The market has been down around 5% each day for the last 4 days. Another 16 days like this and many people will lose all of their savings. 100%. It is a very sad situation.

2000 points, in how many days was that?

Close at 8579, 2000 more like 2500. Down 678 today alone. Yikes.

Since the miraculous save the world 700B bailout was passed on Friday:
Open on Oct 3: 10,483.96
Close on Oct 8: 8,579.19

Loss of 1904.77 or 18.1%

Sorry, I was thinking more about delusional days when the market was around 11,500 to 12,000

34% since last year at the same spot.

TSX also down a lot.

Just curious. How much of the money has been lent to banks so far?

I'm optimistic that instead of a multiyear market plunge that we were likely going to have, we're just getting it all out of the way in a few weeks. As the bad news comes over the next few weeks with earnings, this drop should have anticipated it all. See, I'm an optimist!

A nice market holiday would also cool some heads. The panic is frenzied at the moment. 500 point sell-off in an hour? Idjits.

Also, Howard will be back from his Honeymoon soon. That will help.

Dude.

5% a day for twenty days means everything is at 0. Zeeeeee Row. You don't make that back over the next few years. All of society crumbles. If this doesn't reverse we have 16 days plus weekends before it is all gone.

I agree. I think the market will level out around 7500

I couldn't predict a bottom. I just hope we get to it soon!

I was going to invest a good amount into my SEP IRA tomorrow. So you're saying I should wait?

Do whatever you want. I'm no financial expert and the 7500 figure was just a rough guess. For all I know it could rebound tomorrow and jump back over 10k as fast as it's fallen. Or it could plummet even more

Thank you.

You're welcome. But you don't need my permission what to do with your money. I don't work for the gubmint

Seems to be a lot of anger on this forum .The bright spot is PORK futures are up

I wonder if a lot of this buyoff is by people up in years cashing in their 401ks because they think they better do it now or never see them as high again.

I mean why would stock in Honda go down? Does anyone seriously think that company won't grow in the future?

I think thats a very good observation and accurate , it will take many years for the market to recover to its highest levels if ever in our time.

"The Markets" tend to take a shorter-term view of corporate success. Honda's down because if people can't get car loans, people don't buy cars. That's probably going to be true over a 2-3 year time frame...which is actually very long-term for the stock market. Most of what you hear about corporations doesn't look out past 3-4 quarters in the future.

There's other reasons, too...maybe it's just that no one's buying (since there's little cash or credit available), so normal selling pressure has nothing to absorb it. Maybe funds have to liquidate because people are readjusting their 401k's away from stocks to money markets (that's highly likely, in fact). Part of it, in Honda's case, is that auto sales are cyclical to begin with - someone who buys a car now isn't likely to again for another 5 years or so, so with the glut of new car sales in the past few years, the entire industry is due for a down-turn. Mostly, though..."the market" has an attention span of a ferret on crystal meth.

I so hope you are right about that 2-3 year time frame. I've run into a bit of debt I want to pay off but was hoping to buy up some cheap stock for long term and Honda was my main target, along with China Mobile. Cell phones in China are a good bet for growth I'd think.

Don't ignore your debt. If you can afford to do both. I try to get people to not focus too much on one goal with the exclusion of all others.

I'm just worried the panic will end before I can grab up these cheap stocks! I'm hoping to have everything undercontrol by January so I can at least have $1,000 to play with in stocks.

Start a soup kitchen ,you will make your money on volume

My wife and I are planning to test drive a CRV in the next couple of weeks, so I might be able to help you out with a purchase.

I'm thinking about investing in a Fridgader cardboard box., I heard they make great houses.

Ford is down to $2.00 a share! Can you believe that? There's no way they're going to go under, is there? This looks like a value buy. Kind of like the airlines after 911. Ford can't stay that low for too long or Toyota will snatch them up.

Good Times!

Don't worry...once The Messiah is elected the free lunches begin! Woo-Hoo!!!

I think the Dow will be drop to 5,000 or a little under that.

I have two thoughts:

1. Part of me thinks that Wall Street is just a bunch of spoiled brats, like Dave Ramsey says. Wall Street reacts just for the sake of reacting. Common sense is never a part of the market. It's overreact everytime.

Wall Street did this in the late 90s in the dot.com boom and I think they're doing it again, but instead of going up it's going down. Wall Street is hanging on every "bleeping" word out of someone's mouth. I think they should just invest in a company and not worry about someone's mouth running. So I think it also could rebound really fast, like it's a "false crash".

2. Part of me also thinks this is real and it really should have happened in the 90s, but it didn't. Now we will suffer dire consequences because of the delay with bigger losses mounting.

And I also think college educated people are to blame. For some stupid reason, college educated people act like they're the only ones who deserve to make a good wage, salary, etc etc. And educated managers cut labor costs down to nothing. Cut, cut, cut. Downsize, downsize, cut, cut. "The company needs to get lean".

The economy tanks, interest rates fall to prop it up. There are not enough people with money to buy a house. So they push sub prime loans and ARM's and the whole economy goes under.

Some really smart educated people out there. Didn't Henry Ford say he paid his workers $5 a day so they could buy a car?

That makes sense to me.

Tomorrow will be interesting too. The cds contracts on Lehman will be settled. A few bloggers have speculated this is what has the market on edge. Very likely a couple more institutions are taken down because of the losses here.