Is now a smart time to invest in markets?

Immediately after last years financial meltdown there was a thread about jumping into the market after stocks took a beating. I was very skeptical but the thread OP was adamant about timing and as it turns out a year later he was right and I was wrong. I can't remember the thread or the OP but anyway.
I'm ready to jump back into the market after being on the sidelines for a year. Stocks are still off their highs from last year. Some are still off 50%.

What do you guys think?

As usual there is a plethora of opinions from wall street analysts and financial writers about the rosy future of the stock market and how it always goes up over time.

What do you guys think about investing for the long haul now. 10-20 years plus.

Many gurus ( Buffet, Soros) took a beating over the last year but I remember Buffet investing like 5 billion in GE right after it took a nose dive last year. I thought =
That was a leap of faith but he has proven to be right most of the time. I should have followed his lead with my meager investments



Anyway. I've been looking at several Canadian companies and I'm almost ready to pull the trigger. So I'll be using Canadian dollar but don't let that stop you from adding your opinion from a USD perspective. The 2 are practically the same anyway. Now before you start flaming me for coming to ATS for financial advise, understand, I have a level head and only invest after careful thought ( and a shot of Jim, Jack and Jose!)

IMHO, no the market is the wrong place right now. However if you have significant funds I would be looking at property outside of the US. Canadian real estate could show some real upside in the short term as many people will look for stable economies and good job markets 6 month to 12 months in the future.

I sold all my stocks in the beginning of October because I think there is something to the rumors of a market crash in the end of October. The economy is artificially inflated. The numbers you see are not real.

Better be safe than sorry.



[edit on 6-10-2009 by Copernicus]

ATS in effect. What ATS says do the opposite. Now is the time to buy hand over fist, double up, max out the credit, borrow on margin. DDDOOOOO EEEEEIIIITTTTT!!

It's always a good time to be investing in markets. The question of course is "which markets?"

The US stock market? My personal answer is "no." It has made "impressive" gains this year but those gains are not so impressive when you consider A) real inflation (not the candy-*** "core inflation" stats the government pumps out) and B) the dollar's value versus other currencies. This flattens those "big gains" out a lot more than people want to admit. Try looking at a comparison chart of gold prices vs S&P 500 stock prices over the last 10 years, for a nice chuckle. Also, the DOW is a joke...they change the component companies all the time, which is perfectly legal, but this can allow them to make the DOW look much better than the broader market, which is better represented by the S&P 500. There the story is not so pretty.

There are other markets...commodities, forex...Do you think nationally or internationally? How are your trading chops? I have my own strategy and this is not the place to discuss it. I will say this though. Max Keiser (who is a bit of a loon at times, admittedly) says that the planned new global "basket of currencies" is going to be more than 50% gold bullion to prevent individual abuse by nations. Meanwhile the MSM is bellowing about these IMF and World Bank Gold selloffs to keep the herd in line but if you look at the stats, the amounts to be sold represent miniscule fractions of a percent of global reserves. Draw your own conclusions.

invest now if you are a trader....keep out if your a buy-&-hold investor

all logic tells me that what we are witnessing is a macrovision view of pumping up stocks for the Year End portfilo value.


[[ todays surge in Gold is a wishful anomaly brought on by speculation of conflict with Iran, and the market-mover story of the USD being yanked as the medium for exchange of world Oil...

those 'secret' meetings have been going on better than 6 months already with an anticipated use of the USD ' exclusively' being dropped in 2010...in favor of a basket of currencies
~this is old news...along with gold coinage creation in Arabian Gulf nations~]]

the Chineese have close to $2Trillion in USD & Trasuries, & they havn't turned their backs on the US Treasury Auctions, most every week of every month...

so whom exactly is issuing denials, the elites of the AngloSaxon NorthAtlantic cabal or the Communist Chinese which definitely do not want .40 cents on the USDs they hold...(a 60% haircut on 2Trillion$)

It'S always said that the big dollar reserve holders will never move away from it because they already have so much. So therefore, the argument goes, its OK for the US to print up a parabolic curve of ever-expanding dollars and dollar-denominated debt from here to eternity, and our pac rim buddies will just keep sopping up all that yummy liquidity -- forever, like some kind of MC Escher illusion or perpetual motion machine.

But if that's the only strongest argument for a strong dollar, sounds suspiciously like "too big to fail," doesn't it? That argument simply might not go over well with foreign nations that have less vested interest in propping up the US domestic economy in and of itself.

Eventually, "getting 40 cents on the dollar" for their holdings may start to look like a pretty good deal indeed to the Chinsese and Japaense if the US stays in its slap-happy credit-creation smoke-and-mirrors mode too much longer. Heck, $0.04 on the dollar might end up being a pretty good deal.

You see, at some point, if they finally lose the last shread of their already-dangling confidence in our ability to pay them back in meaningful currency, they may just decide to take the two-trillion-dollar hit and "mail back the keys." If the Chinese economy grows large enough and oil is priced in terms of a "basket of currencies" rather than the dollar alone, that two trillion will start shrinking rapidly in real value, and at some point it would make strong economic sense (especially for a centrally planned, forward-looking economy that thinks in decades rather than "makin' it until next quarter's bonus") to simply dump the dollar and take the hit. Sure, they'd have lost a big chunk of their reserves, and it would hurt, but if they do it fast and hard enough and are the first out the door, they'll loose less than they would by holding. I've heard heroin withdrawal is very painful, but if you can make a go of it you're probably better off in the long run.

[edit on 10/6/09 by silent thunder]