Joan Veon - October 13, 2008

Transferring wealth through the myth of buying and holding an investment

When I was a college student, I had a gall bladder attack late in the evening and went to the Emergency Room. There a good looking intern became my temporary doctor. Not only did he check me out, but he called in 3 or 4 of his colleagues to also check me out. It was not until 10 years ago, that I realized I had been severely violated in the name of medicine by four young men looking for fun during their shift.

The American people have just been severely violated in the name of the 2008 Credit Crisis. In the arena of investing, the concept of “buying and holding” a security has been gold. The idea being that the “market always comes back.” However, the problem is that you have to wait for the market to come back which may take years and you might break even. Last Friday one of the business channels interviewed a financial expert said that buy and hold was best. How could she even think that when stocks dropped 18% for the week? And the month before, they dropped 20%. Friday, October 10, saw a new historic high and low in intraday market swings totaling over 1000 points. Maybe if we use inflation, it is equal to the October 1987 market crash of 500 points. However, both the market and you and I are in new territory. For those of us who did not live during the Great Depression, this is new.

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Tags: Economic Collapse

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 18th, 2008 at 12:47 am and is filed under Economy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.