There was an interesting comment thread on the Seeking Alpha version of yesterday's post about Paul Farrell.A couple of people noted that even if the market is a "rigged game" you can still do well while a couple of people noted that the fact that the market is rigged (in their opinion) will bite us all eventually.
One reader noted that there is no way to "beat Wall Street." Rigged or not beating anyone is not the reason most people participate in the market, at least I hope not. To repeat, the goal of stock market investing should be that it can help you have enough money when you need it occasional downturns of varying magnitudes notwithstanding.
Creditwritedowns had a guest post by Niels Jensen of Absolute Return Partners. I believe it was a letter to that firm's clients. The post was titled Retirement Lottery and opened up with the belief that that most people have about 20 years to save for retirement. Many people get started saving in a meaningful way around 40 giving them about 20 years to build up what they can. He goes on to say that a bad ten years makes the job very difficult and a bad 20 years makes it impossible.
What he says rings true to a point but only if the context is in the way people have previously planned for what retirement used to be--perhaps this is his point and it was lost on me. There will obviously be many many what now articles about retirement and maybe they will be useful or maybe not and while some folks will indeed get by retiring at 65 to play golf everyday this will not happen for anywhere near as many people as it used to.
People have to come up with their own solutions but as I have blogged countless times that I think the easiest way to do this is reduce overhead, find some sort of work that is fun and that can relieve some of the burden of the portfolio and get religion about living withing ones means.
Short post today.
6 comments:
I had scanned Farrell's article and didn't see this gem at the end until late yesterday:
"In fact, it's highly doubtful that you, your portfolio, your family or your America will make it past 2012, let alone into that comfortable retirement you may be planning for 2020."
Well, good for a laugh I guess.
Roger,
on cnbc there is this article about baby boomers and retirement: http://www.cnbc.com/id/34941404
jeff from milan, italy
Short, but sweet. Living within one's means with multiple income streams is the ticket.
T
Roger,
if you can permit me to leave a message to MikeC and the rest of the gang.
Back in june- july correction I had noticed that perhaps there was going to be an extension to this equal to the same amount of points from 666 to 956 S&P. So I calculated that perhaps it was going to S&P 1166. We went to 1150. At 1150 when everyone was bullish and ramping I wrote a post that the market looked toppy. We had a 10% correction to 1045 and here we are. Everyone is realizing that we are having better economic data out there. So this think can go to S&P 1228-1330, if we do not correct further from this level. I think that we are at a fair value. When we went down to 1045 some indicators still went up, and these indicators are leading and important. So RW and SEG are correct. This is only a 10% correction and perhaps we will reach new highs from the march low. After this inflection point 128-1330 we should be correcting and it could be very bad correction, at least 30% if not 50%, which will brig us back to the march low.
The housing problems will be with us for many years to come, maybe for another 2 to 3 years.
Best,
Jeff from Milan Italy
5/3/2010
sorry 1228-1330
Jeff, From Milan, Italy
@ jeff from milan; 1166 is as good as 1150 in my book - just 1.4% out. I think the housing problems will be with us a bit longer than 2-3 years though, and we're in for 5 or 6 years of chopping between the S&P 700s and 1300s.
This will give me more opportunities to cheaply add decently-managed companies and funds to my pension pot, with some cash savings I've been accumulating these last 3 years of living within my means.
Not trying to time the market though, just drip-feeding. I will be working for a good 20+ years yet and you gotta be innit to winnit, eh?
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