Just checking bloomberg and dow futures are +350. Just how long should I hold out. Maybe its time for a little irrational exsuberence myself. Someone who knows please point me in a general direction. THANKS IN ADVANCE.

-- feelingreedy (whattodo@myhouse.com), January 08, 2000

Answers

Every mania ends in a sudden collapse. This current Wall Street mayhem will break all records. If you feel very lucky, get in now, and then get out very fast before it's too late! Good luck!

-- dinosaur (dinosaur@williams-net.com), January 08, 2000.

I have one word for you. DIVERSIFY.

-- (I'm@pol.ly), January 08, 2000.

Had the word 'paradigm' even been coined in 1929? If so, did they develope a 'new' one, as we have?

Here's my take: Alan Greenspan has said two things that stick out for me:

"99% is not enough. The code must be 100% correct." <---highly paraphrased.

DJ at 6500, couple years ago: "Irrational exuberance."

-- lisa (lisa@work.now), January 08, 2000.

The dow will trend down for the next month. Don't get in on the index until March.

-- Just John (John@theBaptist.net), January 08, 2000.

Check out the free daily commentary on the market at www.dingdingding.com. We do expect a short term rally but the risk of collapse is the highest it has been since 1920s. Ok to buy in if you are a day trader with your finger on the trigger.

-- Ron Sellar (y2kbook@telusplanet.net), January 08, 2000.

Don't do it man, buy gold. Dow bad, gold good. Gold will go through roof, dow will only be for sows. Gold is Bold, Dow is Not Wow!. Gold not to be Sold, Dow is worth less than Cows. Gold is want you want to Hold, Dow is to dump Now. Gold is wow, Dow is Mold. The Dow won't feed your family after rollover, but GOLD WILL.

-- Golden Oldie (gold@bugs.here), January 08, 2000.

You might look into holding some put options, such as on OEX (S&P 100 Index). Which option series to consider buying would depend on the loss threshold beyond which you'd want protection, in other words, you'd want the intrinsic value of the option to start to grow rapidly once that threshold was reached. On the flip side, you'd need to consider the amount you'd be willing to lose on the option itself, if it expired worthless.

-- David L (bumpkin@dnet.net), January 08, 2000.

Dude, I'd wait til asia opens up on Sunday. Not sure who you're trading with today?

-- Gordon (g_gecko_69@hotmail.com), January 08, 2000.

Be VERRY CAREFUL! I've been an active trader since '91 in the futures market and even though I'm no market expert, nor am I well heeled due to my trading, I do know a few things about technical analysis.

The DOW charts have been becoming increasing VERTICAL in their price increase the last several years. No longer is it slow and easy going. We are talking GIANT STEPS upward. It is a perfect analogy if you imagine how a mountain becomes more steep the higher you climb.

Of course, markets cannot perpetually go in one direction only, especially when the market momentum hits a frenzied pace, like now. We will probably see some amazing gains in the coming days with the DOW just skyrocketing to unbelievable heights. But what we are seeing is a "blowoff top". This little phenomenon is a TREND CHANGER. I've seen it a million times. In the end, the prices will come down as hard or harder as they went up. Remember the Hunt Bros. and cornering the Silver market? That was a fine example of frenzied buying and collapse.

My trading recommendations is to BUY the big company stocks until the end of January and then SELL LIKE HELL! Remember, the FOMC meeting in Feb. 1 to decide if they want to raise interest rates. Greenspan, if he sees a skyrocketing stock market, WILL slow things down, I assure you.

Buy now, sell by the end of January. Big companies only. No techs.

-- OnlyPigsGoToTheSlaughter (logikos@logikos.net), January 09, 2000.

My investment club sold out in July '99 and wound up 40% for the year. Still, I had to explain how that still wasn't good enough.....sold MOT, MOLX, CSCO.....which eventually ended up migh higher than where we sold. WHEN will this thing finally end???? What will cause this to TOP OUT???

My prediction?? Not 25 basis points.....or even 50 basis points.

Will have to be TOTALLY unexpected event.

Will be a massive CAlifornia earthquake!!

Any other ideas??

-- JJ (J_Martin_10405@Hotmail.com), January 09, 2000.

