[Wait a minute ! ! !
DonDiego thought talking about the stock market and investing is "political". arshaleign [AKA forkush] said so. And DonDiego's thread of two days ago addressing the 2013 Investing Outlook is long gone.
Ahh, . . . well, . . . perhaps things have changed.]
DonDiego is pleased to report the DOW Jones Industrial Average closed at 14,009.79 ! Whoopee !
Nonetheless, DonDiego counsels against irrational exuberance.
DonDiego commiserates with Roulette Man's discomfort over an increase in jobs reported along with an increase in unemployment. It's not that difficult to understand; something to do with the Labor Force Participation Rate LFPR] which has something to do with the number of folks who'd normally be counted as unemployed . . . except that they dropped out of the labor force altogether, . . . and maybe now some are coming back. Or something. (Incidently the LFPR for December 2012 was 63.6%; the LFPR has not been as low as 63.6% since 1981, the year President Ronald Reagan took over from President Jimmy Carter.)
DonDiego also tends to agree with surf87 that a major contributor to the DJIA rising is the Fed policy of keeping bond interest rates low, . . . thereby, encouraging investment elsewhere, like stocks. The stated reason for keeping interest rates low is to encourage lending, but banks remain somewhat reluctant to do so.That's the main reason DonDiego remains mostly invested - although he did sell 8% of his stocks this week.
Supporting surf87's concerns is Mr. Kyle Bass who also spoke on CNBC today: "Zimbabwe's stock market was the best performer this decade - but your entire portfolio now buys you 3 eggs."
[In February 2006, Mr. Bass became convinced that there was a residential real-estate bubble in the United States and was one of the few investors to successfully predict and benefit from the subprime mortgage crisis. Notwithstanding the common opinion that no one saw the 2008 crisis coming, Mr. Bass did.]
Around the middle of January DonDiego actually bought stock in a Canadian silver miner; it's up about 19% since then. Whoopee !
DonDiego remains over 75% invested in stocks and intends to ride along, . . . pr'bly cutting back bit-by-bit, . . . until he gets really, really nervous or there's some drastic event which changes everything. (n.b. On 15 February a sizable asteroid will pass within 18,000 miles or so of Earth. That could change everything, 'specially if it gets a mite closer to Appalachia.)
DonDiego sez: "Good Luck !"
