Is it safe to invest in stocks ?

I have no doubt America will get itself out of this mess. Economies grow because of increases in productivity (as well as population growth). To assume that the economy cannot recover is to assume that the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the American people is at an end. Since the American economy has gone through far worse - the Civil War, the 1873 Depression, the 1929 Depression, WWII - the economy will recover from this as well.

It will recover eventually. The real queston is how long is eventually? I have a question for you Toro. At some point, somewhere down the road, population increase will have to stop. There is a limit to how many people this country and this planet can support. Considering that economic growth has always been driven by populaton growth, what do you see happening once population growth is no longer part of the equation?
 
Is it safe to invest in stocks ?

When has it ever been "safe"? There are ALWAYS risks. There are and have always been safer investment alternatives to stocks (lower yield, but hey, just sayin').
 
Stocks are inexpensive now.

People under 30 how want to start saving for retirement should start buying now because returns over the next 30-40 years will be very attractive.
 
FANNIE MAE Share Price Chart | FNM - Yahoo! Finance

Two years ago this stock (FNM) was at $62.46 per share price
One year ago, May 8, it was at $23.68 per share
Yesterday, May 7th it was at $00.88 per share

It was touted by most analysts, incuding Bob Brinker, a very reliable and conservative investment commentator on his show "MoneyTalk, as an excellent and secure investment, with it's implied Federal guarantee.

Does this suggest anything about the future of highly rated but potentially "politically volatile" stocks?

.
 
Don't believe anyone answering this question! I'm not saying that they are wrong or are lying. It's just that you need to do a lot of studying of any of the stocks mentioned before you buy any listed here or anywhere.

I posed a similar question back in October, and got lots of answers. And NO ONE was entirely accurate, and actually everyone was pretty much wrong.

Having said that, this is possibly ALMOST a good time to buy stocks, but I would wait a few more days to see if the market bottoms out or goes lower.

If you've been waiting a few days since Mar 9 to see if the market bottoms or goes lower, you've missed out on a 31% gain in the Dow.

That's the problem with trying to time the market.
 
FANNIE MAE Share Price Chart | FNM - Yahoo! Finance

Two years ago this stock (FNM) was at $62.46 per share price
One year ago, May 8, it was at $23.68 per share
Yesterday, May 7th it was at $00.88 per share

It was touted by most analysts, incuding Bob Brinker, a very reliable and conservative investment commentator on his show "MoneyTalk, as an excellent and secure investment, with it's implied Federal guarantee.

Does this suggest anything about the future of highly rated but potentially "politically volatile" stocks?

.

Now is the time. My brother bought some stock at $10 a share and it went up to $24 a share and then he sold. Made $14k, minus the broker fee of course.
 
FANNIE MAE Share Price Chart | FNM - Yahoo! Finance

Two years ago this stock (FNM) was at $62.46 per share price
One year ago, May 8, it was at $23.68 per share
Yesterday, May 7th it was at $00.88 per share

It was touted by most analysts, incuding Bob Brinker, a very reliable and conservative investment commentator on his show "MoneyTalk, as an excellent and secure investment, with it's implied Federal guarantee.

Does this suggest anything about the future of highly rated but potentially "politically volatile" stocks?

.

Now is the time. My brother bought some stock at $10 a share and it went up to $24 a share and then he sold. Made $14k, minus the broker fee of course.

You forgot to add the disclaimer: "Past performance may not be indicative of future performance."
 
Who can tell? However with the hits most of us have taken, I'd be skeptical considering there really doesn't seem to be good news to account for the rise, unless veering on 9% unemployment seems good to you:

FT.com / Markets / On Wall Street - On Wall Street: Beware of the sucker’s rally

On Wall Street: Beware of the sucker’s rally
By Spencer Jakab
Published: May 8 2009 17:42 | Last updated: May 8 2009 17:42
The market is a cruel mistress indeed. Compounding the pain of big swoons, it kicks investors when they are down by luring them into sucker’s rallies – typically sharp but fleeting bounces in the middle of a bear market.

The current recovery has propelled the S&P 500 a third above its March low in just 60 days, convincing many sceptics that a new bull market has begun. Noted bear Doug Kass of Seabreeze Partners said the recent nadir may be a “generational low” and strategist Tobias Levkovich of Citigroup claimed many large investors who had feared another bear market rally may soon capitulate, pushing markets higher.

The Bull Market Express may really be pulling out of the station, but Wall Street’s trains have a nasty tendency to derail just as passengers jostle for seats. Most recently, the S&P 500 soared 24 per cent over seven weeks ending in early January, only to plunge to a new low. It was a fairly typical sucker’s rally and bear markets often need more than one to create sufficient disillusionment for a definitive bottom.

