What do you think of the current economic crisis ?

Even after the passing of the bailout plan and the co-ordinated rate cut across all the central banks, the bleeding hasnt stopped. Do you think we are seeing the worst or is it yet to come ?

Are we heading for a great depression ? The intial signs do look similar to the 1929 great depression.

12 Comments:

  1. Leena,
    Your crystall ball doesn’t say anything in this situation :).

  2. My crystal ball says – I told you so …;)

  3. What 10 stocks will you buy in this current economic crisis???

  4. I wouldnt buy anything in this market unless I’m day trading :-). It gets worse before it gets better. Not sure why GLD was down today.

  5. Find companies with solid earnings and which you believe will have solid growth going forward. Easier said than done. 🙂 🙂 Let us know if anyone finds any !!!

  6. My suggestion is to look for companies with P/E 10 before this carnage.

    Some examples are AA, DOW and GE…These industrail stocks will come back eventually and you will be happy and rich 🙂

  7. Leena or anyone has stopped their 401K contribution doe to this current Financial contribution??? I dont think so….But I may be wrong?

  8. 401k contribution reduces the tax bracket so i am not sure if you should stop that. If you think that market has more than 10-20% downside left from this point, then maybe you should put the money in the moneymarket i guess for the next 6 months or so. I know that one of the money market funds went below $1 but I don’t think its going to happen to every money market fund. And Even if your particular mm fund goes below the $1 mark, 3-5% drop is less than peanuts compared to 30-50% drops that we are seeing otherwise.

    If things don’t go too much down the hill beyond what is being expected at this point and the expectation being that we will be in a recession for the next 2 quarters and max maybe 3, then I think based on what economists are predicting the property prices would stabilize around middle of next year. And keeping both of these into account, my gut feeling is that, middle of next year would be probably a good time to start going long on things. Until that time you can get burnt if you try to catch the rock bottom and so should stay out.

    I think that keeping an eye on what the economists are predicting, is a good idea. (NOT the analysts). I believe that Economists (with PhDs) from stanford, harvard and other such universities are the best people to listen to for general macro economic direction. There are 2 main reasons for this view of mine. First, I think that their models are much more reliable in terms of predicting things at macro economic level and more importantly because they don’t have vested interest in their commentary (unlike the analysts) other than loosing or gaining their credibility. An nobel prize winning economist is most likely not going to be commenting with a motivation of earning a few thousands or even few hundred $s.

    Ofcourse thats just my view 🙂

  9. I was skeptical about the market from the beginning of the year, so I directed all NEW money in my 401k to a money market fund. Ofcourse like Manish said its possible the fund may break the buck, but atleast that’s better than the double digit drop. But I haven’t stopped contributing to my 401K.
    Acc to an article in WSJ, we are in a secular bear market and the last one lasted from 1968 to 1982. So I am quite hesistant to invest in this market altogether.
    I’m just furious that everyone’s getting hit because of this credit crisis and there is no end in sight. And I suspect that the next 6-9 months will bring a lot of layoffs as well.

  10. If you want to invest now (i mean maybe early next year – I guess March-April time frame) and have a 1-2 time frame, I think genomics based companies maybe a good idea. Read this article…………

    http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/21466/

  11. Another one :). I also think that if things settle down by middle of next year and if price of oil is back to the 60s and if there is no evidence of increased supply (due to some major oil finding or something – which is unlikely) then investing in oil for a 2 year investment time frame might be a good idea. I won’t go into reasons for this right now and leave it for maybe some time later but just some food for thought. I know its sounds crazy to talk about +ve uptrends at this point but its certain that things will turn around, its just the question of when. My main point i guess here is that it makes lot of sense especially now to think strategic (read it as “NOT short term”) in terms of investments because I feel that this is the best way to make money in the stock market. Tactical investment strategies are very tough mainly because thats not our day job. I know that its common wisdom but just a reminder to myself and others. I am going to stop blabbering now i guess 🙂

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