Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Stock Market Has 2nd Biggest Rally in 4 months: Day Traders Ecstatic

It was nice to learn today that the Dow had its biggest one day rally since April 1 rising 331 points. This is good news I said and quickly chided myself for not being a day trader. So much money to be made, so little knowledge of the process. Why don’t I know these things? I could be out there making money. These last 4 months of triple digit run ups and run downs would not be complete without another milestone to add fumes to the fire. The Dow is now 11,615 points, this is fantastic! At this rate, the Dow will reach the highs that it had back in 2000. For all the pomp and circumstance, we are where we were 8 years ago. In fact, if we subtract fees, losses and taxes paid, we haven’t made any money since then. But, that’s alright; we shouldn’t ruin the spirit of these breakneck days.

Today was a great day because the Federal Reserve, concerned about inflation and a weakening economy, kept the key interest rate the same, making it still beneficial to borrow cheap money, if you can get your hands on it. Those of us with HELOCs should be elated; we get to keep our rock bottom rates! The banks, Wall Street financial firms, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac get to keep their federally funded deals too. They all have access to the fed discount window, borrowing unlimited funds at 2%. How is it that we can’t get any of those deals? I’m going to have to look into this. Also, to make matters better, oil fell a few more dollars and now is only twice as much a barrel as it was last August.

It really is hard to enjoy these dog days of summer with all of this drama on Wall Street. With the government propping up the financial institutions, the housing market, and the credit markets, it is good to see Wall Street taking this all to heart and rallying in the face of fiscal calamity. America will be saved after all and I hope to be right there with them. The economic realities that cautioned the fed to keep interest rates the same and caused the price of oil to drop means that things are going to be OK. The market is rallying on fumes despite the economic realities so don’t try to understand it or apply any logic. Go with the flow, get your money in and get more money out on a daily basis. It’s like Vegas, we just have to learn a different set of rules. Now that things are really looking up, I plan to stop worrying about all of this not making sense and run with the bulls. Now, if only someone can teach me how

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