DOW tanks

[aztecstargazer]

That had to hurt. The dow jones here in the USA just tanked over 1000 points today. This is exactly why I refuse to invest into a 401k or IRA. I am going to be honest, I held my cash in my trading account with the hope that this was only a short term correction. This doesn't appear to be the case. If you look at the faces of the people on the floor of the NYSE, there isn't a sense of calm nor a feeling like they aren't worried. It looks exactly like the opposite. They look like deer in the head lights. 

There are a lot of people who are comparing this to how the 2008 collapse began. In fact, today's drop is bigger than Friday's drop. We have had a historic drop, and in less than a week, a bigger drop occurs. I don't know if anyone has read "gold and silver" by Mike Maloney, but this is exactly what he predicts in his book. That this market would absorb a ton of the QE currency and inflate like crazy. Then people would knee jerk transfer into bonds. 

I don't know why, but when I heard the "experts" on the big financial news channels saying that it was the bond yields that were attracting investors away from the stock market; I heard the "twilight zone" theme song. 

I don't like to blindly follow what "experts" say, Mike Maloney and others like him are no exception. I actually was tempted to buy short term T-bills or something. But there is something about my mentality that doesn't like being out of control. I don't even have a cell phone contract. 

But I also know the danger of going "ALL-IN" with any investment. I also don't feel comfortable with my strategy of utilizing FOREX markets, as I don't know enough about it yet. Any suggestions for an investment vehicle would be appreciated. Art, trading-cards, toys, etc. The more obscure the better.

[FlorinCollector]

Looking recently there can be money made in both yu-gi-oh cards and pokemon. You can get them graded by psa. Might take a good bit of knowledge to start making a bit. There are probably more cards that are worth money to. I looked at all my old yu-gi-oh cards and some worth a few quid but sadly mine r well used. 

Recently i bought a full box of 20th anniversary pokemon cards and have kept them sealed under my bed for the future.

i also bought some star wars lego including the millenium falcon. Lego has seen some good returns over the years but hard to store a lot of it. 

Hope that gives a bit of help to spark an idea mate

[vand]

I agree, this does feel very similar to January 2008 to me. I remember that month very well - we had just clawed back the drops from late summer 2007, and then we had some more large sudden drops, yet everyone was still so very complacent because they expected the market to act as it had umpteen times  before, claw back the losses and then go on to make new highs.

Well, that is not what happened. Suddenly the market started to drop, and instead of being bought back up it rallied a bit.. but then sold off even harder. I remember having some discussions with not-at-all stupid people that we were now entering a bear market, and they wouldn't even entertain the thought, believing that everything was still great with the economy. I told them "that's not how it works.. the market is a leading indicator" but they just wouldn't hear it.

The sense of complacency around is very similar to what it was back then. People aren't scared anymore because stocks have gone up so much... they resort to the straw-man argument that you can buy at any price so long as you are prepared to sit tight and hold through any dips - maybe that is true, but that doesn't mean that there won't be far better opportunities just around the corner.

 

BTW, if they think that 2.8% bond yields are a problem, then they ain't seen anything yet.

 

If you think there is a lot of risk in many markets then stay heavily in cash and bide your time. I would not get involved in collectibles unless I developed a genuine interest in them.

[sixgun]

The market went parabolic in January. The market is now at the level it was in the last week of November 2017.

An all out crash could still be prevented but a long period of consolidation is needed - several years of consolidation. We need a two-way market, not this ridiculous one-way movement.

This was all entirely predictable and was predicted by me and others on the forum.

The Kinesis cryptocurrency went on pre-sale to a select group of investors this week. As far as i am aware it will start trading at the beginning of March. The physical markets are highly stressed and assuming the coin gets traction which i expect it will explode the physical markets and cause a reset in price. How the rest of the markets react to this i can only guess at but i am led to believe there are many $100's of billions of underwater derivative positions in gold which have the potential to upset the house of cards.

[HawkHybrid]

I think it's safer to go part gold part cash. gold went down

in 2008 before it rose. peter schiff says this time it could be

a dollar/bonds problem.

 

HH

[Scuzzle]

Seems to be a lot of people sitting in cash waiting to see which way this is going to go but I don't think this is the big one, in fact I'm going to go for a return to record high after record high.  I think there will be a lot of people gone bankrupt betting against VIX volatility though, lot of young guys will never have experienced volatility such has been the success of the high frequency trading computers.  If I had to invest I would go half in Skynet and half outside.

It's interesting what you say about trading cards, I think thats why the young embrace cryptos so easily as they never had trading cards, they had digital rewards from their video games etc so they are used to having their rewards as digital rather than physical.