Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Dow Hurst's avatar

This is one of the best descriptions I’ve read that pinpoints where we are. I keep reading other analyses that say buy the dip, or we are in for a rocky road until the Fed moderates. That is optimism that hasn’t been surgically removed by Mr. Market. Once everyone is saying, “all hope is lost, sell sell sell!” Only then is it the time to possibly buy. I just noticed that the Case Schiller home price index is rolling over with last summer’s data. It is a very laggy piece of data. Zillow has shown my house dropping from an insane price since summer. Nothing has value until someone assigns a price to it. I always thought my house was overpriced since I purchased in 2004. It almost doubled by last summer. As this everything bubble implodes, I wouldn’t be surprised if if drops below the original value I paid.

Expand full comment
Alan Eade's avatar

From Bill: “Two years after the trend was already in motion, 10-year US Treasury bonds, still regarded as “certificates of guaranteed confiscation,” were trading with a yield of 14% (it later went to 0.6%).”

How I remember those days! A newly minted broker in Baltimore, I was urged by a senior colleague to call everyone I knew and offer them the long bond, then yielding about 15%. Not a single taker! The typical response was “Get back to me when it goes a few percent higher.” After all, the hometown company T. Rowe Price was then crediting 16% in its money-market fund. Little did it avail me to remind my sales prospects that the long bond is not callable. I did manage to get my best local friend to buy some shorter-dated zero-coupon bonds (seven to ten years out) for his pension fund. The discount was so substantial he didn’t need to commit more than a small percentage of the pension account to make a killing. Over the years, I needed to remind him, more than once, of that early “brilliant idea” of mine when some other products I later installed for his account eventually defined mediocre down.

Expand full comment
10 more comments...

No posts