My wife’s family (in Germany) had an old aunt before WWII that didn’t trust banks. During the thirties when inflation was in the thousand percentiles, she buried her cash in her backyard. For safekeeping.

When the new Reich government issued new money, requiring citizens to trade the old money in for the new, she was distrustful and failed to do so. When the family found out, her entire fortune, worth a considerable amount before the exchange, was worthless.

Riches to rags in a heartbeat.

rwahrens wrote:

I hope your mattress is giving you a good interest rate – and doesn’t go on any looong vacations, at your expense!!

Yes, those mattresses can be mighty untrustworthy sometimes.

Peace,
Gene

I hope your mattress is giving you a good interest rate – and doesn’t go on any looong vacations, at your expense!!

@ rwahrens:

If I had money to burn, I’d probably put it under the mattress nowadays.

Peace,
Gene

Robin, you’ve got a point. Confidence is the basic stuff of which the stock market is composed. Without it, we’ve got what we have today, which is a freefall.

But, Gene, my point is that this market may be a real dog, but it isn’t going away. (If it does, we’d all be better off buying flour in bulk and guns and ammo instead of stock!) But it won’t, this too will pass.

And when it does, those that bought at or near the bottom half of that market will profit, at least IF they buy with the intent to stay the course and hold what they buy.

No, this market is NOT for the faint of heart or the day trader – unless you’ve got a lot of money to burn. But if you want to buy some stock in a company with a solid performance history, that you can be sure will be there at the end of this bad turn of economic events, Apple, with $20 billion (with a B) in the bank, is a good bet to buy and hold.

Several analysts have noted them as a good opportunity already.

Maybe a simplistic point of view, and a lack of grasp of the US stock market, but I still fundamentally struggle to understand why anyone conceptually thinks that (most) US companies stock price has any real fundamental basis in the performance of the company.

Look at it from this point of view. As I understand it, APPL dont pay dividends. The basic concept behind stocks was originally to provide comparmentalised ownership of a company, in order to raise capital to invest in the business. The return on the risk of buying stock in that company was to receive dividends (ie a profit share if the business grew as a result of the capital it raised). Stock then became a tradable item, based on potential returns as a result of company performance.

Now basically, since the company doesnt provide an actual return on the stock to the shareholder, it appears that the only thing that is actually affecting stock value is market confidence. Confidence in both the market, and whether an indvidual believes the stock will rise further. In other words, basically a house of cards that has no grounding in actual reality, and purely feeds on the confidence of the market itself. Oh, and of course, whether Steve Jobs possibly had a heartattack this week. Its this lack of grounding in tangebility that causes the stock to be so volatile.

Just my 10c (love inflation).

I have to tell you that I don’t disagree necessarily, but I would be inclined to avoid buying anyone’s stock right now.

Peace,
Gene

I cannot disagree with much of what you said. Makes a lot of sense.

I can’t help but think that AAPL’s performance in the markets is due to a mixture of deliberate manipulation and relatively ignorant investors doing what they do best – panic on bad news and being skeptical on good.

I am not by any means an expert on finances – much less the stock markets. But I own 9 shares of AAPL, two of them bought last week. That decision is based upon a long personal history of using, supporting and actively hawking Apple products to anybody that’ll listen – and to many that wouldn’t!! I remain a bull on AAPL and the company too – their products are too good, and their performance in the market (the computer market, not the stock market) is too consistently phenomenal NOT to own Apple stock.

Last night, my wife and I made the decision that we are going to cut loose some more savings to buy more AAPL, should the stock drop again – and maybe even if it doesn’t.

THAT is based upon my experience that the stock market WILL go back up – and I am an investor for the long haul, not a trader!