The high for the Dow was 14,164 recorded on October 9, 2007. Since then, we’ve seen a vicious bear market take over as the credit crisis unfolded and the housing market tanked. 17 months to the day later, on March 9, 2009, the Dow reached a new low at 6,547. That’s a 53% drop in the value of the index!
A few weeks ago, my wife and I got away for the weekend and left the kids with grandparents. We ended up at one of her favorite clothing stores and I sat on the bench while she looked. When she finally emerged from the retailer, she looked half happy, half disappointed. Happy she had gotten what she wanted, but disappointed that she had to pay full price for it because it wasn’t on sale. She rarely buys things that aren’t on sale, and if it weren’t for some birthday money, she probably wouldn’t have bought it.
Well, today, I can’t predict that the market has bottomed, or that we’re anywhere close to being on our way to recovery. But I can, with certainty, tell you there’s a fire-sale on a ton of well-managed, profitable companies that are trading at half of what they were just over a year and a half ago.
Ignore the naysayers, ignore the fear-mongering media…I am here to tell you that America is not going out of business! We are hard at work researching the markets to exploit the number of opportunities this crisis has created. If a person had some extra discretionary income, I would recommend dollar-cost averaging into the market. Stocks are on sale, so why waste a good crisis?
~Tony
