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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (38635)	9/25/1999 11:13:00 AM
From: Jacques Chitte	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

Thank you for the revision, Neocon. Sporting of you <tips tweed> The Other Factor that receives little play in the press is that even though the Dow or the Transports or other major indices DID recover andf eventually go on to dizzying highs ... the composition of these composites was a moving target. If you bought a Dow cross-section in '29, then let it be ... I suspect it would have been MUCH longer to achieve break-even. The reason is that the big indices drop their losers and replace them with the young Turks. A person would actively have to manage a portfolio to parallel the acts of the index referees (fortunately this is easily-acquired information) to tread water. Most investors hold single issues - the smart ones hold several. This means that many many Schwabbies would get wiped back to zero (or beer money) in the event of a Real bear market. The diversified ones would lose a large percentage - but if they paid attention in the endgame of the bear mkt they could buy the Next Generation of winners cheap (there are price action indicators to improve one's odds) and recoup their losses in a "survivable" time frame. The agonizing thing is that there is No Way to predict a bear market except ... in retrospect. Study the chart for '73-'74. A sawtooth pattern. Selloff! - Rally and recovery - wait, another selloff! - oops, no here it is - hey whatcha doing! - OK, is this the recovery ort another fakeout? Btm line is when the last big selloff happened (which saw composite stock values at * 30% * of the high a mere eighteen months previous!) and the mkt reversed for real - only the Titanium Testicle Crowd still had any game left in them. So I fear that if a Real Crash comes, I'll get zorched pretty good. Because the Lesson of '96 and of '97 and of '98 was Buy the Dips, Stupid!!!!! And in a Bear Mkt, that is the wrong thing to do. But how to tell the diff between the fall of '98 and a Bear Mkt? I mean in time to go defensive? That is a real toughie imo. There is Serious Potential to see a massive collapse of wealth in America. And with the present frenzied emphasis on stock ownership - 401(k)s, Ameritrade ads, home equity loans, talk of "privatizing" SocSec to exploit the yeasty action in the S&P ... the pins are pretty topheavy and spaced close. The ball might be rolling, but pins are deaf. Course if it's a gutterball we're all rich rich rich, bwahahahaahaaHAAAAha