questionable buying philosophy

This afternoon was a good time to nibble on some Altria, Johnson and Johnson, Bank of America, General Mills, Procter and Gamble and a lot of other great blue chips. These companies don't "cook the books" or have crooked CEO's. I suspect you will have ample opportunity to pick up some stellar buys in the next two weeks but don't procrastinate. You get 3 or 4 good opportunities a year to buy stocks......this is the first opportunity !! This was a long overdue correction and the China and Greenspan news was just the excuse. Fundamentals are still good and the sub prime mess will be contained. No one knows when the correction will be finished running its course but if you are a long term investor now is the time to start nibbling. The momentum guys get killled on these sell offs because they happen so quickly and ferociously they are like deer in the headlights and they are stuck holding stock they bought "at the highs".

As for waiting for FL RE to start heating up...you'll be glad you bought a chair.

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Sorry about that seacliffes....you stock junkies have more guts than I have! Hey they are calling it just a mistake, maybe I will buy some yahoo stock tommrow? But not before consulting goofer:roll:

There is not a person on the planet, including the Pope, Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan, or the great commodity trader Hillary Clinton who knows what the stock market will do. You have to look at what intrinsic values are relative to price. There are many metrics to calculate value. After todays action I think there are many stocks that are good values based on PE's, dividends, and future growth prospects. The stock market could be up 1000 points tomorrow or in the weeks ahead ....no one knows. Certainly no one told you yesterday that the mkt at one point today would have been down more than 500 points!! My point is, this money is for the benefit of young children with more than a 10 year time horizon. Don't try to time the market....that is an impossibility and a mistake. If you feel you must cherry pick, then put half the money to work now and time the rest.

How long as this agent been in the business?

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9 years

Fair enough..since you're reporting from the street:

List the properties that you've closed in January/Feb and give some solid examples of what you would say are "priced to sell."


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If he was in the biz for 9 years and is currently having his best month ever.... was he in a coma during the the great 2004-5 RE grab?

I've been expecting the economy to start cleansing itself sooner or later.

No worries....just illustrates the point that diversification is the way to go. No one should be "all in" whether it comes to dot-coms or dot-condos.

As for waiting for FL RE to start heating up...you'll be glad you bought a chair.

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O my gosh..You were expecting the market to tank. In just one day?? How do you do it???

How the heck do you go from "I've been expecting the economy to start cleansing itself" to "You were expecting the market to tank"?

:roll:

400 plus drop to me is tanking. But to others it might be just a cleansing.

I mean no disrespect to you by saying I feel you are off about "this" market. I can tell you are a very wise person and have a great deal of experience in investing but trying to figure out SOWAL based on what the rest of the country is doing is a big mistake. This market (SOWAL) dances to the beat of its own drum.

400 plus drop to me is tanking.

Mabe you can find the article and post it ?

Now don't clap too loudly, as I lost a lot of money today.. I love our real estate market and since I have an invested interest and will be selling a beach parcel in the future, I obviously want it to do well to!

BTW I bought more stock today after the slide........

Al Gore can harness some of the hot air emanating from our friendly day traders on this board. Perhaps Shelly and Robertson can help Gore to a Nobel Peace Prize by lowering Gore's home heating bill. Can we get some more wisdom about the stock exchange on the real estate board - Gore needs your help.

Moreover, for SoWal to underestimate the current housing "unaffordability" crisis, being felt especially by its vital service-labor pool, will be to its detriment.

Hot Air and Real Estate...at your service:




OMG Shelly! More insider traders caught playing games in the stock market! You should have bought you a nice piece of breach front property to enjoy the view as the stock market goes tumble-tumble:shock:


13 charged in white-collar case

By LARRY NEUMEISTER, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 19 minutes ago


Husband and wife lawyers and 11 top Wall Street workers were charged Thursday with making more than $15 million in illegal trading profit through an alleged federal securities fraud scheme, authorities said.
Linda Chatman Thomsen, director of the Division of Enforcement for the Securities and Exchange Commission, said in a statement that the case was "one of the most pervasive Wall Street insider trading rings since the days of Ivan Boesky and Dennis Levine" in the mid-1980s.
"What is so alarming about the conduct alleged in the SEC's case isn't just the scope of the scheme ... but, sadly, who is at the center of it," she said.
Besides the lawyers, defendants including registered representatives, compliance personnel and hedge fund portfolio managers, improperly relied on hundreds of tips during five years of illegal trading, she said.
"And this conduct didn't occur in obscure boiler rooms ? but rather at what are commonly considered `top tier' Wall Street firms," Thomsen said.
U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia said Wall Street professionals repeatedly traded on secrets revealed to them by insiders at UBS Securities LLC and Morgan Stanley and Co.
Among financial professionals charged criminally in U.S. District Court in Manhattan was Mitchel Guttenberg, an executive director and institutional client manager at UBS.
Garcia said Guttenberg, who worked in UBS's equity research department, accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars as he sold nonpublic information to two men regarding upcoming upgrades and downgrades in UBS analysts' securities recommendations.
The men, David Tavdy and Erik Franklin, used the UBS inside information to each earn more than $4 million by executing profitable trades in various brokerage accounts they controlled, Garcia said.
The attorneys, Randi Collotta, 30, who worked for Morgan Stanley & Co. Inc. in Manhattan, and her husband, Christopher Collotta, 34, who worked in private practice, were also among those criminally charged. Civil charges against 11 individuals and three entities were brought in a complaint filed by the SEC.
In an indictment, prosecutors said Randi Collotta was an associate in Morgan Stanley's global compliance division when she passed inside stock tips to her husband, who gave it to others, resulting in illegal profits of hundreds of thousands of dollars between September 2004 and August 2005.
After others made money from the tips, they paid Christopher Collotta cash that represented a portion of their profits, the indictment said.
Guttenberg, Tavdy, Franklin and the Collottas all were charged with conspiracy to commit securities fraud and securities fraud, which carry potential penalties of up to 25 years in prison. It was not immediately clear who would represent them at an initial court appearance along with five others arrested Thursday.
The four other criminal defendants have pleaded guilty to conspiracy, securities fraud and commercial bribery charges, prosecutors said.
Mary Claire Delaney, a Morgan Stanley spokeswoman, said, "We have cooperated and are continuing to cooperate fully with authorities regarding a former employee who allegedly stole information from Morgan Stanley."
Prosecutors said two insider trading schemes and two separate bribery schemes were part of the case.
The SEC said the scheme involved unlawful trading ahead of upgrades and downgrades by UBS research analysts and corporate acquisition announcements involving Morgan Stanley's investment banking clients.
It said the ringleaders of the UBS part of the scheme went to great lengths to hide their illegal conduct with tactics including a clandestine meeting at Manhattan's famed Oyster Bar and eventually the use of disposable cell phones, secret codes and cash kickbacks before the scheme unraveled.

And what term would you use for walking away from a $30,000 deposit on a pre-construction condo?


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