Lately it seems the stock market has been more like a despair-market than anything else. It’s hard to look at your investments and see that things are dropping. I hear it from my folks all the time. “Do you know how much my 401k has dropped?”
So far today as of this writing it seems we are holding tight. After a 7% increase in the DOW yesterday, most felt that historically speaking we would just drop another 7% today. There is nothing wrong with optimism lets just hope it all stays up there.
Of course if you have nothing in the market then all of this means very little to you. I like to use it as a barometric indicator on how emotionally people feel about the economy. I find that when there is a sell off there tends to be people not willing to buy retail goods. At least in my own town. I went to Northpark Center one night and noticed a ton of people but very few bags in hand. Then the market took an upswing and the human to bag-in-hand ratio went up significantly. There is in fact a certain psychology to how people buy. Having people tell the public that its doom and gloom sure does not help.
Well, lets hope we are moving forward in a growth pattern!