Thursday, August 07, 2008

300-Point DOW Gains = Bear Market?

This is a very interesting story that I have picked up from the Big Picture blog (go here). According to the Big Picture, “Merrill Lynch's David Rosenberg was on CNBC this morning, discussing the current Bear Market. He noted that this was the sixth 300 point rally (referring to the Tuesday rally) to occur since September 2007 (markets peaked the next month) -- a period of time which can only be described as a Bear Market… Even more intriguing, he observed that EVERY 300 point DJIA rally has occurred ONLY during bear markets… During the 2000 to 2002 bear market, the DJIA had 15 days where it gained more than 300 points… During the 2002 to 2007 bull market, the DJIA had no days where it gained more than 300 points.

That's so counter-intuitive that most people would find it very hard to believe. Before you jump to the wrong conclusion, you should be aware that sharp sell-off is also a frequent occurrence in a bear market. See the table below.

4 comments:

Remnant 888 said...

I saw a friend who bought into an O&G second board counter SAAG which rose about 18 percent, from 42sen to 47sen.
Crude goes down, this counter goes up..? Mind-blogging..
Are penny stock like this worth investing/trading..?
Appreciate your thoughts on this.

Alex Lu said...

Penny stocks are worth checking out, but don't put too much faith in them. The chance of a big strike is low, but you would be well-rewarded if you picked the right stocks. For that to happen, you need to work really hard & you need a bit of luck. You must not forget those picks that did not work out & the losses that you would suffer from them. So, investing in penny stocks is like panning for gold in the stream. Somebody, somewhere would get lucky once in a while, but it's never your turn.

Remnant 888 said...

Thanks for your thoughts...
1. It's too much hard work to pan for gold in the wrong stream.
Even in the right stream, I'm not experienced enough to even pick a good spot(just started looking into stock market 5 months ago).
2. I don't mind hard work but probability of a strike is too low. Looks like the risk/loss > reward/gain.
3. I did what some call 'catching a falling knife' act and made some losses on IOICorp when it came from RM7 to RM6. #1: it looks cheap. #2: i held too long, believing it could rebound but it fell more; it's now valued at RM5.
What could help me in preventing such flawed reasoning.?
Learn TA charting? Learn to read more blogs? Read more trading experiences from who, where ah?
Avenue where remisiers, traders, investors share their victories, failures?
4. In a bear market, what practice is appropriate.?

Alex Lu said...

Hi remnant613,

I missed out on your subsequent comment. Let me see...

What to do in a bear market? My personal investment strategy is to hold as little stock as possible when the market has turned bearish. For a more moderate approach, try the post entitled "Responding to bear market conditions" in the weblog, FinanceTrends dated August 6th (go to the link below).

How to improve your investment's success rate? Learn as much as you can about investment, especially technical analysis. Learn about trading techniques, even though you may only want to invest long-term. Learn from mistakes as well as successful hits. A good place to start is Investopedia (go to the link below & then click on 'Tutorials').

http://financetrends.blogspot.com/

http://www.investopedia.com/