[DruulEmpire]

Not only is the 12555 (highs of January 2000) floor still holding, but this year has a new high of 12400.  One hundred points to go ...

[DruulEmpire]

Interesting recovery from just two days ago.

On page 2 of my Pittsburgh outings thread, I mention in passing the Dow hitting 12445 for the first time ever on December 15, 2006.  As of today we bypassed that old high with 12453.  Just 47 points to go ...

In fact -- I'm going to raise the target, from 12500 to 12555.  So now I need 102 points.  Ah well.

(Note to careful readers: obviously the "floor" I mentioned above was supposed to b 11555, not at all my current target of 12555.  Lots of digits flying around here ... )

[DruulEmpire]

Obviously I stepped out of the way of a sudden cash-in just in time yesterday.  Today's close was 12505.99, so that with the newly announced target that leaves 49.01 to go.

All right, I really AM going to try wrap up my little career in this thread.  First, I'm going to grow a pair and move the target date up nearly half a year, from Monday, October 31 to Thursday, May 5 -- Cinco de Mayo.  That's right, just ten more trading days.

If and when we do hit 12555, on schedule or not, the targets I want to shoot for beyond that are 12667 ("beating the Beast," that 666 symbolism), 12800 (that retrospectively scary point from which we zoomed to 14000 in a mere three months, the fake George W. Bush rush just before his bubble burst), 12960 (close to but not quite the superstitious 13), and 13130 (hell, at that point, might as well embrace it).

But here's the thing: if we hit 13130 anytime this year, I'm not touching this again till 2012.  The 13000s scare me, they worried me the first time around and they still do.  Once again they give occasion to ask: sure, nice boom -- but a boom made of what, exactly?  We could creep, creep, creep our way up to 12960 by Halloween 2012 -- that's right, next year, not this year -- and I could be a reasonably happy man.

But maybe I won't even hit 12555.  The market has tricked me before.  

[gOOber]

 

[DruulEmpire]

Mmmmm -- or maybe Bernanke wills it?

Well, whoever may be willing it, the Dow hit 12595 today, so I'm cashing in my 12555 prediction, with seven trading days to spare.  But I'm tired of dancing around 666 (except as two-thirds of a thousand), an archaic cryptogram slamming either Caligula or Nero.  For a truly scary number, I'm leaping ahead to 12800, chosen for reasons stated above, and I'll make that my new Halloween target -- until, of course, such time as the market rises long before that.

V to bio below: I actually kind of agree with you, I'd prefer to see us muck around at lower levels -- but still above my suggested floor of 11555 -- and never even think of flirting with 13000 till 2013, if then.  It seems that my drive to try to predict accurately is splitting further from my more cautious hopes all the time.

[pedonbio]

This is indeed bold of you.

I still subscribe to the "double dip" recession predictions, despite the wonderful spring we are having. I'm looking for a sub-12,000 period of maybe six months before we start the lonely climb to 20,000.

But I think gOOber's cat has more chance of an accurate prediction than I do.

[DruulEmpire]

In view of the Dow having gained over 560 points in the last seven trading days (I stupidly forgot Good Friday doesn't count) and having today closed at 12763, I'm going to bet on a relatively modest extra gain and boost the deadline for a "scary" 12800 all the way up to "scary" May 13, aka Friday the 13th.

[DruulEmpire]

I should have called this in last month.  Dow closed just now at 12695 -- however, in view of it having hit 12810 back on Friday, April 29th, I'll call that the cashing in of the 12800 level.

I'm going to set 12960 as the goal for Monday 31 October 2011.  Of course, it may zoom up towards that much sooner, at which point I'll pull the goalpost back and dare to make a much sooner prediction.  (Surely someone out there has caught on to this transparent little game of mine?  From my standpoint, it ain't bold.)  But honestly, I'll be all in favor of six months of dithering (so long as we never fall below my staked-out floor of 11555  ) and then a final 265 point gain.  These days, what I'd prefer and what I think is the more accurate bet are two entirely different things.

[DruulEmpire]

Finally, after six trading days each closing lower than the last, a little resuscitation, back up to 12124.

I would not say I retain interest in this out of any kind of sunny optimism.  "Optimism" that says we might hit 12960 in late October after having already hit 12810 in April is to my mind not that daring.  The only way it becomes "daring" is if everyone else insists "double dip ... double dip ... " or even expects a new Great Depression by next year.  If I'm basically the only person who does not do that, I guess that leaves me labeled as an optimist by a kind of default.  The fact is, though, that I now rather wish I had set my Halloween bet for Halloween 2012, not this year.  But the bet was made for this year, so I'm sticking by it.

My suspicion -- perversely enough, almost my hope -- is that the market will regenerate very slowly.  It will rise, but being essentially fragile will keep getting knocked down by this or that or the other passing crisis, only to eventually rise up again.  It will be a living tribute to Chumbawamba.  But I've yet to be convinced of a crash.  The last time I was so convinced, I thought "We've already hit the 14000s, and I don't think this is going to hold," and in fact it did not.  I recognized one crisis, so I'm hoping I'm still able to recognize a next one.  Till then, my thesis is that the economy is going remain tough and tedious indefinitely.  I've heard the term "stagcovery" applied to it, and that feels about right.    

