WOW What a morning. i think I am going to check my Coffee can that is buried outside and see how it is doing.

I was expecting it to happen. Actually I thought it would be worse but then there still 4 hours of trading left.

I Haven't seen - and don't think I want to know. And my financial planner tells me that burying my retirement funds under the bed is not a good idea ! !

The DOW will probably go below 11,000. It is down over 400 points right now.

What are your thoughts about Merrill Lynch. I don't know if I should be worried or not - that's where my portfolio is. OUCH!!

Merrill Lynch should be okay. Looks like the market got crushed in the last half of trading today. 500 point decline in the Dow.

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I don't know if I should be worried or not - that's where my portfolio is.

Bear in mind that managing a portfolio and owning stock in Merrill Lynch are two different things. If you own a lot of Merrill Lynch stock, you may be in trouble although their stock increased today because of BOA buying them out. If ML is simply managing your investments - such as a 401k - it is doubtful that a large percentage of your investment is in ML stock. Typically a portfolio is diversified enough to prevent a huge hit if XYZ company crashes.

Thanks! They are managing my portfolio - I don't have stock in ML. I had inherited the account, and I just don't know enough about all of it as I should. It just worried me when I heard that they were bought out.

I do hope the market will start on it's road to recovery soon though. It is looking pretty ugly right now!

Just think about how many more shares those 3rd quarter dividends are going to buy.

I had my eye on a stock buy today and chickened out. I'm going to wait for this mess to bottom out.

Dwayne

Just be glad you don't own AIG stock. It went from $70 a year ago to $3.75 today.

I just saw some financial genius on CBS who said getting credit, getting a mortgage, is going to change dramatically. Frankly I agree with him. Credit has been too easy to get. People got loans and mortgages that they simply could not afford. It worked both ways with lots of blame to go around. The mortgage lenders pushed big money loans and many consumers were irresponsible in thinking they could cover their notes.

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Originally posted by f-mattox:
Just think about how many more shares those 3rd quarter dividends are going to buy.

As we in the business say, it's "stocks on sale." Then again, these days, what are dividends?

Why couldn't that AIG stock be Microsoft or Apple, and the plummet was because of some scandal? I'd buy that in a heartbeat at $4!

The big thing is that people don't need to panic. This shake-up of the financial sector was overdue IMHO and in the end things will be more stable. Our portfolio has lost around 10% of it's value so far this year. But over the course of time it will recover and then some.

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what are dividends?

The irony is that my R.E.I.T. index fund, in spite of the battered NAV, is still spitting out wonderful dividends, which, reinvested, are going to put me in good shape when the recovery comes. The value funds aren't doing too bad either.

Read this

And as a result of the Fed "rescuing" AIG, the Dow falls again because of the signal this bailout sends to investors.

They only loaned AIG $85B of taxpayer's money. Gee, what a nice present we gave them. I feel warm and fuzzy all over.

Man, I don't know if I can handle many more of these +/- 500 point swings on Wall St. I went out to do some mowing this afternoon and the Dow was in the red. I came back in an hour later and it was up over 400 points.

Dave, please go back out and do some more mowing!!

I don't know what to think anymore.

I just put a limit order in to sell the last financial stock I have. I can't take anymore bleeding from it. I am only keeping my foreign based shipping stocks because they are still above what I bought them for, and pay dividends.

I don't have much money to invest, so I can't keep watching it go down the drain.

Dwayne