Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : Waiting for the big Kahuna -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: kahunabear who wrote (14901)	3/11/1998 10:38:00 AM
From: Tommaso	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 94695

Some people never did get their money back, but many did--and in effect got a handsome return because by the time they got it back prices had dropped by --I forget how much, but about 25%, so that they had made money. I am beginning to fear that in a really big crash there might be enough voters to convince Congress to bail out the stock market in some way. Sounds like something comparable has been going on in Japan--though I really haven't studied the whole Japanese banking situation enough to see clearly what has happened there.

To: kahunabear who wrote (14901)	3/11/1998 12:01:00 PM
From: Real Man	Respond to of 94695

Unfortunately, those who don't invest in this bubble will suffer a lot as well. Cash will devalue, people will get fired... No fun at all. All the crowd have learned from last October is that when they got scared and sold (at least some of them) they should have bought the dip, and the bad news were irrelevant. Now they will never let go these precious stock certificates, and try to buy more.... Until the money runs out, or they get fired from their job. -Vi

To: kahunabear who wrote (14901)	3/11/1998 9:35:00 PM
From: Bonnie Bear	Respond to of 94695

whipsaw: I'm sitting in the " stable value fund" option out of five or so choices in my company 401K fund. When I look through the top holdings of the five or so "approved" funds all of them have a high proportion of garbage stocks in the top holdings. The annual return is pretty much what you expect- there's a couple of quarters each year of great returns, one with no return, one where most of the year's gains are lost in the space of about two days. This goes on year after year. The bond fund has lost more money than sitting in money-market over the last five years. Meanwhile the average pension plan management house stock price has quadupled over the last three years. Our best-returning fund was the Martin Marietta Materials stock fund. People who invested in the gravel company spin-off got triple the return from the high-tech-laden "conservative" growth and income funds. You have no idea how many mutual funds I've looked at-most are on steroid stocks. When the fund managers have their own money in the fund the holdings look very different. Not all stocks are bad, there will always be a place for stocks, but a huge problem is that the 401K participants have little control in the stock selection, and stocks on steroids are easier for the managers to buy in large quantities. after all, it's not their money. :-( There's a growing faction of managers looking for substantial interest-rate increases in the next four quarters. This will certainly deflate the bubble. If China is looking at a 15-20% increase in M2 and the asian countries keep printing currency and converting it to dollars, there has to be a day of reckoning for the US. I just don't understand how interest rates can go down, not up, from here, unless mass unemployment sets in. I see the mutual fund companies as chameleons- they will adapt to whatever becomes fashionable in the future. We'll probably see speculative excesses in oil-and-gas, metals, unobtainium futures, etc, they'll be there for their customers with a product. I just don't think the american public is bright enough to figure out they would get better returns by investing in the stock of the pension houses instead of the mutual fund products offered by them.