Monday, March 2, 2009

More clouds gather

retailjan09

Sorry, I can’t help it.  Today AIG announced a loss of $61.7 Billion.  How much is that?  If someone gave that money to Iowa it could fund the entire state government for 10 years.  And that’s what ONE company lost in a THREE MONTH period.

The chart above is the change in retail sales compared to the previous year.  (The blue line accounts for inflation, the red line doesn’t.) 

We have officially driven off a cliff.  The news with 10 minutes before the market closes is not the Dow below 7000.  It is the S&P 500 going below 700.  (Dow makes headlines but traders watch the S&P 500 because it measures the stock price of 500 companies while the Dow only measures 30.) 

Here’s the new silver lining:  At Dow 6800 we are closer to bottom than we were at Dow 8000.  (Gee, that’s profound.)  Arguably, this is a time you should consider investing.  “But low, sell high,” remember? 

We’ve become a world wide conga line chanting, “How low can you go?”

1 comment:

  1. Barack needs to let AIG declare bankruptcy or just plain go under. They have had enough in bailouts.

    ReplyDelete