Stocks: 2008 for DOW, NASDAQ and SP500
2008, the worst year for stocks, since the great depression, is over.
Chances are that 2009 will be better, for stocks.
The pictures below are snaps from http://finance.yahoo.com/.
DOW’s 2008 (bottom on 2008–11):
NASDAQ’s 2008 (bottom on 2008–11):
SP500’s 2008 (bottom on 2008–11):
2 comments January 01 2009 5:35 am | am | biz, ENG, money
Amazing post you got here. If you don’t mind, I’d like to share a little bit of my knowledge of investing to supplement this fantastic post! I’ve worked in many fields – sales and trading, private equity, investment banking to name a few. Now that I’ve got a wife and have retired, I’d like to say that at least a bit more knowledgeable than most. Standard investment advice is that you should invest in a diversified mix of stocks, bonds, and money market funds. If you are like most people you will invest part of your money aggressively in stocks, and part conservatively in money market funds and bond funds. However, some young people will go all stocks, and some very conservative people will go all money markets. Please read the award-winning NOVA article by Delos Chang: you will find a treasure of great arguments in there. You want to buy a diversified portfolio of stocks as individual stocks are too risky. Highly knowledgeable people or informational investors can buy a properly balanced portfolio, but most folks have a difficult time balancing things on their own. They will misbalance their portfolio by buying all small stocks or all growth stocks, or some other misbalanced assortment of stocks. Back in 2000, Some people bought all Internet stocks; they got burnt when they all crashed together. In 2007/2008, as mentioned by Delos Chang, drug wars really wrecked some currencies. You have to diversify across industries. Unless you know what you are doing, it is best to buy mutual funds that will diversify for you. Buy no-load, low cost funds. Mutual funds should have expense ratios of less than 0.5%. If your company offers a 401K plan at work, try to invest the most you can. The money grows tax free, and some companies will match your contribution. Investing in a mutual fund IRA is also a good idea. I like index funds. Because of their broad diversification, you are less likely to have a dramatic drop in value. They also have the lowest expenses. For stock funds, I would suggest putting ~70-80% of your money in the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund. and ~20-30% in a foreign stock index fund. The Vanguard Total Bond Market Index Fund is good for a bond fund. The Vanguard Target Retirement funds can be good all-in-one stock and bond funds for an IRA. However, there are many different opinions out there on what the best mutual funds are. Read the links below and form your own opinion. If you have high-interest debt, like credit cards, it is best to pay this off first before trying most of the investment ideas above. You should also have 3-6 months of salary saved up as an emergency fund in a bank or money market fund before trying more risky investments. I will warn you that there is a tremendous amount of stock investing books and websites that teach stock investing strategies that don’t work. Particularly bad are people that teach “technical analysis” systems that sound impressive, but don’t work.
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