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Why did the stock market post its biggest plunge following a presidential election? We all are suppose to deny the truth, right? I mean, this is Obama-World where things are different and we live in make-believe, right? It is the Politically Correct world of liberal media from here on isn't it? The latest is that Barack Obama tries to stimulate growth even though the reports on jobs "caused" the market to record its historical biggest plunge. What a guy. BTW, what did he do to "stimulate growth?" I can't believe he isn't even president yet and he is already at work. I just love it!!! The EXCUSES start the day after he is elected. Here is the signature paragraph making excuses on Bloomberg. "The stock market posted its biggest plunge following a presidential election as reports on jobs and service industries stoked concern the economy will worsen even as President-elect Barack Obama tries to stimulate growth." I don't know about you, but Obama is really trying. If McCain was elected, he wouldn't even be trying now... but look at Obama! What a change! Of course people will eventually start puking in their mouth once they tire of the liberal press new PC correct attitude and become street smart and will simply look at this plunge as the markets lack of confidence of the Obama election. It can be termed nothing more by honest people. What is funny is that "ADP Employer Services" isn't even the index followed for unemployment. It was today, because they had to have an excuse why the market took the dive. Those of us who "have" played the stock market, know the truth, and I'm betting it will take months before the naive gets smart enough to question the liberal media. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a4dQtLxVSHEY&refer=home ======== Nope... not profit taking. ======== Hey Sophisticated_Suga, if our school system did better you would be able to read my post and see that Bloomberg said "even as President-elect Barack Obama tries to stimulate growth," not me. Must be an ADHD thing with you.

ARE U A BULL OR A BEAR? WHAT TIME FRAME OF THE YEAR DO YOU THINK WE WILL BE IN A BULL MARKET? I THINK THE DOW WON'T BE ABOVE 9,500 TILL MID 2010, TILL THEN IT WILL STAY VOLATILE FOR MANY REASONS THAT ARE LISTED BELOW................. October: This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August and February. ~Mark Twain While there is much to celebrate this year, we find little cause for joy when looking at the financial markets. While many pundits have predicted that the final closing low in the bear market was reached on November 20th, we at Hurricane Capital Global Alpha Fund still believe there will be more red than green in the stock market in 2009. However, during every major bear market since World War II, the time to buy stocks was after a 30-50% decline in the S&P 500. So one may ask why we would recommend something different this time around. In the spirit of Christmas, we present twelve reasons why there is more downside to the stock market in 2009. 1. Valuation: Historically the price to earnings ratio (P/E) and price to book ratio (P/B) of a stock or index is considered cheap when trading at less than ten to one and one to one respectively. Stocks in the US bottomed with at a P/E of 7 in July 1982. During the Great Depression, Benjamin Graham wrote about how many of the greatest US companies would be worth more if liquidated for the cash on their balance sheets than kept. These stocks were trading below their net current assets. According to Bloomberg, the Russell 3000, which incorporates 98% of the market cap of us stocks, has a trailing P/E of 24.64 and a P/B of 1.68. Despite the massive drop that occurred in 2008, it would be tough to characterize the market as cheap from a historical perspective. 2. Housing Prices Crashing: The latest monthly reading of the Case-Shiller home price index from October 2008 showed a drop of 18.04% year over year, the largest drop on record. Amazingly, the drop in home prices is still accelerating two years into the decline. We are not going to find a bottom in the market until the pace of decline slows significantly. The massive tailwind the US consumer had been receiving from equity extractions has officially ended. 3. Debt Destruction: American consumers doubled household debt this decade while incomes stagnated. Consumers adding a trillion dollars in debt ever year on average for the first 7 years of the decade. Two trillion in consumer credit lines may be pulled in 2009, and home equity extractions are done for the foreseeable future. Another way to look at this is consumers would have a trillion dollar pullback in spending from 2007 levels if debt stops expanding. Debt destruction, which we believe is going to occur, means purchases would have to decline by over a trillion dollars. This would mark the first significant destruction of debt in the US since the 1930s. Growth of household debt to GDP did not start increasing again, until after World War II, over a decade later. 4. More Writedowns: We have another trillion or so of losses to take in the commercial real estate, jumbo mortgage, prime mortgage, leveraged loans, asset backed, corporate bond and credit default swap markets. This is assuming subprime and Alt-A are now priced correctly. On second thought, considering the debt destruction process, it could be more like 1.5 trillion. 5. US Corporate Earnings Collapse: Corporate earnings estimates are way too high. The consumer is dead due to the debt destruction, and there is another trillion (give or take) in losses yet to be realized across the financial sector. Almost all earnings growth in the first half of 2008 came from oil, basic materials and technology. Pricing has collapsed in all three areas. We have not yet seen the price collapse reflected in the EPS of companies in these industries. We will see it in 2009. Be wary of people touting cheap stocks based on future earnings. Trailing twelve month earnings on the S&P are $44.91 a share. The average analyst estimate on Bloomberg for the S&P 500 is currently $71.69 per share for 2009. There is absolutely no way companies will earn more in 2009 than in 2008. None. 6. Corporate Credit: Credit spreads are at levels where companies cannot fund themselves and survive. This is if companies can roll their debt at all. Much of the lending during the last 5 years was never meant to be paid back. Spreads on CCC bonds hit 40% in December. There are loan sharks who charge better rates than this. The debt markets are still closed for virtually everything high yield. 7. 12.5% Underemployment: And rising fast. 8. No Savings: The savings rate was under 2% from 2005-2007. Interest rates were low, and lots of spare money was funneled into the stock market. It always goes up if you buy and hold. Right? This was conventional thinking anyway. Many people now need this money to live on. This means

