If you can stand a post from middle America here---
I've been on the phone this afternoon since the market closed with several friends who know I spend all day doing this, and they are terrified. These are people whose husbands are high income for the most part, and they have been fairly frugal with their money: saving, investing, preparing. We all have children either in or entering (or both)college.
We ARE what most middle-upperclass Americans strive to be, if that makes sense- we worked hard, we made money, we invested. We thought we did the right things.
It is slowly dawning on us all that our IRA's, the mutual funds, the stocks our brokers advised us to buy, ALL are decimated. Early retirement? MAybe not this year, they are saying, with a strained laugh.
I don't believe these are people who thought they were going to be rich fast because they bought a dot.com. They weren't driven by greed. They THOUGHT they were making the right moves. Sure they took some bellyflops on small stocks there towards the end. (Hey- everyone's making a million, why not me?) But their "real" money is in funds or maybe KO, IBM, GE, banks, whatever their broker thought was sound and safe. They are just beginning to see the damage to their lives. I know I bought a "blue chip" fund at the recommendation of a broker, and when it went down big last month, I (and yes, I am beating myself up about my laziness) finally checked what the fund's idea of blue chip was, and they were primarily tech.
ANother thought, hesitantly offered by a woman, is that men aren't as inclined to admit that their investments are in trouble as women are. There's that caveman element. "Oh, it'll come back." I've been hearing that a lot.
While it is awfully nice to make 20K in a day to offset my losses in funds etc, I realize that this isn;t happening to most people. They are losing a lot of money.
And I'm scared for them. (well, and for me, too)
You guys (and thanks to Velo, maybe even I) are going to be ok. But a lot of our friends and relatives aren't.
So I don't feel too much blood lust right now for what's left to be slaughtered.
I guess I'm worried for all of us. We yuppie types have taken a lot scorn and jeering, but I do think that we also are in many ways the last bastion of what our parents started. Who will pay "the bill" if we can't?
Rambi, waxing philosophical on a glass of Chardonnay and her relief at selling those puts for a nice profit. |
