The market seems to be selling-off on the back of limited bad news imo, apart from the dollar that is.

If you can hold your nerve and apart from any short term requirements to offload poor performing stocks, I have a couple!!, my advice would be sit tight. This does not have the feel of the tech(mining!) bubble at all. Difference being there are a lot of good fundamentals, unlike in 2000 when there were a lot of over rated nothing companies.

i thought the question was are we in a bear market?

It is. ;-)

Currently our world runs on borrowings against house prices. Today's headline reads "Foreclosures jump 93 percent in July".

Does anyone really believe this will not affect future earnings? Hell, Wal-Mart, Macy's, etc have all downgraded guidance for the rest of this year.

NEW YORK (AP) - Shares of mortgage lenders climbed Tuesday on prospects for a Federal Reserve interest-rate cut and the possibility that Countrywide Financial Corp. could attract a buyout.

Mortgage lenders' stocks have fluctuated dramatically in the past few months and the ones that are not bankrupt still trade near multiyear lows.

The rest of the market has hardly leapt on this!!!!!

very happy to see a peaceful day on Wall Street with just a modest sell-off at the end, rather as expected

trading volumes very light in new york - seems like everybody is waiting

just been watching senator Dodd , seems they want to bail out everybody. shorts not a good idea this week

There is the BOJ decision first.............if the BOJ does not raise rates it will be very bullish.

You would expect the Fed at some to to lower rates, to allow us to get out of the summer months and into earnings figures in September with a bit of a rebound, then the natural dynamics will take over again imv.

having had the Fed cavalry ride to the rescue , it looks like the US indices are going to jump back above the uptrend line

apart from loking at L2 data prior to opening, what is the best place to look at stocks futures for LSE (e.g for tomorow?)

igmarkets.com

Flag - which way?

though of course 20/20 hindsight shows that to be true, (A) no one at the time could possibly know when the bottom had been hit, and (B) there were plenty of buying opportunities to take advantage of rallies, or (C) there were plenty of shorting opportunities to take advantage of dips ...... and the same applied during the long bull run from 2003

Just had a Marketwatch Bulletin into the Inbox. The headline reads:

Fed accepts mortgages as collateral in lending $7 billion to banks via 14-day repo
This just gets better and better. The indebted US government now takes on the debt of a bunch of dumb bankers who got in way over their heads in order to prevent a banking collapse, if I translate that correctly. Basically the Fed will do anything to prevent the bust happening sooner rather than later ................. it's gonna happen IMO.

And the highs of 2000 were on the back of a load of dotcoms that had no substance, no real assets, and (as it turned out) no real prospects.

Our current peaks are based on companies with a lot more financial strength, solid prospects, etc, etc, etc

So no real comparison, e t.

Our current peaks are very much on the back of private equity buyers and hedge funds up to thier eyes in debt pushing the market higher, whilst the Fed, at least for the time being, bails out the dickheads who gave them the money in the first place.

;-)))

here here

$14 billion today, md. That'll make a holw in their pocket. Now who's going to buy up that debt? Vicious spiral IMO

US Fed adds 7 bln usd to markets in second move, daily total 14 bln usd UPDATE
AFX


WASHINGTON (Thomson Financial) - The Federal Reserve added another 7 bln usd to the money markets in its second operation Thursday, bringing the total daily liquidity injection to 14 bln usd.

The New York Fed's open market operations desk accepted 1.057 bln usd in Treasuries, 3.00 bln usd in agency debt and 2.943 bln usd in mortgage-backed securities as collateral.

The second operation was for 12-day repurchase agreements. The first was for 14-day repurchase agreements.