Is it any wonder today’s investors are confused? These two headlines ran on MSN/Yahoo within 12 hours of each other:
Dow off 237 as financial stocks crumble
Stocks head for higher open
Okay, I can understand that. Financial stocks are weakening, but there was some optimism as the market opened this morning. Optimism is good – our country literally runs on optimism.
Later today, these two Yahoo news pieces ran 5 minutes apart:
Dow, S&P turn negative on oil, financials
Stocks higher despite worries about financials
Can you see the short term investors pulling their hair out? What is it – higher or lower? Red ink or black?
I just wanted to point out the insanity of today’s marketplace. If we try to overanalyse the situation, we might just catch ourselves selling valuable stocks on a bad tip or media lead.
At the age of 23, this is my portfolio’s first true bear market. It’s scary, and I don’t like it. I’ve lost more than $1,000 in the past six months – about 15 percent of my retirement portfolio. My financial adviser’s advice? Sit tight. It hurts, but there are no bulls without bears.
Until that bull comes charging back into our stock market, I just tell myself that I’m buying lots of stocks on sale. I like sales, right? I’ll stick to my large-mid-small cap indexes, and hopefully ride out this mess with a profit in the end.
In the meantime, I think I’ll just stop reading the daily stock updates. How much value can they hold for a long-term investor? Not much.
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