It's very quiet here

In the area where I live, which is populated by quite a large concentration of retired affluent "boomers," there are some similar interesting indications of the state of the market. One is the number of newspaper ads of people offering "financial advice." Another is the number of "seminars" or similar "informational" events to teach people about economic conditions and investment choices. For some reason, those events always seem to end with recommendations to buy certain loaded mutual funds.

I am pretty sure if you did a count of such things, the numbers would be highly correlated with some market index. When the market is up, the newspaper ads and seminars are up, and when the market is down, the experts who once were so willing to offer free advice and recommendations are nowhere to be found. Of course, there is a lag in those numbers too.

For many older people,the stock market crash of '2008marked the end of their investing careers, and similarly eliminated many financial and estate planning options. That could explain some drop off in traffic.

i

when the market is down, the

===A lot of the "experts" are beneficiaries of a one-time correct call. Others always have the same agenda claiming the market is going straight up while other always predict disaster. Remember Jim Dines, the "original goldbug" who later became the "original internet bug?" And there was Joe Granville whose "Staight up' prediction was followed by a "sell everything" call that was followed by a market crash for which he was widely blamed.

A one-time correct call could occur purely by chance. If you make two correct calls in a row, you get to start a newsletter. When you make three correct calls in a row, you get to write and publish a whole book on how to invest.

ROFLMAO :-) Very good!

I've been quiet because I made my targetted purchases a few months ago. So I'm sitting on my front porch sipping mint juleps with my hound ... just watching the willows' shadows rock back and forth over the green grass.

I presume that comes under the heading of a buy-and-hold strategy. Never sell until the last willow has died and the last blade of grass has disappeared. I like it.

Excellent information. Although newsgroups, blogs and other specific forms of communication come and go, the whole concept of the internet and its effect on the way people interact and acquire information will surely remain and expand. Transformations in how investors, large and small, learn about opportunities, how financial products are bought and sold, how exchanges and regulatory agencies operate, and so on, are inevitable.

In general, I prefer usenet. However, the trend is not encouraging.

While I follow this group, I also follow the "Boglehead's" forum. It's pretty lively. Their forum has the usual web forum interface, which I don't like that much. That is, it will tell you which threads have new posts and allow you mark them read (if you're registered), but clicking a thread will bring you the whole thing (or a piece if large). Then you have sort of navigate your way down to the last message you read.

I don't think I've seen a web forum that would take you to the next new message, or even mark read ones in some useful fashion. As a software guy, it kind of annoys me because it shouldn't be that difficult.

Brian

Most forums let you access via RSS, which can give you a "most recent first" ordered list of all posts. It can even be smart enough to exclude or mark ones already read... all without logging on. If you bookmark it on a firefox toolbar, it is incredibly easy to scan multiple forums without doing any clicks - just a mouseover. Other browsers can be much less RSS convenient. Oh, some forums have non-RSS ways of retrieving posts by most recent.

But the RSS daddy of them all when it comes to being economically aware must be

- I can't believe theygive it away for free when subscriptions run into the $hundreds. Someforums or news sources have no explicit RSS link, but only show aclickable RSS symbol (sometimes in your browsers webpage addressfield).

======================================= MODERATOR'S COMMENT: Posters are requested to direct their comments to financial planning.

Ok, thanks. I'll pursue it outside this newsgroup.

Brian

AT&T's recent shut-down of its usenet servers hasn't helped, a few of us have them as ISP. I'm finally checking in via Google (which some of you will remember as Deja News in those ancient days of the Internet) but it's not quite the same - there's some appeal to the basic-ness of usenet.

For anyone interested in an outlet for web based discussions (spam alert!) I've been doing some consulting since late last year for a new personal finance site backed by a large nonprofit. It isn't quite ready for prime time but aims to mix articles and other content with online tools, discussions and comments - a lot of Web 2.0 stuff. If anyone is interested in checking it out, send me an email and I'll send you a pointer to sign up with the next batch of beta users (you can use borekfm at pacbell dot net). I think there's a great mix of people and opinions here on MIFP and the site would benefit tremendously from your participation. Again, with the caveat that it's still in development at this point and will be evolving in the coming months.

Sorry for the spam - first in 10 years! And again, the site is nonprofit-funded which to me is a big plus.

-Tad

Yes, please send me that link. Thanks.

Don

There are a few free news services that you might look into. is one. I use the inexpensive service as mine. It has the advantage of providing excellent spam filtering at the server.

Brian

For decades I have bought individual stock positions and mutual funds with an eye to around half of it potentially disappearing, just like the Great Depression, but with some faith that for the long run, stocks would be my best bet. If a person cannot handle losing half or so, then no they should not buy stocks in any form. I personally am still of the mind that half of a lot of money is still a lot of money.

Since about 2004, I have not held a job but rather relied on income from my portfolio. I have had several thousand dollars in the last five years of unexpected expenses for minor medical ailments. Mostly the Dentist Cometh, despite pretty good teeth. I computed the worth of my house, stock and CD portfolio in 2004 and what it was yesterday. I am down about 3.4% from 2004. This is not per annum; this is yesterday's worth over the 2004 worth. I was a Washington Mutual owner but I had some nice capital gains over this period from individual stock picks, so the damage seems pretty minimal. Granted one can throw in inflation and it is not as rosy. Then we had better throw in that I have not had to work the last five years, either.

I do not know that we have turned a corner. Employment numbers are still awful, at around 10%. No job, no money to buy goods and services or pay for ever-increasing health care, and the mighty engine that is the American economy will seize and shut down. The extent of government borrowing to pay for this or that stimulus program is troubling. I do not know that these stimulus programs are good for the long run. A little more pain via laissez faire might be better. There is still much madness out there by our financial institutions. What Goldman Sachs and other institutions are doing, gaming the stock market via instantaneous order tracking, is troubling. I think we could still easily go into a Great Depression. My income from dividends and interest is down, so I am dipping into principal now whereas two years ago I was not. I remain a stock investor but I am watching my expenses more closely than ever.

Still, I am buoyed a little by being down only 3.4% since 2004.

Many ISPs have dropped usenet. The big one a few years ago was AOL (no great loss of clients) and most recently AT&T. Althought there are free browser services like Google Groups, some people dont seem to like to use it.

Much of the chattig has moved over to social networks. When I've looked I havent seen much serious stuff there.

It's the worst newsreading system I've seen.

There are several free news services that are decent. The one I use is low-cost and excellent for text-only access.

Brian