Thursday, January 01, 2009
What a Crap Year....For Most!
Happy New Year!!
I have been away with the family for the festive period so apologies for the lack of posts last week.
Anyway most normal investors will be saying good riddance to 2008...the worst year ever for the markets.
Wednesday saw the last trading session of the year. The Dow gained 108.00 points to close at 8,776.39. The SPX added 12.61 points to finish the year at 903.25.
The major market indices did see their best year-end rally ever with the Dow and SPX gaining about 3.5 percent the last two sessions of the year alone. However, these gains barely put a dent in the huge losses seen in the major markets in 2008. For the year, the Dow fell 33.84 percent and the SPX was down 38.49 percent. In short both indices experienced their largest losses since 1931.
And just to put it into perspective only two stocks in the Dow gained ground in 2008; Wal-Mart (WMT) and McDonald’s (MCD). Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) was the next best performer and it lost 10 percent!!!
On the year, GM was the worst Dow performer, losing 87 percent with Citigroup (C) off 77 percent. And if we went back to July, no one would have believed that by the end of the year crude prices would be trading near $44 a barrel when the commodity hit $147!! Crude rallied 14 percent Wednesday, but still gave up 54 percent in 2008.
And our favourite metal Gold was up about 6% for the year.
What was also clear was that the economy fell into a recession in 2008, led by the bursting of the housing bubble. Unfortunately, the jobs market followed suit and has become a major problem. Jobless claims for the week ending Dec. 27 fell sharply, down 94,000 to a level of 492,000. Nonetheless, continuing claims remain near a 26 year high and the feeling is that nonfarm payrolls will continue to show large losses in the months to come.
The major fear indices have come well off their recent highs, showing that traders are becoming more optimistic. What with Obama taking office and his promised further stimulus should also help sentiment, but most economists agree that there are still a lot of problems to get through before a recovery will develop.
As for us we had a good year considering we only traded over half the year ......we are up well over 45% so that makes us better than most!!
I'll be posting more about what I see next year will bring this week.
We are looking for plays from next week.
Until next time.
I have been away with the family for the festive period so apologies for the lack of posts last week.
Anyway most normal investors will be saying good riddance to 2008...the worst year ever for the markets.
Wednesday saw the last trading session of the year. The Dow gained 108.00 points to close at 8,776.39. The SPX added 12.61 points to finish the year at 903.25.
The major market indices did see their best year-end rally ever with the Dow and SPX gaining about 3.5 percent the last two sessions of the year alone. However, these gains barely put a dent in the huge losses seen in the major markets in 2008. For the year, the Dow fell 33.84 percent and the SPX was down 38.49 percent. In short both indices experienced their largest losses since 1931.
And just to put it into perspective only two stocks in the Dow gained ground in 2008; Wal-Mart (WMT) and McDonald’s (MCD). Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) was the next best performer and it lost 10 percent!!!
On the year, GM was the worst Dow performer, losing 87 percent with Citigroup (C) off 77 percent. And if we went back to July, no one would have believed that by the end of the year crude prices would be trading near $44 a barrel when the commodity hit $147!! Crude rallied 14 percent Wednesday, but still gave up 54 percent in 2008.
And our favourite metal Gold was up about 6% for the year.
What was also clear was that the economy fell into a recession in 2008, led by the bursting of the housing bubble. Unfortunately, the jobs market followed suit and has become a major problem. Jobless claims for the week ending Dec. 27 fell sharply, down 94,000 to a level of 492,000. Nonetheless, continuing claims remain near a 26 year high and the feeling is that nonfarm payrolls will continue to show large losses in the months to come.
The major fear indices have come well off their recent highs, showing that traders are becoming more optimistic. What with Obama taking office and his promised further stimulus should also help sentiment, but most economists agree that there are still a lot of problems to get through before a recovery will develop.
As for us we had a good year considering we only traded over half the year ......we are up well over 45% so that makes us better than most!!
I'll be posting more about what I see next year will bring this week.
We are looking for plays from next week.
Until next time.
# posted by Paul @ 2:31 PM 
