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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: energyplay who wrote (28924)	2/19/2003 3:44:50 AM
From: EL KABONG!!!	Respond to of 74559

energyplay, The common factor of all of the stocks in the DJIA is that most all of them have enormous exposure to the US consumer, and as the consumer goes, so goes the prices/earnings of those stocks. Yes, exposure to foreign currencies by US global exporters will be of some help, but I fear it will be a too little, too late type of thing. My gut feeling is that the US consumer is about tapped out, and has genuine fears for the safety of his/her household income(s). I'm seeing a shift in consumer preferences from the luxury items to the basic needs type of items. So, I might expect Procter & Gamble or Wal-Mart to at least tread water in any downturn of consumer spending, while other companies don't fare as well. But the markets don't discriminate very well when everyone is selling everything and there's a rush for the exits. The baby does indeed get tossed with the bath water. So I'm expecting an across-the-board type of decline, torpedos be damned, where all boats sink lower in the ebbing tides. I think that short term traders have a definite advantage in this market. Longer term investors (like myself) may have a very long wait before buy-and-hold becomes practical again. And it's the buy-and-hold crowd that provides stable market prices, not the traders (who provide needed volatility). KJC