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Originally Posted by B R
That's all true. But these historic highs only bring us 1 or 2% higher than it was 5 years ago, in 2001. that's not a great return on your investment money - 1 or 2% over a 5 year period. and you've lost money if your tracking the s&p over a 5 year period. i hope your stock broker is getting you better returns than those #'s. now the nasdaq, on the other hand, was 5500 in 2001 and it's now at just over 2100, less than half what it was in 2001.
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Actually, he ( broker) has easily beat those numbers. Don't forget, a few little problems happened during that time, 9/11, Iraq among others. The Nasdaq,in the late 90's, was propelled to those highs on the backs of tech stocks most of which were grossly overvalued and over hyped, if not criminally misrepresented (I don't include the obvious now infamous criminal cases in this generalization). We're getting off on a tangent here, my point is that the economy is not all gloom and doom, in fact its been quite robust as evidenced by the FEDs continual interest rate increases. Unemployment is low, you can see this when you drive down RT 25 and see the number of Help Wanted signs. I think the vacation slow down here is more a by product of the sensationalized media coverage of gas prices, most people, not all, but most aren't severely impacted by gas prices. The Speed limit controversy also had an impact because the Lake was portrayed as an unfriendly place, which simply isn't true.