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Strategies & Market Trends : MDA - Market Direction Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: pater tenebrarum who wrote (25162)	9/8/1999 10:58:00 AM
From: Benkea	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 99985

"...if you held on to your stocks in '29 it took until '54 for the Dow to regain the high reached in '29." And you'd held until 1999? It's all relative - isn't it?

To: pater tenebrarum who wrote (25162)	9/8/1999 3:39:00 PM
From: James F. Hopkins	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 99985

Heinz; I'm going to add to you post, The buy and holders during that time 29-54 still lost , like you said many of the stocks just disappeared. The index itself under went changes that if you didn't pick up the new ones and dump the dogs in a timely manner you didn't do anything like what the index shows. ------------------ Indexes are enhance , only about 5% of the best mutual fund managers can keep up with them over any long period of time. Another reality they don't point out , is there are very few people who "can" hold in down swings, people talk about hold via the 87 crunch..well it's not that easy , & only the rich can do it, as mortgage payments need to be made and jobs dry up, and people have to eat. Holding during a bear market means you have to have income of some sort..and the reality of it was hardly no one had enough income to hang onto their stocks, it's just B.S. that the market put's out to sell stocks they make it sound easy, buy and hold..ya they don't point out that 1/4th of the people who even in good times can't do it because something unexpected comes up that exceeds their ability to cope with. One can't buy enough insurance to take care of every thing and still have any money left over, insurance has limits too, so there is a trade off . But the brokers hold up the big "IF" you held..but dam few could. ------------------ Now back to this wonderful market, most funds don't keep up with the indexes ..we know that, BUT what they don't tell you is just how BAD some of them funds do, tons of retirement money has vanished over the years you hear a little here and there as they don't want to make a big thing out of it but when you add it up it's big numbers. Many retirement plans have gone broke and paid 10 cent on the dollar of the promise they made and this is since 1950..but they happen one at a time, and it effects a limited amount of people at the time, and the unaffected don't notice until it hit's them. -------------------- The market if you take it apart , and subtract all the stocks that go belly up from the index. it doesn't look half as good, in fact in the last 12 months taking every thing..the broad or total average..( then subtract all that went belly up from that ) you will see why almost 50% of the funds haven't made 5% in the last 12months..but morning star just points at the winners, and guess what. Most new traders think they can beat the pros, well they can't. 70% of all traders who jump in to trading stocks do worse than the mutual funds, but they don't talk about it. The full service brokers know that and try to steer newbies into funds to keep them from making they mistakes they already know newbies tend to do, ( but they won't talk about it either) they don't want to scare the mullet off. ------------------- Anyway any long term buy and hold person better understand taht for that plan to work they need job secuirty if the market shuts down and lay offs hit. Jim