Friday, March 14, 2008

Market just pissing it all away

No surprise here. No news still would've moved the Dow Jones and Nasdaq down, but the Fed bailout of Bear Stearns ... the road is so crooked, nobody can see straight. CNBC says two days ago, Bear Stearns insisted that there were no liquidity problems. And yet, today, they accept a bailout and the market goes haywire, down 2%. Nasdaq is down 61 points.

The very thing that annoys me to no end — people borrowing and spending beyond their limits — is what has put our economy under enormous, severe pressure on several fronts. Many of us can't pay for our homes anymore. Many of us are in major credit debt. China basically owns our ass. And that gets worse with the dollar falling off a cliff. Even the Japanese have us by the nuggets now that the dollar is worth only ¥99.

Is anything in the green today? Barely.

• Blue Nile is up a fraction, but at 40, it has been destroyed since hitting a high of 100 last year
• Ninetowns Internet (NINE) is up 2.3% to 2.23, but is down from its all-time high of 7.20
• China Medical is up fractionally to 40
• Dick's Sporting Goods is up 2.5% to 26.66
• Gamestop is up 2.4% to 48.31
• Boeing is up 1.3% to 75.17
• Healthways is up almost 1% to 32.73

But those are far and few in between. The vast majority of the market is deep in a red sea. Commodities had been steady until today's selloff. Gold hit $1,009 per ounce. IShares Silver Trust (SLV) is up a bit to 204.86. Global silver supply will dry up within a decade, supposedly. That reminds me of the talk that phosphorus supply will evaporate within 50 years, and will hit the fertilizer sector in a bad way. It's only fitting that "liquid gold" may become a source of phosphorus some day. Quite gross, but in the realm of possibility.

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