this mess eventually starts hitting in California, as I fear it will, that’s going to wreck havoc on the entire national economy and it’s way to early to figure out who the winners and losers will be.
If you made some money yesterday, then Salut to you. But don’t get smug and certainly don’t get complacent with your investments. It’s going to be crazy for a few years.
Our office conversations have pretty much veered the same way WRT the UK elections and of course Greece.
I do see that spectre of what is occuring in Greece translating (maybe on a smaller scale) to what’s happening and may occur both in NY and CA. The conservative in me of course smiles at that ‘comeuppance’ but I do recognize as you say that many, many people will suffer because of those mistakes.
Good advice on the smugness and I hope I didn’t come off as such at least in that (investments) respect. Noted.
In the back of my head I think that a national great depression may be a good thing – to reboot the system and to shake people out of this idea that everything is working as it should or that corporations/governments will always exist to provide our pensions.
Formerly, how about 2 and 3? I am greedy. I would like part 1 and then 2 or combined.
Thanks!!!
I’ll see what I can write up but this weekend’s news is going to change everything. They’ve saved the Eurozone in the short term while signing its death warrant in the long term.
The Euro will be below parity with the dollar within five years, test new historic lows within seven and have at least one or more members withdraw within ten years. It’s going to be a great time to visit Europe for a while, but it’s going to be murder on exports to the Eurozone.
I’m dumbfounded but their plans for this “nuclear option”. A TARP-like bailout isn’t going to save the Euro. It just postpones and worsens their day of reckoning with another $900 billion in debt. (It brings America’s day of reckoning closer though. Moody’s says 2013 for us. I say 2012, maybe even 2011 if Congress passes the tax bill this year.)
We are very rapidly getting to the point where this is going to be bigger than 2008. Like the old adage of generals always trying to refight the last war, too much is being done to try to save the lost cause of Greece instead of firewalling Greece off from the Eurozone. Instead, for reasons that can only be described as a failure of political will, they’ve done the opposite.