I am not using a specific fund.
I was referencing your cherry picking a single day which was the high for the entire year and in a completely different quarter and trying to compare it to the low day of another year. Not a fair comparison.
If you compared January 2000 to January 2008 that would be fair. If you compared June 2000 to June 2008 that would fair. But cherry picking the extreme high point in all of 2000 and trying to compare it to the extreme low point of half of 2008 (we have a whole half year left, plus a couple of days at this point) is not a fair comparison - it’s yellow journalism.
Yellow journalism being defined as reporting facts and figures in such a manner to convey a message or influence the thinking of others by misleading them or leading them to false conclusions. This is usually done by making poor comparisons, leaving out certain facts (1994 drop of the DJIA in excess of 6% but implying the 3% drop of June 27th, 2008 was the worst thing ever since Black Monday).
You are at the least guilty of the first, making poor comparisons. And I would suspect the second as well by omitting the facts that in the 1990’s, when people generally feel the stock market was doing extremely well, there were days where the market dropped by more than 6%. Meanwhile, you highlight a single day in 2008 where the market dropped less than 3%, but close to 3% and try to herald it as being a net negative from 2000. It is not a net negative from 2000. 2000 ended barely into the 10,000s and we are well above that in 2008.
Now, I do get the impression, personally, that you have had a very rough time at it in your investments and this is almost surely because your advisers need to be replaced with more investment savvy investors. My investors in 2000 were telling me to get out of American stocks and spread myself globally, I did (focusing mostly on Russia for nostalgia’s sake) and have done extremely well for myself.
After all, the writing’s been on the wall for a LONG time that the mortgages were going to pop. Banks requiring interest only loans? No proof of employment to qualify? How long could that have lasted! Same with technologies, that Y2K scam (and I was in the industry at that point, I knew it to be a total scam) totally rocked the business world when it was uncovered. Add to that a new government administration bent on enforcing the laws and many companies (Enron, WorldCom, AT&T, Arther Anderson, Martha Stewart, etc) getting leaned on and reporting their financial figures were not honest, and what do you expect?
A good investor would have pulled you out of many of these markets long ago. I kept some, against my adviser’s prompting, and they have done very poorly, but my other investments have been great. Gold up. Oil up. Corn up. LED Technology up. Russian stocks WAY THE FRACK UP! (One already has gone up by 44% since January). But some have not done so well. American financials down. Medical down. Etc. (Funny, the prospect of National Health Insurance drives the price of medical stocks downward…hmm, wonder why? But then, I’m buying it because it’s going down in the hopes that no one would be insane enough to put in national health care in which case, the stocks will rocket back up.)
Brains dude. You have to use your own brains not the financial planner’s brains. Assume he has none. Check and double check everything he says (I am assuming it is a he, most men do not like to work with women when the they are working with someone in a field where they are intellectually inferior because of training, expertise, whatever.)
But to try and claim that the DJIA is net negative from a very specific point in 2000 history (BARELY in 2000 history mind you, not even a full 3 weeks after the DJIA opened after the New Years recess!) is pure yellow journalism.
In fact, the DJIA is HIGHER today than it was in 2000, a fact you seem loathe to admit. Significantly higher, but not the 10% per annum you wish for. (Actually 8% is a more appropriate number. Plan for 8%, hope for 10% and kiss your adviser at 12% is the rule I’ve always been taught.) Yes, it’s been only what, about 3% per annum? Maybe 4%? Is inflation up? Yes. But then the fed’s been cutting rates for what, 12 straight quarters? Everytime they cut the rate they add money into the economy, more money = more inflation. Less money = deflation. Is inflation THAT bad? Not really. Minimum wage went up about 70% so there’s more money in people’s hands to spend - businesses are just adjusting for the influx of cash I’d wager.
What IS bad is Eggs are up 33%, Milk is up, Gas is up 200% etc. Now those are real problems that have real solutions. (Cut the Ethanol stipends so that ethanol is forced to compete on the world market on a level playing field; drill off the coast of Florida and in Alaska as well as other parts of the nation; end China’s status as “preferred trading partner”; build some refineries, etc.)
You want to end inflation (and I believe you mentioned it first, someone else may have, but it was mentioned prior to me) then you need to spur the Fed to raise rates. The DJIA has no effect on inflation (other than their assets are worth less as inflation rises.) If the Fed were to raise the Prime to 8.5% we’d see some deflation happening. If it was raised to 17% like it was in the 70’s (or was that mortgage rates in the 17-23% range?) then we’d see MASSIVE deflation (and soup lines I’m sure!)
But no. I refuse to buy into your argument that in Q1 of 2000, barely after the markets opened, there was a day when the market was a few points higher than in Q2 of 2008 half a year into 2008 when the market momentarily dropped below the extreme high of 2000. Hell, at the end of Q1 in 2000 the market was flirting with going into 4 digit numbers again and had lost well over the same amount lost during all of the 1930’s and the Great Depression.
Honestly, the worst year on record for the DJIA was Jan 1, 2000 to Dec 31, 2000. I doubt that anything, short of a 3 year old with the remote on the Fed, can give us a worse year than 2000 in our life times. Of course, now that I’ve given the Universe a challenge, I am sure the Universe will prove me wrong.
