Wall Street opens in half an hour or so...

...could be the scariest day on the markets since 1987 after the Lehman's chapter 11 and the sale of Merrill Lynch.

Tip of the iceberg ... reckon there's a shed load more C 11's in the pipeline.
The US prime mortgage situation still casts a serious shadow on the Seppos economy.
Add the cost of the Iraqi 'peace keeping' force and the black hole looms ever larger!

Nice welcome for the new administration in January!!

Greenspan should keep his mouth shut, so should Swann. Glad I got out of the market at the bottom. Mind you if Malcolm turns out to be the alternate PM tomorrow we might not take such a huge hit.

Happen to be working in Canary Wharf and the Lehmann Brothers Offices cast a dreary shadow...

Can't remember who it was but someone predicted that a major Wall Street player would fall but I don't think even he thought it would be this quick.

DJIA is down 3% early.


FTSE looks like closing down 5%.

I used to envy some of my friends who went in to investment bank IT jobs years ago. Few of them have been made redundant last month and another two moved on to different sector. Glad that it wasn't me.

The ones made redundant would've been given a hefty package and those having moved to different sectors would've made hay over the last 5-6 boom years.

Alex Loudon and James Bruce picked a good time to pack up cricket and go to the "City" !

Be some buying opportunities over the next few months.

Buy low. Sell high.

Most people do it the other way round.

If the FTSE dives much below 5000, fill yer boots if you've got the coin going spare.

Farkin blood-bath. Will be ugly today on the ASX.

Farking greedy farkin investment bankers. HTF do you fark an institution the size of Lehmann Borthers.

The scariest thing about this is that the rest of the world won't be badly affected.

Chinese century anyone?

The only good thing about the ASX crash from 6600 to probably 4400 in the next week is that we can get cheap units for a while.

Got my annual Super statement.

Management Fees for year - $5,600

Annual earnings - negative (yes, that's a big minus) $138,000.

When I rang the qunts to question what the fark they did to earn their farkin fees, their robotic response was "well you've had 5 very good years". Qunts.

I gave up reading super statements years ago, it saves a fortune in depression medicine.

Indeed qmy. Just have to suck it up and wait for the "good" cycle.

Still sh!ts me that these qunts with billions of dollars under their control (whether it be investment banks or Super funds) can be so farkin cavalier to let this happen.

Did I mention "qunts"?

You did mention qunts. To think you're retirement is in the hands of 20somethings with less business nous than a milk bar operator.

Actually that's unfair milk bar operators actually have to work for a living.

An hour in on the Australian Market and we are down 2.2 %

Some are predicting 3-5%, I doubt it will be that much.

Bradman wrote:You did mention qunts. To think you're retirement is in the hands of 20somethings with less business nous than a milk bar operator.

Actually that's unfair milk bar operators actually have to work for a living.

Hehehe, I actually said as much to my "advisor" this morning. I actually was very close to converting my portfolio to cash when the market dived from 6600 to 6000 12 months ago, but was assured "let's just ride this out". FFS, we could be heading for low 4000s from this point.

Qunts.

Some good bargains at the moment. Would be a brave person to get in though.

D!ckhead advisor said to me today "It's a great time to buy now, because dividends are yielding better than cash rates."

Jeez, that fills me with joy. Does that mean when the market was revving around in the 6000s that it was severely over-valued (i.e. yields were not as good as cash rate but everyone was in a buying frenzy) and therefore will take forever for us to regain our losses?

Qunts.

skully wrote:Farkin blood-bath. Will be ugly today on the ASX.

Farking greedy farkin investment bankers. HTF do you fark an institution the size of Lehmann Borthers.

Firstly, you lump serious moolah into a black hole called the US prime mortgage market, and then "assist" other banks and institutions
to do the same before the black hole caves in.
In your wisdom you pay $$millions in bonuses to 20 something year old "whizz kids" for doing a job any trained parrot could accomplish -
ie., squaking down a phone without REALLY knowing WTF you're about.
These "whizz kids" only know a bull market, so when the bear inevitably bites back, panic strikes and nerves fray, as they, too late, realize a falling bear market ALWAYS spirals down at a faster rate than a bull market rises.

Cheers Merls. Possibly the best explanation I've had so far.

I hope thousands of these "wizz kids" lost their jobs.

skully wrote:D!ckhead advisor said to me today "It's a great time to buy now, because dividends are yielding better than cash rates."

Jeez, that fills me with joy. Does that mean when the market was revving around in the 6000s that it was severely over-valued (i.e. yields were not as good as cash rate but everyone was in a buying frenzy) and therefore will take forever for us to regain our losses?

Qunts.

He will be right on some things. There will be a stack of stocks who are in effect the baby with the bathwater.

The trick is finding them though. Some of the Infra stocks like BBI are currently on a 30% yield with some superb assets and no need refinance anything for over a year.

skully wrote:Cheers Merls. Possibly the best explanation I've had so far.

I hope thousands of these "wizz kids" lost their jobs.

You can spit in their faces next time you are in Maccas.

He's still a qunt.

But I'm not bitter. Like fark I'm not.

JGK wrote:

skully wrote:Cheers Merls. Possibly the best explanation I've had so far.

I hope thousands of these "wizz kids" lost their jobs.

You can spit in their faces next time you are in Maccas.