Is it good to invest in Africa, probably in Ghana? Ghana's `Forgotten' Stock Market Beats World Equities (Update1) By Janice Kew and Emily Bowers Oct. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Vendors hawking handbags and fruit along downtown Accra's Liberia Road are busier than the traders five stories upstairs on the Ghana Stock Exchange. An offshore-oil discovery, rising commodity prices and government spending on roads and other projects drove the market to a 63 percent gain this year, making it the world's best- performing bourse. Then volume on the market fell to 23,875 shares daily over the last four weeks, a 20th of the average for the past six months. This left investors unable to flee even as stocks in nearby Nigeria declined 44 percent since March 5. On some days, almost no shares have changed hands in the Cedi House Building. ``It's hard to call it a stock market because of the liquidity levels,'' said Don Elefson, an emerging-markets specialist at Harding Loevner Management in Somerville, New Jersey. ``Ghana's a little market that gets forgotten.'' The path of Ghana's All-Share Index diverged from the Merrill Lynch African Lions Index on March 5, climbing 54 percent as the broader measure of bourses started a 60 percent plunge. ``Ghana missed out on the initial Africa bull run and is now playing catch-up,'' said Cape Town-based Roelof Horne, who helps manage $1 billion in Investec's Africa Fund and Pan-Africa Fund. Stock-market development in the country of 22.5 million, sandwiched between Togo and Ivory Coast, has trailed neighbors such as Nigeria. The Lagos exchange has 219 listed companies and a valuation of about 10 trillion naira ($80 billion) as of September, compared with Accra's 34 listed companies worth 18.1 billion cedis ($15.5 billion). Ghana's All-Share Index today lost 0.1 percent to 10,788.29, while Nigeria's benchmark tumbled 3.5 percent. Electronic Trading Unlike Nigeria, Ghana doesn't have electronic trading, according to the market's Web site. Traders scribble bid and asking prices on whiteboards. That's forecast to change before the end of the year, according to the exchange's general manager, Ekow Afedzie. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aR0aUBdXVtfM&refer=home Please be analytical, best answer will be posted on blog. Please also base your answer by analyzing the article!

what is the macroeconomic issue from this article.Central Bankers Urge Governments to Throw Economic Lifeline.? Aug. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Central bankers gathered at an annual retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, this weekend had a message for political leaders: monetary policy alone can’t keep the global expansion going. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke urged adoption of “good, proactive housing policies” to reverse the depressed U.S. real estate market and warned lawmakers to avoid steps that may hurt short-term growth. Ewald Nowotny of the European Central Bank Governing Council said euro-area governments should expand the powers of their regional bailout fund. “Most of the economic policies that support robust economic growth in the long run are outside the province of the central bank,” Bernanke said at the annual conference of policy makers and economists, sponsored by the Kansas City Fed. The call to arms ended a month in which the Fed and the ECB raced to shield their economies from fiscal tightening and strengthen a world economy that is losing momentum. Reports this week may underscore the challenges faced by policy makers: U.S. payroll growth probably slowed in August, and confidence in Europe’s economy fell to its lowest since April 2010, economists forecast. Fed policy makers will meet for two days in September instead of one so they can discuss options for spurring growth. Warning of a “dangerous new phase” for the world economy, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde told the forum that risks have been aggravated by “a growing sense that policy makers do not have the conviction, or simply are not willing, to take the decisions that are needed.” ‘Twin Perils’ “Fiscal policy must navigate between the twin perils of losing credibility and undercutting recovery,” said Lagarde, who took the helm of the IMF in July. Bernanke told the conference that the U.S. central bank still has a “range of tools” it could use to help the economy if needed, although he stopped short of signaling that the Fed would embark on a third round of government bond buying. European stocks rose as investors awaited a report that may show U.S. consumer spending gained. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index, which last week dropped to near the cheapest valuation in more than two years, advanced 0.7 percent to 227.12 at 8:40 a.m. in London. Asian shares and U.S. index futures climbed. The U.K market is closed for a holiday today. The Fed pledged on Aug. 9 to keep its main interest rate at a record low near zero through at least mid-2013. The ECB is taking the lead in combating a sovereign debt crisis approaching its third year by buying Spanish and Italian bonds. ‘Only Game in Town’ “It’s a difficult burden central banks are carrying because of the constraints of fiscal policy,” Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial Holdings Inc., said in an interview in Jackson Hole. “The Fed and other central banks realize they are the only game in town.” The policy makers met for three days to discuss ways to bolster long-term economic performance. They gathered as banks from UBS AG to Citigroup Inc. cut their forecasts for global expansion and predicted the Fed, ECB and Bank of Japan will keep benchmark interest rates at or near record lows through 2012. Recession Odds Harvard University Professor Martin Feldstein, who attended the conference, told Bloomberg Television there are “better than even” odds of another U.S. recession, while Stanford University’s John Taylor called it a “recovery in name only.” Allen Sinai, president of Decision Economics, said the chance of a global slump is 30 percent. The dilemma for policy makers is that four years to the month since the start of the global credit crisis they have fewer remedies to aid the faltering expansion. Government budget deficits are high and interest rates are already at or near record lows. A paper presented at the conference by economists from the Bank for International Settlements concluded that governments start to impair economic growth when their debts reach about 80 percent to 100 percent of gross domestic product, levels now witnessed in all of the Group of Seven countries. Kansas City Fed President Thomas Hoenig told Bloomberg Television that there is a limit to how much more the Fed can help the economy, saying, “we can’t do it all.” Recovery ‘Fragility’ Standard & Poor’s downgraded the U.S. credit rating this month, even as U.S. politicians agreed Aug. 2 to slice the nation’s deficit by $2.4 trillion over 10 years.