Brokers: they’re sales, and the good ones will tell you so with a broad smile. Remember Merrill’s emails proudly dumping stock on customers. The field is not level, was not level, and will not be level; why anyone would expect otherwise confounds me. Of course commodities are the exception, wanna try leveled. Interestingly Wall Street is doing their thing in Naked Shorts; ever wanted to know who runs the Treasury or the Bank of NY. By the way those Ivy League Supply Side educations don’t work in the cold. Few months ago Goldman closed a real estate hedge fund because everybody had the same algorithm. Gosh folks do we think we got something new? Hell, all this prosaic silliness was done with tulip bulbs. Admittedly we’ve globalized sales. Ah, back to sales: that ain’t a bonus, it’s my commission.

you go w/: “investing is ownership of companies I believe in, and I trust my fund managers to do the same.”

seems fine to me, though, if you’d be so kind, pray tell, which co.s and or ‘fund mgr.s’ fit that bill?

as an aside, and LSS: “The Capt. that went DOWn with his ship, never did lead his Navy to victory.”

My house was somehow worth half a million, if I wanted to buy a bigger house and pay an even higher mortgage, or cash out and pay rent? Yes, I could have done so, but hey, then I would have been more broke, or renting. I still own the house I bought 25 years ago, I write off the mortgage I do pay, which is our only major tax break. Our 401K money is money we either invested or payed in taxes. I laughed at the statements when we became millionaires, I don’t bother looking at them now as what’s the point.

All of you who trafe the markets, fine and dandy, but I can go to Vegas to gamble. To me, investing is ownership of companies I believe in, and I trust my fund manager sto do the same. Right now, there’s not a lot to believe in, so yeah, selling prices are low. So what? If I still believe in those companies, or my fund managers do and haven’t traded them, they are still worth as much as they were worth before. As more bargains come into play, hopefully I’ll come to own those as well, and eventually if things go well, I’ll own a lot of very good stocks and they’ll go back up. If things don’t eventually go well, we’re all screwed anyway.

Trade away, have fun with your long and short position and gambling if you like. I prefer to spend my time and money and efforts to work on building a new future for my kids and (perhaps one day) grandkids. If that gives you reason to insult me and the others who like me still hope we have a chance, oh well, I don’t really care. Continue to gamble away our future, or pull out to cash or whatever. For all the good that does any of us.Somebody still has to believe, somehow, in the future of this country and its businesses. I guess that is just Warren and me. Oh well.

Later in the week, perhaps after more selling. At this point, very bad employment numbers are more or less priced in, so anything less than an awful NFP would likely trigger some buying. It has happened before in this bear.

Remember that Johnny B calls a rally every day… wonder how his buy of C worked out?
Leftback only calls the rallies at highly strategic intervals.