[DruulEmpire]

Well, this has been a pisser of a month.   There's only one thing to say for it, and that's it ending on a high, 12414, which is at least above the low, 12356, set in May.  Trouble is, the high for May was 12807.  Ah, those were the days.

With Greece momentarily behind us, can we build another 500 points?  Or will America seriously default on its international credit come August 2?  Will see.

[DruulEmpire]

Huh ... I called JUNE a pisser of a month?  June, really?  

All in all it's not too bad -- we're just back to where we were a little over a month ago -- but I do find it notable that we were at 12724 on the 21st and now a mere six trading days later we're down to 12143.  What's more, I still refuse to start sweating too hard till we reach my floor of 11550 announced earlier.  But still, a consistent loss averaging 96 points per day over six days -- golly, whatever could be behind that?  No doubt someone would love to blurt out "Obamacare" or some such rationale ...

It's probably a good thing, for his own sake, that Q_BE got banned after all, for at this point he would surely display clueless crassness by belting out a Palin-style "How's that hopey-changey thing workin' out for ya?"  (That is, if he's still as eternally Sarahmaniacal as he loved to claim, and has not yet switched to Bachmann.)  Ah yes, Obama, that shameless polarizer -- why, Obama is SUCH a shameless polarizer that he actually said OK to a proposal to cut $4.7 trillion, including the Big Three (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid).  Well, hell, people -- how can the GOP POSSIBLY negotiate with ANY Democratic President as rigid and wild-eyed as THAT!?  Nosiree, no WAY could the GOP settle for THAT.

Interestingly enough, though, there now emerges a new shameless polarizer -- JOHN BOEHNER.  Yes, John Boehner, that Benedict Arnold, that closet socialist -- how can ANYONE work with HIM?

Funny how the universe is filling up with polarizers, isn't it?  Or ... doesn't Occam's Razor require a reassessment of an allegedly unpolarized moral majority of one?

Hold your nose, everybody -- here comes August.

v to bio below: eh, I don't care that much.  It's becoming drearily predictable for these guys to want to burn down the universe just so they don't have to face up to personal issues.  In fact, that's probably why they're so nihilistically in love with apocalypse: Biblical apocalypse, debt ceiling apocalypse, whatever they can get.  Getting near the end of Atlas Shrugged is really opening my eyes to this.

[pedonbio]

Druul, speaking of Bachmann, have you discovered the FB group "Marcus Bachmann's Gayness"? A lot of his stuff is crass, but he hits a few home runs.

[DruulEmpire]

I find it rather interesting that I've been on an out-of-the-blue bizarre Boehneresque crying jag for two days now, somehow precipitated by Jimmy Webb's "The Moon's a Harsh Mistress" (don't worry, I've contacted the university and will try to get it taken care of), because if I wasn't already classically depressed today's Dow might have depressed me anyway.  We've hit 11866 -- only 316 points from that "floor" I'd like to try to hang on to of 11550 in honor of Clinton and all these years beginning with 2.  Mmm, yeah, precision timing there, you Tea Partying geniuses.

[pedonbio]

I find it rather interesting that I've been on an out-of-the-blue bizarre Boehneresque crying jag for two days now, somehow precipitated by Jimmy Webb's "The Moon's a Harsh Mistress" (don't worry, I've contacted the university and will try to get it taken care of), because if I wasn't already classically depressed today's Dow might have depressed me anyway.  We've hit 11866 -- only 316 points from that "floor" I'd like to try to hang on to of 11550 in honor of Clinton and all these years beginning with 2.  Mmm, yeah, precision timing there, you Tea Partying geniuses.

Yes, I leave it to deeper minds than my own to explore, but I think part of the market's drop can be attributed to a growing segment of the market realizing that the Teabag episode broke the back of American economic leadership. If sixty uneducated twats can put us into default, we aren't special any more. Once upon a time I posted something somewhere about what would happen if OPEC simply started to price oil in euros instead of dollars. The poor, beleagured euro. The first day it wouldn't matter, but if it had happened the day we invaded Iraq, oil would cost us about $160 a barrel. 

[DruulEmpire]

I'm inclined to agree with bio's analysis.  This sucks from the standpoint of my old idle wish for 12960 by the end of October, but I think far more importantly this might be the beginning of what I would declare as the Chumbawamba Stagcovery.  That's "stagcovery" for "We'd all really like to recover if only enough of us had a clue or even a memory of what that entails," and "Chumbawamba" as in that infamously memorable song "I get knocked down!  But I get up again!  Nothing's gonna keep me down!"  That is to say, a feisty constant struggle for ascendance played against a backdrop of self-defeating megafinancial semi-competence.  About all that's left that I really care about anymore is the outside chance of staying above 11550.