esrosedotblog

ROLLER COASTER RIDE

This has been a bastard of a week for the portfolio.

The markets are very volatile.

I am widely spread but no one has any protection in this kind of environment.

Since this is my nest egg, I get a little nervous about it all. Especially when some prognosticator says that this is "the big one". As in 1927.

But I am calmer than I used to be.

Look at the ten year Dow Jones Average chart.

This happened in 1997 just as I was about to retire and then again in 2003 and now, five years later again, in 2008.

It is encouraging that despite the dips, the equity trend has been up for ten years.

I have had the good fortune of being able to withdraw money from my nestegg and have the egg stay pretty much the same size for ten years (or larger).

So what is this up and down all about?

The mismanagement or non-management of the economy by the bushies is easy to blame as it is blameworthy but there is also the whole public belief in the money fairy. That somehow mortgages on the cheap can be good mortgages or that houses you cannot afford are going to more valuable some day and you can re-something.

But that is human.

We are no different than the tulip bubble guys way back there on the world economy road.

And we will get through this one again.

I found myself thinking today that if and when it gets back up there into the stratosphere again, this is the time that I will sell at the top and liquidate to cash.

Money markets.

But I know that the same bubble headed thinking will hit me as well.

"What goes up must go up higher".

Well, maybe.

Maybe not.

The older I get the more serene I get about my nest egg because whatever else is doubtful, I know that the time I have to use it up is shorter and so on a perday basis, I am probably gaining all the time.

If I live to be ninety, as I plan to do, and if I go out with zero in the bank account, as I plan to do, then ten years ago I had to have my nestegg last 30 years. Now I only have to have it last 20. Pretty good.

Unless I live to be 100.

Shit.

Labels: economy