Bloody hell - it's MELTDOWN on the FTSE

Generali

The Dow is pretty hopeless as an index - it's unweighted and is unrepresentative. The S&P500 is much more useful.

1 day movements are little more than noise too - better to look at the bigger picture.

S&P500 is down 42% from the peak.

Oh, and we've not even had a recession yet.

A poem recommended in the FT:

When money's tight and hard to get
And your horse has also ran,
When all you have is a heap of debt -
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.

Woby_Tide

The Dow closing down by lots, that spooks Japan then the Europe markets as said earlier.

The Dow was floating when the FTSE shut really, then it plummeted the rest of the day, they need to catch up

WTF?_2

fc123 wrote: »

Why?????

Apparently FTSE futures are indicating about a 6% drop upon opening.....

That is serious meltdown territory.

Oh, and Bush is due to give another pep talk tomorrow. Bound to knock a few percent off of the markets. :rolleyes: The greatest economic crisis in modern times and that plank is leader of the free world :mad:

turbobob

!!!!!!? wrote: »

Apparently FTSE futures are indicating about a 6% drop upon opening.....

That is serious meltdown territory.

Oh, and Bush is due to give another pep talk tomorrow. Bound to knock a few percent off of the markets. :rolleyes: The greatest economic crisis in modern times and that plank is leader of the free world :mad:

You can buy exchange traded funds that short indices like the FTSE 100. They basically do the opposite of whatever the index does. I bought some myself as a bit of insurance.

Walletwatch

!!!!!!? wrote: »

Oh, and Bush is due to give another pep talk tomorrow. Bound to knock a few percent off of the markets. :rolleyes: The greatest economic crisis in modern times and that plank is leader of the free world :mad:

And who's waiting in the wings - a hollow Obama, a drunk Biden, a Dr. Evil look-alike McCain, a dumb Palin...

No wonder the world has been talking power shift away from the US to India and China. Can you even picture Palin having diplomatic talks with Putin or Ahmadinajad? Hell, Hazel Blears would give her grief !!!

fc123

!!!!!!? wrote: »

Apparently FTSE futures are indicating about a 6% drop upon opening.....

That is serious meltdown territory.

Oh, and Bush is due to give another pep talk tomorrow. Bound to knock a few percent off of the markets. :rolleyes: The greatest economic crisis in modern times and that plank is leader of the free world :mad:

Oh dear....only came on to find something...anything positive.
I think we (personally speaking) are in the $h1t...I need to find out what's going to happen to Bauger (and Mosaic) now that Kaupthing are in administration (they are aren't they?) and Iceland is insisting they sell of foreign assets.

All the trade press I read is full of positive 'We arent affected'' statements from them....but that cannot be true. It's a retail pyramid scheme.

If Mosaic are under threat of insolvency, then our LL will negotiate....if Mosaic manage to get a stash of £££ from somewhere and continue to trade...LL won't negotiate ........and we are in big trouble....because of the full, personal liability on the lease for next 10 years.

We have mentally prepared for the worst case scenario BUT it doesn't make me feel any better.

stonethrower

down 10% this morning after 15 minutes how far can this fall

WTF?_2

stonethrower wrote: »

down 10% this morning after 15 minutes how far can this fall

This is irrational selling - same as we had irrational exhuberence when things were going well.


It can do a lot of damage but ultimately things should recover to a more sane level, and relatively quickly.

However, there's just a chance that the panic could tip the system over the edge into a total meltdown.

Dithering_Dad

borntobefree wrote: »

When I first joined MSE I clearly remember you giving posters the advice not to move to cash & gilts from equities, within their pension wrapper. The reason I remember this so clearly is that I couldn't believe that someone with a background in IT was so confident in their knowledge to provide such advice. This was in the second quarter of this year. Your reasoning was that the returns weren't good enough from cash & gilts and you would only do this near to retirement, which might have been good advice if we weren't in the middle of a credit crisis. Frankly I was astonished, particularly as you were so dismissive and mocked posters who suggested otherwise.


So I did find it shocking that you'd moved your pension money to cash & gilts, albeit belatedly, after advising posters to do otherwise.

I can only hope that posters ignored your advice.





Edited to add
Extract from your post on the pension board
"Incidently, by doing this I have prevented a fall of £7600 in my pension pot and I'm poised to move the money back into equities once I feel some stability in the market. I intend moving the cash to equities in chunks, rather than as a whole, because it's so difficult to call the 'bottom'.

Shame you gave advice to the contrary to other posters.

Extract from post #55

"Direct advice is frowned upon on MSE, instead she should have provided information and allowed the OP to make their own decisions"

Shame you don't listen to your own advice

I'm sorry B2bt, but you either are completely getting me mixed up with someone else or you're lying.

p.s. when I say that "I am going to do this" or "I am going to do that", it's not advice. It's just what I'm personally doing.

borntobefree

Dithering_Dad wrote: »

I'm sorry B2bt, but you either are completely getting me mixed up with someone else or you're lying.

p.s. when I say that "I am going to do this" or "I am going to do that", it's not advice. It's just what I'm personally doing.

No I have not mixed you up with somone else and nor am I lying.

Let's take this statement of yours

when I say that "I am going to do this" or "I am going to do that", it's not advice. It's just what I'm personally doing.

and this link you provide here

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/...html?t=1209067


In this link you were clearly given advice - whatever terms you like to cosset it in. My recollection is that you were quite adamant in your advice, rather than the cuddly " I suggested this and I suggested that" parlance taken in this post.

So I have also, like you, reached 2 conclusions:-

1) You don't want to acknowledge the poor advice you have given in the past ( but then I never thought you would).

2) You actually, truthfully, don't even remember giving such poor advice - which I find, frankly, even more scary.