What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?..........
I am not an investor. And what’s more I have only the slightest understanding of things financial. But as an outside this whole market thing looks way too much like the housing bubble! Prices going up, despite the lack of solid news that would warrant such increases.
IMHO.
I have been dividing the DJIA by the US Dollar Index. From the period of October 2009 to February 2010, the ratio was fairly stable, implying that the DJIA was driven by the value of the dollar. The ratio has been increasing since mid March, suggesting the true value of the DJIA is increasing, albeit slightly.
Investors have yet to believe in DJIA growth and in economic growth, so volume is very light.
Stocks are up because of profits...profits are up because of this (how long can you sustain a recovery at the expense of the “average joe”...I think sooner or later it’ll catch up to these companies):
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63E2VK20100415?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&rpc=22&sp=true
Fortune 500 shed record 821,000 jobs in 2009
Phil Wahba
NEW YORK
Thu, Mar 18 2010NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Fortune 500 largest U.S. companies slashed a record 821,000 jobs last year, even as their collective profit soared more than three-fold to $391 billion, according to the business magazine, which issued the annual ranking on Thursday.
The companies suffered an 8.7 percent drop in 2009 sales as the recession, the sharpest decline since 1983, took its toll and spared few industries last year, but the cost cutting, including the job cuts, more than offset that.
The media and “experts” insist on touting these market increases as proof the resession is over, even though the markets ate not the be-all, end-all indicator of economic health they would have us believe. This reminds me of the late ‘90s under Clinton, when we were told how great and wonderful the economy was, while large companies were going out of business or being chased out of the US due to increasing costs (especially tazes and union wages/pensions), unemployment was slowly going up and the masses all seemed to have increasingly less money in our pockets to spend.
Artificial gains like that one and this one are unsustainable for very long.
More unemployed on the way...stocks are rising...because they are letting employee’s go.