What an ugly market

Wow was this an ugly week for the stock market.  I'm a little pissed at myself for not taking some profits in a couple of stocks when I had the chance.  But that is another regret for another day.  On Thursday the market started off bad and kept getting worse.  We are watching it go down while we're working and I'm looking at my stocks and they're all down.  Even the gold stocks were getting hit pretty good.  And two others that had been doing pretty well were really down big.  At lunch the Dow is down 300 points and it's not looking good. 

When I got back to my desk after lunch the market had actually come back some with the Dow down around 270 but as the rest of the afternoon wore on it just kept getting worse and worse.  As it got close to market close at 4 the losses accelerated as the Dow went down 350, then 400, then 450.  About 10 minutes before 4pm it hit 500.  I looked at some of my stocks and saw how far down they were.  When I saw how low some were I decided it was time to step in and buy some shares.  So I spent a few thousand and bought shares of Banco Santander, Brigus Gold, Thompson Creek Metals, and New York Community Bank.  I can't see any of them getting too much lower at this point though the way the market fell, it also wouldn't surprise me all that much if one (or more) of them fell further by 20-30% either.  I don't think the problems in the economy are over and the downgrade by S&P on US debt isn't gonna help. 

In thinking about it, I'm a little surprised by the downgrade by S&P.  Not that US debt shouldn't be downgraded at some point.  I mean come on, we've just agreed to increase the national debt by TWO TRILLION DOLLARS!!!  $2,000,000,000,000.00.  Thats a lot of zeros.  If you're gonna spend that much money, why not let all the major Wall St. investment banks fail, let AIG go down the tubes, and hand every man, woman, and child 15K instead.  I guarantee that would have stimulated the economy better than QE1, QE2 and (I'll bet we see QE3 soon).  And while Wachovia, Bank of America, Bear Stearns, Lehman Bros, Merrill Lynch (hopefully Goldman Sachs as well) went under, the regional banks, the smaller home town banks, and the companies that make things for everyone would have boomed.  That also might have allowed so many of the folks who were having mortgage and debt troubles to pay their way out of it too.  Of course let's not be too blind either, some would have used it wisely and paid down debt but the vast majority of those who got in trouble by taking out loans for more than they could pay off would have probably bought a boat or a new car instead of taking care of business.  Which would have helped the economy at least.

Sorry to get side tracked there.  What I was gonna say is the reason I was surprised S&P had the balls to downgrade the US debt is because I think they could still be on the hook for looking the other way when all of the bad mortgage debt was being graded as AAA and taking the money from the creators of these mortgage backed securities while rating them AAA.  No one has ever been charged with any wrong doing there and obviously there was conflict of interest in place.  If the government suddenly comes out and says something like "we must investigate how these bonds were misrated", S&P execs might be on the hook for criminal charges.  So go ahead and embarass the Obama administration, I'm sure no one will sic the Justice Department on you.  It could be just the opportunity for the Obamessiah to remind the sheeple that he's a different cat.   He better do something soon, the only reason he might get re-elected is because the Republican candidates are almost as lame as he is.  His understanding of what it is to be an American is completely skewed to say the least and I don't trust him to run a local post office, never mind the entire government.

Apparently my buying spree was enough to turn the markets around on Friday.  That and an employment report that was better than expected, though not so much better as to create a full blown rally on Friday.  As I said earlier, I still expect there to be more down days, maybe not like Thursday but based on some other things I read, it looks like the economy is slowing pretty hard.  A lot of companies are expressing doubts about earnings for the rest of the year.  They are also unhappy about the uncertain future regarding taxes and the upcoming institution of the mandatory medical care lunacy that was passed last year.  One of the reasons a lot of companies didn't do much hiring over the past year is because the future looks so uncertain to them.  So a number of companies reported record earnings over the past year or 2 but didn't do much hiring because they were afraid of what the future might bring.  3 of the 4 stocks I bought were up, one up nicely.  But after this weekend's downgrade by the S&P I'm figuring the market is gonna take another dump on Monday.

If it doesn't, I'm going to get out of a couple of stocks that have run pretty well for me, hold on to my gold stocks, and other than that just sit on good dividend paying stocks at a good price.  Oh and sell a couple of dogs too.  Stocks, not animals.  Well no poker other than a little online this weekend.  Time to wrap this up.  Hope everyone has a good weekend.  Stay lucky you nuts.