slickvguy

Pundit Failure: We Are in a Bear Market and This Is a Recession

Dear mr. internet nostradamus #19384757636,

A recession has a definite meaning - two consecutive quarters of negative growth. It is a FACT that we are NOT currently in a recession.

A bear market is commonly defined as -20%. From peak to current price, the s&P 500 is down about 14.5%. Thus, technically-speaking, we are not in a bear market. Yet.

The current environment is one of a)slow growth, b)housing/credit bubble burst, c)historically high p/e's, d)rising inflation (regardless of what the BLS's massaged numbers indicate), e)flat corporate profits. Clearly this is not a good environment or the stock market as a whole.

Touting your horn about the subprime-related stocks is laughable. You and about 50 million other investors saw the same thing. Big deal.

Mortgage Insurers: The Next Shoe to Drop?

"If mortgage insurers are writing more policies than ever, my guess is that they're writing more bad policies than ever."

Is this what passes for intelligent comment these days? Good grief.
You have no clue what you're talking about, thus you really should keep quiet and educate yourself.

The disease of our culture - the need to write and speak something/anything far outweighs the value of the content.

The internet is chock full of worthless blabbering. The post above is a perfect example.

Hint: Instead of guessing, why not do some actual research and post FACTS? Ah, so much easier to just lazily speculate. It fits your viewpoint. You have a bias - and your post is a self-reinforcement of that bias. BTW - you might very well turn out to be correct. Guesses are sometimes correct.

"more bad policies than ever".

Prove it. Otherwise you have no reason to believe such a thing.

In fact, underwriting guidelines have become much tougher. Also, real estate prices having dropped x% so far are de facto better bets than previous vintages.

The laughable part is that taken as a whole these new mortgages are the least risky of the past 4 years (or more) - and yet the lenders are more afraid than ever. Human behavior - project the past into the future. And that is what YOU are doing as well.

"If the monolines collapse, the mortgage insurers could be next."

Wow - what a heroic statement. Nobody has thought of that one happening. Really? MI's are in trouble? Who knew?

Must write. Must write. Must write. Fill that space!