The 2000–2002 bear market had three, with average gains of 21 per cent in the Dow Jones Industrials over 45 days.

The granddaddy of all bear markets, 1929 –1932, had six false alarms with an average gain of 47 per cent. And Japan’s ongoing bear saw the Nikkei rise by at least a third four times in its first four years with 10 more false dawns since then...
 
Underpinnings:

Hot Air » Blog Archive » What if we held an auction and no one came?

What if we held an auction and no one came?
POSTED AT 9:26 AM ON MAY 8, 2009 BY ED MORRISSEY
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Great Britain knows how that feels, and now so does Barack Obama. Treasury had to offer higher-than-expected prices to investors to get them to buy government debt, signaling a distrust of American economic policy and financial strength. That will have significant consequences for Obama’s deficit spending policies (via Instapundit):

Weak demand at a Treasury bond auction touched off worries in the stock market Thursday about the government’s ability to raise funds to fight the recession.

The government had to pay greater interest than expected in a sale of 30-year Treasurys. That is worrisome to traders because it could signal that it will become harder for Washington to finance its ambitious economic recovery plans. The higher interest rates also could push up costs for borrowing in areas like mortgages.

Investors also pocketed some gains after strong rally in stocks this week and ahead of the government’s April employment report on Friday. Investors were jittery ahead of the formal release of results from the government’s “stress tests” of bank balance sheets, which came out later Thursday.

Major stocks market indicators slid more than 1 percent, including the Dow Jones industrial average which lost 102 points after gaining nearly the same amount Wednesday.​

Once again, this shows exactly how speculative the White House and the CBO have been in calculating deficits for the next decade based on Obama’s spending plans. Let’s take another look at the deficit projections from OMB and CBO:

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Both sets of numbers depended on a certain level of economic growth, which so far hasn’t begun despite Obama’s predictions of rebound in Q1 from the application of the stimulus. It also depended on a constant supply of debt purchase at steady bond rates. These projections had to consider interest payments on all of the debt Obama planned to buy while running these deficits, and any hike in interest rates means that those interest payments will have to go up. That also means that we will have to spend more money than Obama projected, creating even higher deficits and the need for even more bond sales — and more interest payments on those.

It’s basically a Ponzi scheme, and it’s accelerating.

One of two things will have to occur to resolve the situation. Either the federal government will have to massively cut its spending in order to service all that debt at the higher interest rates now demanded, or it will have to pass massive new taxes in order to generate enough revenue to accomplish it. Which do you think Obama is likely to try?
 
Deficit spending usually is beneficial for stocks, at least in the short term.

Based on what?

We've ususally had deficit spending, but is there a strong correlation? Did stocks do better in the 00s with big deficit spending vs. 90s with low deficit spending? How about the 50s and 60s compared to the 80s?

I haven't done a study, but I doubt you'd find much correlation.
 
When American go back to work, THEN I would feel confident to invest generally.

Bear in mind that I still think that the price of real estate is so far out of line with average incomes that things are going to remain out of kilter regardless of what the stock market does from day to day.

That doesn't mean that some stocks cannot be winners, but it does mean that Amnerica cannot win until it does something about the shrinking American middle class.

I disagree, if it is indeed now that the bottom has been reached then this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to buy stocks. Where I do agree is with the risk, if you buy stocks now you will take a very big risk ... but you know what they say about big risks: they pay off big time if the stock goes the good way.

Stocks always recover before the economy recovers, because stocks anticipate the actual economic recovery: when the actual economic recovery happens the stocks will have risen significantly already.

Certain sectors are interesting right now, the banking sector for example seems to have bottomed and seems to be recovering (look at the recent stress tests).

Keep in mind that factors like unemployment are lagging indicators when it comes to the stock market.

Their is also big evidence that many investors are coming back into the stock market. Investors like warren buffet have already stept in and bought a big number of stocks.
 
Deficit spending usually is beneficial for stocks, at least in the short term.

Based on what?

We've ususally had deficit spending, but is there a strong correlation? Did stocks do better in the 00s with big deficit spending vs. 90s with low deficit spending? How about the 50s and 60s compared to the 80s?

I haven't done a study, but I doubt you'd find much correlation.

Ken Fisher has done some work on this, looking at stock markets and deficit financing for countries around the world. He found that generally there was a correlation, that deficit financing was positive for stocks.

This makes sense because fiscal deficits are expansionary by nature, which means profits will rise and so will stock prices.
 

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