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To: LTK007 who wrote (357481)	2/13/2008 12:18:21 PM
From: Horgad	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

"by having 54% of U.S. households in the market, never in history had a public been in greater in danger. Previous to 1990s the highest % of american households in market was 20%, and that was in 1929." That is some scary shit.

To: LTK007 who wrote (357481)	2/13/2008 12:44:55 PM
From: stan_hughes	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 436258

IMO it's all in the demographics -- the post-WW2 baby boomers were shepherded wholesale into the equity markets by the financial planning industry that sprang up to direct the investment of their excess earnings -- they didn't want CDs, those were too boring -- they wanted action. You can directly correlate the rise in the SPX with a typical saving/investing profile tied to the age of the boomers When a disproportionate percentage of a population enters any market, it is inevitably going to rise, and rise it did -- however, as those boomers start to wind down toward retirement, cease investing new funds and then eventually need to cash out, the whole mechanism gets thrown into reverse, and the tailwind of the past 25 years turns into a headwind Housing has already peaked out -- good luck trying to sell 3-storey McMansions to empty-nesters with walkers who can't climb stairs -- but we're only in the early innings of the boomer-driven equity divestiture process, which also offers the double-edged sword of those same boomers starting to lean very heavily on Medicare resources One would think such a scenario means that maybe a good place to hide would be health care services, but I have my doubts that the government will leave that sector alone, and I expect them to screw it up royally