International Dow Breaches 23,000

Interesting times, the other week the Dow Jones notched another milestone, breaking through 26,000 for the first time in its 121-year history.





The STOXX Europe 600 Index also hitting the 400 point mark for only the 4th time, its highest since 2015 and just a few points below its all-time peak of 414.



It's also been more than 19 months since the last 5% dip in the S&P500

I read that a $10,000 investment in Apple, five years ago, would have grown to $25,206 by January 12, 2018. If you had invested in Tesla, it would have soared to $102,165. If it were invested in Netflix, it would have rocketed to $152,870..... And these were all just five-year gains on a $10,000 investment!

Then there's Bitcoin, in January 2017, one Bitcoin was worth $958. By the end of the year, it was priced at $15,527

What next for the Dow... 30,000?

Stock market will rise 50 percent, esteemed economist says

Or a pullback in 2018?

At some stage stocks will crash down and it will be time to deploy your reserves to pick up some bargains again, in the meantime its an interesting ride

 

AFIC waiting patiently with cash to deploy

AFIC "Waiting For Better Prices"

Australian Foundation Investment Co, the largest listed investment company (LIC) in Australia is maintaining interim dividend at 10 cents a share after reporting a modest improvement in the six months to December 31.

New boss, Mark Freeman (who replaced Ross Barker in the half year) says “it is hard to find stand out value in the current market”.

AFIC is struggling to find value because so many good shares are fully priced and suspects other investors are in the same position as AFIC in “waiting for better prices”. In other words AFIC reckons it and a host of other investors would like a ’nice’ market correction to produce value in the market.

AFIC grew net profit after tax (NPAT) by 15.6% from $118.3 million to $136.6 million, thanks to an increase of investment income by $18.5 million from major investments, led by the big miners which as Rio Tinto and BHP which returned to profitability in 2017, especially in the second half (the finals for 2016-17 were all paid in the six months to December. But the company confessed that it had missed the rebound by small and mid level resource stocks - they rose 41% and 21% in the half year

 

I think in the AFI interim report, they expanded on the above comment and said (paraphrasing here): because every half-decent investor is flush with cash now, any pullback will be modest. Unless, of course there is a significant geopolitical event that shakes everything down to the core.

 

DJIA days to new highs

•18,000 to 19,000: 483
•19,000 to 20,000: 42
•20,000 to 21,000: 24
•21,000 to 22,000: 107
•22,000 to 23,000: 54
•23,000 to 24,000: 30
•24,000 to 25,000: 23
•25,000 to 26,000: 8**

Remembering that as it climbs 1,000 point milestones become a smaller percentage

 

But what does it mean? Is there a point to all this?

 

Geez talk about slow path to wealth. With bitcoin it happens in hours

 

On another note, thanks for the charts @Redwing

I never realised the Europe market is hovering around it's point of 18 years ago.

The ASX ain't so bad after all. Or does that mean we got another 8 years to wait till we reach our high?

 

Interesting post. Do you have any thoughts on what will cause the next correction?

 

All-Time Highs, Risk & Consequences

 

Valid point. Have you been topping up your LICs lately?

 

Nope. Not because I think I know better than anyone else but as a retirees we’re already living comfortably so I don’t feel the need to buy unless we feel we’re being well rewarded for taking on risk. It’s subjective and different for each person but peace of mind is my guide. Don’t care if I’m wrong, as long as SANF is good.

 

In the grand scheme of things, improved perception on the economy, hopefully greater earnings/dividends to shareholders etc...it's only a scoreboard with 1,000 points being breached quicker as the overall number rises

As an accumulator it also means you are paying more

 

S&P 500

Eight ways to look at the stock market’s sudden U-turn

 

Great pictures.

Unfortunately, many only see the bottom right squares and come out with those sayings about catching a ‘falling knife’.

 

Now back to 23,932

Just for fun had a look at the Total S&P 500 Return (Dividends Reinvested) from Jan 2010 to Jan 2018 , the result was 191.026% , eights years without a calendar year loss.

As they say, may you live in interesting times

 

Interesting read, Tech stock warning

Yes. It's a Bubble. So What?

We see a bubble in the US stock market today, albeit less extravagant than Tesla or the growing swarm of cryptocurrencies. Reasonable observers can disagree, but we believe we are experiencing a tech bubble, based on our relatively rigorous definition of the term.

At the end of January 2018, the seven largest-cap stocks in the world were all tech fliers: Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Tencent, and Alibaba.

Never before has any sector so dominated the global roster of largest market-cap companies. At the peak of the tech boom, four of the top seven companies by market cap were in the tech sector, and at the peak of the oil bubble, five of the top seven were in the energy sector. Only the Japanese stock market’s bubble at year end 1989 has matched today’s tech sector dominance of the global market-capitalization league tables.

Not only do we have the FANGs, we have FANG+ futures, affording investors a chance to buy the world’s trendiest tech stocks with almost no collateral, and the list is amended quarterly to make sure only the trendiest are on the list.

 

These are fantastic pictures!
As they say a picture says a thousand words and I can see eight thousand words in favour of buying and holding/investing for long term.

 

Dow Jones crosses 27,000 mark for first time ever



The Dow Jones industrial average crossed the 27,000 mark for the first time ever, boosted by bets that the Federal Reserve is poised to cut interest rates for the first time in a decade.

The blue-chip index soared as much as 227.43 points Thursday to hit a record 27,088.45 — blowing past an all-time intraday high of 26,983.45 that was reached a day earlier. It closed just off that high at 27,088.08, up 227.88 points.

“Right or wrong, everyone pays attention to the Dow,” Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial, told The Post, referring to the 30-stock index of US corporate giants like Apple, Exxon, Goldman Sachs and McDonald’s.

The S&P 500 gained 0.2 percent for a record close at 2,999.91 while the Nasdaq dipped 0.1 percent.

“The Dow has become the picture of the US economy even though professionals argue it’s about the S&P 500,” Krosby added.

As the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 27,000 for the first time, take a look back with this visual history of the index




It took only eight trading sessions for the Dow to sprint from the 25,000 level to 26,000 in January of 2018. Over 500 days and exactly 372 trading sessions later, the blue-chip index has notched its next 1,000-point milestone.

 

First photo's a concern...all party's come to an end



Five Lessons from History

May 29, 2019 by Morgan Housel

The Great Depression began with a stock market crash. October 24th, 1929. That’s the story, at least.

It makes for a good story because it’s a specific event on a specific day. But if you were to go back to October 1929, during the crash, the average American might seem unfazed. Only 2.5% of Americans owned stocks in 1929.

The huge majority of Americans watched in amazement as the market collapsed, and perhaps lost a sense of hope that they, too, might someday cash in on Wall Street. But that was all they lost: a dream. They did not lose any money because they had no money invested.

The real pain came nearly two years later, when the banks started to fail.

Just over 500 U.S. banks failed in 1929. Twenty-three hundred failed in 1931.

When banks fail, people lose their savings. When they lose their savings they stop spending. When they stop spending businesses fail. When businesses fail, banks fail. When banks fail people lose their savings. And so on endlessly.

Continues on link...

 

Fantastic read thanks for posting