Juggling Dynamite

Good piece (thanks Attila) on the negative results ‘enjoyed’ by investors over the past 12 years since this secular bear began.  To wit:

“I heard a Wall Street executive this morning expressing puzzlement as to why investors have been pulling money out of stock mutual funds for several years and continue to do so “missing out on this tremendous rally when they should have been getting back in.”

Well, pal, that’s just the problem. How can they be getting back in if you never told them when to get out? They’ve stayed in until they can’t stand the pain anymore.

This has been a tremendous rally, and tremendous bull market since the low in 2009 only for market-timers.

But the vast majority of investors have their money in their IRA’s and 401K’s and independently in managed mutual funds, and pay only casual and glancing attention to the market.

They have trusted long-time Wall Street’s advice that the market can’t be timed, and they need to simply buy what they are sold and hold through whatever comes along “because the market always comes back.”

For them, it has not been a tremendous time. Even if their ‘diversified’ portfolios matched the benchmark S&P 500 index, especially after fees, they have been losing money for 12 years, not even adjusting for the additional loss from 12 years of inflation…”

Read the whole piece here.

Danielle was a guest today with Phil Mackesy on Talk Digital Network talking about this week’s developments in global markets and the economy. Here is a link to the audio clip.

Here is the direct link to Part 2. This is a very dramatic story, but I don’t buy the idea that the government had no choice but to save the banksters.  We, the people, need to cut them free of the public purse.  The whole economy will breathe a sigh of relief once we get out from under their greed and tyranny.

Watch Money, Power and Wall Street: Part Two on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.