phillips49

Things Aren't as Bad as They Seem - Barron's

I think rational people have pretty much ruled out the '29 end of the world scenario. It should be pretty clear by now that the governments of the world are willing do whatever it takes to prevent that. That means realistically we are dealing with a recession. We have had recessions before and we will have them again. We have always recovered. History proves that.

I agree that the gas price drop will be a boon for the consumer. It comes at just the right time of the year for the retailers. The holidays...the time of the year they go into the black.

The stock market behavior appears to be more liquidation driven than value or economy driven. That may be due to a confluence of factors such as hedge fund redemption selling, margin call forced liquidation selling, financials raising cash by selling equities, baby boomers that don't have the time to do it again and the fear mongers benefitting from short selling The current P/E of the S&P is around 13.5 against a 30 year average of 18. To me that says that the sell off was most certainly not value or economy driven but driven by the need to raise cash. The last time the P/E was at this level was 1988. The market returned to more traditional value 2 years later.

I don't think it is polyanna to be optimistic about the future. History is on my side.

I shopping for some stocks. They're still on sale this week.