Close today was 13245 -- interesting because I don't usually expect Election Day to do very well, what with all the uncertainty.
ADDENDUM:
All right, now that we have seen the re-election of President Barack Hussein Obama, I'm letting go of this thread -- but not out of anticipation of watching it plummet, as anyone can read the first pages and follow how the Dow fell on Bush's watch and continued seven weeks into Obama's first term. Nothing has substantively changed in what has been my basic strategy ever since March 2009: to anticipate a slow, halting, yet distinctly consistent rise in the Dow. Of course, I can afford to say this because the only target date I care about anymore is THURSDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2016. That's right, I'm looking four whole years into the future. But first, a few words.
First, I can wholly understand how anyone can find this one thread alone to be grossly inadequate to assessing our economy. We have an unemployment thread lying around here somewhere and we can always bump that up. Heck, anyone is always free to start their own threads. You can talk about bonds, or money supply, or how awful it is that we don't have the gold standard anymore -- honestly, whatever floats your boat, just go for it, post away. In fact, I would greatly prefer such outright threads to the occasional one-shot grumble-mumble passive-aggressive sideswipes that sometimes pop up: "Oh dear oh my, such a shame that DruulEmpire has **92** that Jonestown Flavor-Aid and his brain is just too soft and insensitive to this one dazzling economic indicator which I'm only going to blurt out just this once before of necessity squirreling myself away from the vast omnipotent monolithic liberal conspiracy, oh dear oh my" or some such suggestion. The economy's important, and it can always use more threads. So far as this particular thread is concerned, it can basically go all to shit now that I'm opting out, but for whatever it may be worth I leave it with three wishes:
1. Put up some numbers, particularly target Dow levels, up or down, and specific dates. There are people who for decades have predicted doomsday for the Dow every damn day, and such people were in no way "vindicated" come the Bush meltdown. Look, you can cast yourself as Cassandra and pontificate all you please, but at the end of the proverbial day I wish you could also set a target number and a date for that target. You think there's a "debt bomb"? Set a date. You think Europe is about to collapse? Set a date. You think there's an impending fuel crisis? Set a date. Anyone can hypothesize, but it takes real guts to place a gentleman's (or lady's) bet, and stick it out with quiet grace.
2. Please leave your claims open to verification. You search back on this thread far enough, you find a bizarre (even for him) Q_BE comment of truly Romney-Orwellian style rhetoric to the effect that the Dow adding just a couple of points is somehow a tribute to the vast iso-Masonic power of the Fed. Say what!? Look, when overseas markets are slumping, acknowledge it, and when oil prices rise, acknowledge it -- acknowledge the damn data, because the whole "My hypothesis is getting proven even though I'm the only person in America talking about it" isn't very persuasive.
3. Finally, strive to be gracious. (This goes even for pedonbio, who I generally agree with.) The economy is ultimately not so abstract at all, it's what we all live in. We should all be pulling for it and trying to help, not just sitting back and going Nya-nya at each other.
I'm struck by how this thread got some attention during the meltdown, a meltdown which noone seemed to predict -- but then, as we struggled to recover, there were calls of "Aha, this particular momentary downturn is the precursor of true doomsday!" and every damn one of those calls bloody well came to nothing. Maybe it's just plain human to do that, but it's still not very impressive. It reminds me of Redd Foxx as Fred Sanford flailing around with one of his melodramatic fake heart attacks: "Oh no! This is the big one! You hear that, Elizabeth! I'm coming to join you, honey!" Foxx did it first, and better than any of us. Please try leaving it alone.
And now three targets for 10/27/2016 These are not predictions, but more speculations.
1. 14920: A Dim Hope. In the next four years, it's not enough to meet and beat the old high of 14164. The "1492" symbolizes hope for a New World with new infrastructure, a new grid, new energy, the works.
2. 15555: The Beginning of Promise. With all decimal levels set at 5, the midpoint, this expresses real hope of someday hitting 20000.
3. 16384: A Time For Caution. I think this is an appropriate level to start worrying about our having settled into some new soon-to-burst bubble -- and I leave it to you to figure out how I chose that.
That's it. It's been fun. May we ascend far beyond 16000, and on solid ground, with our rights intact.