This is worth noting.
U.S. stocks have gained about $5.2 trillion in value since the low in March, putting the gain for the year at $2.6 trillion. But the climb was still not enough to give investors a win for the decade. The S&P fell 24.1 percent from 2000-09, its first loss for a decade. S&P says it managed to advance during the Depression thanks to dividend payments.
It seems incredible that the stock market could have done worse than the Great Depression, yet it is true. How long before the sheeple wake up to the fact that buy-and-hold is for suckers? Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum, its looking like the 21-year bull market in Treasuries is ending.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, used as a benchmark for interest rates on mortgages and other consumer loans, stands at 3.84 percent, up from 2.22 percent a year ago. Investors are no longer fleeing to the safety of U.S. government debt.
we're all day traders now
I don't know the percentage or people who lost their 401ks and retirement during this decade but it has to be large.
Many were wiped out during the dot con crash and then this last one wiped out many.
Then, people had to use their retirement to survive because of other financial hardships.
Trading ro survive
Robert, the hit to 401k is an unknown, but Bernanke's recent speech at Brookings confirmed that "going to cash" was rational behavior for individuals during the crash. This meant that most of them took the hit, but did not benefit from the Fed's largesse that supplied liquidity to banksters. During the crash, information was distorted by the panic as corporations raised cash and you could not count on traditional measures such as dividends, etc. Pfizer and GE come to mind as examples of apparently healthy companies slashed dividends to raise cash (for different reasons). Rational liquidation was difficult in an environment where liquidity imploded.
So one is led to ask, how can we keep the social contract intact when Wall Street has violated it so egregiously? My 401k is mostly intact, though down, and I have had to trade to recover. Frankly, investing should not be so hard in a rational market, and I resent having to check my 401k balances daily -- because I do not trust these wall street bastards nor do I trust the Fed. We used to have some degree of faith in the system, and now it's every man for himself. We used to believe your word is your bond, but now it's "let's read the contract again."
This is socially destructive, individualism carried to extremes. I can survive this crap, but can America? Toqueville marveled at the solidarity in America, but I wonder what he would say in this predatory landscape?
Frank T.
Frank T.
if you see it
what I am interested in is the ave. 401k value from a period of 1990-2009. What I suspect is a lot of people lost their retirement. Firstly the entire thing of moving from traditional pensions to this as a "retirement plan" is B.S., yet another financial services agenda....
but I suspect the last generation with sufficient funds for retirement....is currently retired.
So, I'm looking for concrete data. One needs to find concrete data to express thy outrage. Just being pissed is perfectly ok on EP, no doubt about it, but we need to look at the details, data, prove to document the royal middle class screw job.
If you dig such a thing out, you could write it up as a blog post as well.
Interest rates
The yield on the 10 year shows a steepening curve, which some (AKA Kudlow) say is very bullish for the economy. How is the housing sector (and the American consumer) going to keep up during such a rise in rates? How is Fannie going to keep lending 125% mortgages when the rate keeps climbing?
OR -- could it be that the Chinese gentleman was right when he said there was a shortage of dollars to buy Treasuries?
Oh Ben, is your hand on the tiller, or are we lost again? Tim, Larry, where do we go from here?
Frank T.
Frank T.