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Strategies & Market Trends : A.I.M Users Group Bulletin Board -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JZGalt who wrote (7572)	5/31/1999 11:06:00 AM
From: JZGalt	Respond to of 18928

plan.ml.com Merrill Lynch transcript on after hours trading plus other topics. FYI. ---- Dave

To: JZGalt who wrote (7572)	5/31/1999 9:58:00 PM
From: OldAIMGuy	Respond to of 18928

Hi Dave, Yes, As bad as '29 was, the '69-'74 decline is more recent and real for many of us. It was just as brutal in many ways and yes, many folks stayed away for years afterwards. My first $$$ went into the market during that terrible period and I was rewarded with a slap in the face each time. However, after we turned the corner in '75, those incredibly cheap P/E's I'd been buying for 4 years finally started to look much better in my portfolio. Can't say it wasn't painful for the first part, but it sure felt good later on. AIM beat the pants off Buy&Hold for the period from '69 to '89, but both were in the red for many, many years. The only winners during that period were folks who were out of the market. Today's fat P/E's remind me of the late sixties as much as anything. I know we are supporting those lofty P/E's only as long as the FED is not raising interest rates. Recently, my "Relative Valuation" figures from the Idiot Wave have again been signalling "Bearish" levels. The FED could easily turn this market from one of expanding P/E ratios to one that's contracting. Like labor pains, those contractions won't be fun! With the overall IW hovering just about on the raw edge of the High Risk zone, this is a time to keep a fat cash reserve and keep it high and dry. Yes, last fall was pretty scary, but then again, so is being an investor at any time! If we kept "score" of all the reasons that the market should go up VS go down, we'd probably hide our $$$ under the mattress! Since I started investing, there's been one pile of bad news after another into which we could step. I guess that's probably always the case. Best regards, Tom