Sunday, April 19, 2009

The Stock Market Rally of 2009 & Susan Boyle


The Stock Market has been up for the last six weeks leading experts to ask, " Is this rally too far, too fast?" Since March 6, 2009 major indexes have gone up about 30%. One year ago, the Dow was trading around 13,000 and the NASDAQ was 2,500. The Dow (8,130) is still down 37.5% in twelve months while the NASDAQ (1,673) has lost 33%. In fact, a 50% recovery for the Dow from the low set on March 6 would be around 9,700. My conclusion is that we fell so far so fast that it is possible to rally much further than experts envision. I expect a pause in the rally in the next few weeks as we wait for the results of 'stress tests' for financial institutions. The market needs unexpected good news like an uptick in housing or strong retail sales. As the overnight success of Susan Boyle shows us, anything can happen when we least expect it.


Random thoughts....this may the time to convert your IRA's to Roth IRA's...it is worth an email to check with your tax advisor....this week Microsoft, Bank of America, IBM and Apple report Quarterly Earnings....If Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo & JPMorgan want to pay the TARP back (over $60 Billion) will Las Vegas be a buy again....only time will tell...

1 comment:

TheHappyMan said...

Good suggestion on the concept of doing a ROTH CONVERSION for an entire or part of an IRA. Great bloggin'...who knows what will happen next. It seems IBM may be having 'should've could've' feelings about now (since ORACLE has made the merger deal with SUN MICRO).