Hi Bachman,..Re:. The average citizen is becoming more and more savvy (or greedy), and is no longer satisfied with earning ~5% on a CD
Bachman, thanks for your remarks. They are as usual thoughtful and thought-provoking. Also, with all this political BS, it's nice to see some fundamental reasons for investing or not. Makes us almost want to see some posts from LT so we can shoot him down again! <vbg>
If we consider that the long bond PE is approximately 20, and consider that for forward earnings, the S&P is only about 25, then we might reasonably conjecture that that is a reasonable premium to pay for the increased dividend. Besides, who is going to put funds into long term debt when the likes of AMZN are around? Not to mention the past three years returns.
Even with the current layoffs, the jobless rate decreased to 4.4% from 4.6% last month. Obviously, not all of the laid off people can re-train and capture new employment readily but those that can will be employed quickly. This is an on-going re-establishment of job skills and those that can adopt to the new technical requirements will do well. I guess what I'm trying to say is that we're in a rolling modification of old time industrial employment standards to new era technical standards. It's not hopeless, there are lots of opportunities.
Consumer spending has been healthy, primarily due to the full employment but also due to rising wages. I was worried about it earlier because of the layoffs but, as yet, it has only showed up as a temporary blip in the consumer confidence survey.
You are correct when you say that the market internals are deteriorating and this is a good reason to take precautionary measures.
quote.yahoo.com
Thanks for your thoughtful post and please keep it up.
Regards,
Lee |