What stocks do you think are the most stable, that will weather market's volatility (sp?) the best, please? I'm wondering which companies have the best trained workforce, best cohesion and know-how to survive whatever will come-what-may. Any ideas, please?

-- Deb M. (vmcclell@columbus.rr.com), January 09, 2000.

Everything changed on Friday. Did you see it? Rally was very broad based. This has not happened for many months. Correction is over. Money on the sidelines is coming in full force. In my opinion the market is overvalued but will not correct until a recession hits, which is highly unlikely now. Rest of the world is starting to recover and grow again. Market ignored Friday's economic data which suggested some increase in inflation threat. Economic data means nothing anymore, only GDP growth and earnings growth matters now. Market will shrug off interest rate hikes unless they go up 1-2 percent. Nasdaq is funded by venture capital which is not affected much by interest rates. Greenspan will only increment rates by 1/4 point at a time anyway. Forget about February Fed meeting, this will be the best month of the year for stocks.

If you are leary of risk, buy the big stocks: GE, IBM, PG, C. GE doesn't lie about its earnings reports. IBM is a strong tech stock selling at a discount due to passing Y2K spending patterns. Proctor and Gamble will benefit from foreign exposure and growth of world economy. Citigroup is a world-wide financial powerhouse (bank) and will benefit from recent banking deregulation.

-- Rooster (rooster1230@netzero.net), January 10, 2000.

Rooster -

A Japanese recession did not "pop the bubble" in the Nikkei back in 1991. On the contrary, it was the land and stock market collapse that caused their recession (which they are STILL digging out of).

F rom the "Japan Information Access Project"

...Indeed, at some point, probably in late 1986 or 1987, the asset inflation process appeared to become a speculative bubble with little restraint either from financial institutions or the regulatory authorities. Expectations of asset price increases fed upon themselves and price/dividend and price/rent ratios increasingly deviated from fundamental values until the crash in the early 1990s.

Speculators during the asset inflation typically thought that even though the "levels" of stock and land prices were abnormally high and would eventually fall, further investment was warranted as long as other investors thought prices would continue to rise. Many felt that they would be among the first to sell their asset holdings, realizing large capital gains, when the market started to fall. This kind of behavior has been variously characterized as stochastic bubbles, herd instincts, momentum trading, and bandwagon behavior.

Burst of the Bubble, 1990-95

Asset prices declined rapidly in the 1990-1991 period. The Nikkei 225 stock price index reached its 38,915 peak on the last business day of 1989, and then tumbled. By October 1, 1990, the Nikkei stood barely above 20,000declining almost 50 percent in nine months. The Nikkei 225 index fell below 15,000 by summer 1992, and only broke the 20,000 point again in early 1996. Land prices began to fall in late 1991 and, by 1995, prices were frequently only half of their peak values. At that time, the typical land price was similar to that prevailing 10 years earlier...

Catch the magnitude of that decline? Roughly equivalent to DJIA going to 6000 and NASDAQ down to 2000 in just nine months. I saw a really fascinating comment recently from James Cramer of TheStreet.com, who's a hedge fund manager (and frankly is made of far sterner stuff than yours truly.) He's not at all happy with the volatility in this market. The market makers aren't maintaining any semblance of order. More and more stocks are trading in a huge range, which makes no sense at all.

Systems that become unstable are not good for anyone.

-- DeeEmBee (macbeth1@pacbell.net), January 10, 2000.

I don't think Japan collapse has enough similiarities to be useful as a predictor of the US market. Japanese stocks were trading at valuations 3x or more of what we have in the broader market right now. We don't have anything near their real estate bubble. Secretive accounting standards and asset disclosure hid the problems in Japan Inc., ours is much more open. Yes, certain sectors of stocks are way ahead of themselves now, but this has always been the case in healthy bull markets. When the tech stocks correct, money will rotate into other securities. The internet stocks only comprise a small percentage of the whole market. The techs go through this boom and bust cycle every few years but they have provided the best long term returns to patient investors.

When the Dow triples from where its at now with no corresponding earnings increase, and real estate goes up 10x, then its time to buy gold or whatever.

-- Rooster (rooster1230@netzero.net), January 11, 2000.