Keep a Journal of These Times!
by Sy Harding, StreetSmartReport.com | March 6, 2009
PrintTen years ago I wrote a column with a similar title, saying “Someday your grandchildren will become excited about a future bull market, and you’ll certainly want to tell them about the Great Bull Market of the 1990’s. But you’ll need considerable proof or they won’t believe you. So keep a journal; about how wild the frenzy is to own tech and Internet stocks at any price, of how IPO’s of unknown startups shoot up 200% in a week, of how America Online, still trying to make a profit, is valued at more than the combined value of Delta Airlines, Federal Express, Texaco, Raytheon, Litton Industries, Colgate Palmolive, Union Carbide, Pepsico, Hertz Corp, J.C. Penney, and Sears. And be sure to include this week’s news that brokerage firm Donaldson, Lufkin, and Jenrette has opened “trading kiosks” halfway down several ski slopes at Vail, Colorado, so skiers can stop on their way down to check on their stocks, make trades, and then continue down the slope.”
As I said at the time, if that was not a mania and a bubble, then the definition of those terms would surely have to be re-written.
Shortly thereafter we saw the severe 2000-2002 bear market, in which the S&P 500 lost 50% of its value and the Nasdaq, home of most of the tech and Internet stocks, lost 76% of its value.
We then saw the 2002-2007 bull market that carried the Dow and S&P 500 all the way back up to their peaks of early 2000, (but not the Nasdaq, which recovered less than half of its losses).
Then we saw the bursting of another bubble, this time in housing, and the current even more severe bear market in stocks, which has dropped the stock market below its lows of the 2000-2002 bear market, in fact back to its levels of 1997.
Yes, it has been historical times.
Someday, just as our grandparents and great-grandparents told us about the great crash of 1929-32, we will be telling our grandchildren the stories of 2008 and 2009. And again, you may need proof if they are to believe you. So once again I say keep a journal of these times.
Otherwise they may not believe for instance that in 2009 a share of one of the largest bank conglomerates in the world, CitiGroup, could be bought for $1, less than they charge for a withdrawal from one of their ATM machines, a hundred shares for a hundred bucks; or that a share of G.E., which just two years before was being honored as the best run company in the world, could be had for the price of a Big-Mac burger. Or that shares of once mighty General Motors, of which it was said for several generations that “As goes General Motors so goes the nation,” could be had for less than a cup of coffee, except that no one wanted them since the company said it was probably headed for bankruptcy. (Let’s hope the old saying that as goes GM so goes the nation no longer has any truth to it, since for generations when GM was doing well the nation was doing well, and when GM struggled, so did the nation. GM heading for bankruptcy?).
Meanwhile, you’ll also want to tell your grandchildren how, as has happened often over the last 100 years, once again in 2008 and 2009 banks and brokerage firms were under investigation by Congress and regulators, trying to figure out how their greed and risk-taking again got out of control, how their problems again threatened the collapse of the entire financial system and economy, how many went under before it was over; how the market collapse had Ponzi scheme crooks again coming out of the woodwork; while economic conditions were downright scary.
When we tell them the story, our grandchildren will likely ask what the difference was between the risk-taking banks, and the risk-taking speculators in the Internet bubble, or the housing bubble. We’ll tell them that one of the biggest differences was that, as usual the banks and Wall Street firms risked and lost other people’s money.
Yes, we are living in historic times that will be analyzed and critiqued for generations to come.
We will come out of it, at this point probably sooner rather than later (with 12 years of the previous excesses already taken out of the stock market).
But how that will be done is still the unknown and unwritten story.
Copyright © 2009 Sy Harding
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Sy Harding publishes the financial website www.StreetSmartReport.com and a free daily Internet blog at www.SyHardingblog.com. In 1999 he authored Riding The Bear – How To Prosper In the Coming Bear Market. His latest book is Beat the Market the Easy Way! – Proven Seasonal Strategies Double Market’s Performance!
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