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Gold/Mining/Energy : Gold Price Monitor -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Joan Osland Graffius who wrote (67364)	4/8/2001 4:11:22 PM
From: russwinter	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116763

<there has been many years of buy and hold education.> Past bear markets have been marked by public liquidation that will intensify near the bottom. The fact that there has been little in this one is to me quite alarming. It is yet to come. comstockfunds.com I know some speculative types that have been wiped out on margin, and I think that's pretty widespread and may account for a good chuck of the big decline to date. Through the latest reporting period of Feb. margin debt was down to 187 billion from a year earlier 265 billion. March was ugly so we should see another good drop. I suspect that liquidation process is about two-thirds over. That next liquidation phase will be people like my 79 year old father who was scammed by his "broker", I mean salesman into putting his once considerable retirement pension money into a stock mutual fund. He bought "one of the dips" about 2000 NASDAQ points ago. I won't go into any fund names except to say well known. Their portfolio looks like a who's who of all the nifty fifty "blue chip" favorites (Jees, Louise, who didn't own Intel, GE and Cisco?) that so many people have been crucified on. I know he did it against his better judgment, but there was some peer group pressure from some the other bluehairs that he runs with. He didn't discuss it with me and the outcome reminds me of that TV ad where the guy is talking about his investment plan, "rich parents", when the scene cuts away to Vegas, where Mom and Dad are gambling away their life savings at the table. Dad smiles and says, "Easy come, easy go". I just think the ad got the Vegas and Wall Street part mixed up. Do I think my Dad has much time or pain threshold for this? Absolutely not. He really has no business being invested in this manner, and neither do millions of other folks. I happen to subscribe to the notion that five trillion in lost stock market value (to date) will play havoc on the real economy and on the US Dollar.