What are you holding?

ESEA isnt a bad company, they are a small shipper with the same issues all of them have, they have quite a bit of debt relative to cash and a very small float.

The way to decide if they are solid or not is to see their time charter schedule for all their ships, see how many are on spot and how many are in long term agreements and how those are structured relative to the spot market. I know you are just flipping them around of course but for a longer term play I would dig a big more.

Goose,

I dont see how that drop in average price is low enough to make it worthwhile. I would not add up here, pull up a chart and try to see where it goes next since it is on a 52 week low now. I would want to add at a point that it would drop my average more than 3% like this does.

btw....this market drop is NOTHING...it is nothing at all, The market is still right at 25k and 7k on the NAZ, I wont get interested for several thousand points more, several...like 10k more on the DOW and 4k on the NAZ...and still that is overvalued to me.

Wall. Just curious about your thought process here. It sounds like you haven't been in the markets for a while. At what point did you sell out and become such a bear? Pre crash 2008? Post recovery 2011? I am holding onto everything for the time being, and yes I'm down almost 100K this month, but I don't know too many people that time the market with results that beat the yearly averages. In fact, even the most successful (Buffet) will tell you that timing the market is a futile exercise. If you sit around waiting for another 10K on the Dow 4K on the NAZ, I believe you will end up on the sidelines forever and I think we can both agree that's a bad plan. Perhaps you are the exception to the rule? 

gamble,

No Ive lived through too many of these market ups and downs to fall for the trap. The trap is that there is no returns to be had outside the markets and to me that is not a reason to risk up here or for a LONG way below. I like to buy when others are selling and sell or wait while others unwisely buy.

The reasons for the market move the last 6-8 years are not good enough to get me to invest, the gains in the market are fake and not based on real economic innovation or activity. Forcing rates low like this are not why I invest, corporations loading up on debt to do buybacks are not why I invest. (why would a company like Apple who has ZERO need for debt load up as they did? Because the cost is cheap and they can get a better return by buying back stock...totally illogical and stupid) I have not seen a reason based on fundamentals or economic strength why the markets are up here so yeah for the most part Ive been watching this move and doing little...and yeah it is annoying but this market is coming down and there is not much that can be done to stop it IMO.

What can the government do go MORE into debt to give corps MORE freebies? Can the FED risk economic destruction by letting the market and RE market and student loan market inflate even more by leaving rates so low in the face of reasonable GDP numbers? Can other countries do the same and keep the fix going to satisfy the market?

I think people forget the realities of leverage and how fast the souffle can pop...I remember in 2008 the market melted down FAST...it was not some long drawn out pop and it came out of nowhere...the same thing could easily happen now and it should happen now. Bonds dropping in price have a multi faceted destructive force on stocks, first the drop in prices create leveraged losses and many banks, hedgies and governments have been leveraging our bonds and many are underwater now and it should get worse...and then the higher yields mean higher borrowing costs to governments, AND it ripples to corporate debt very quickly.

I am a bit shocked that the high yield market has not started to rumble yet, there are some serious levels and layers of junk out there floating that cant stay afloat for very long...yet even with the raise in rates corporate yields have not shown panic yet, but really they should. Seeing corporate rates this low relative to say the ten year is odd...very strange but it only takes a few days for the spreads to widen and the pain can come fast, then one bank or institution has to make some margin calls and start selling their illiquid financial instruments and then that market cracks...and if you recall THAT is what crashed the market in 2008...those illiquid markets failing, margin calls come and stock selling begins to cover the illiquid CDS and derivative margin calls.

I dont see how this keeps going, I dont see how it has kept going, but lets see how it plays out. I could see a large bank go under EASY...someone like DB could get wiped out in the matter of days, then who is next? Citi, BofA? 

No way am I buying up here, I am not buying for a very long time...and its ok if I miss out, I like better risk/reward opportunities than this market.

I love futures and Forex and all sorts of leverage, that is a siren song for me...options too. Ive really worked hard to NOT make impulse moves as I am getting older...its not easy but I'm trying to be a little smarter and be patient, in this case too patient of course.

I seriously see ZERO value out there...I do own a few things here and there but the high majority of funds I am parking until I see something worthy of an investment...not just because the market tells me to or the yield on a MM isnt very high. I see no compelling value out there...even beaten down housing stocks I am not buying because they are really not beaten down AND rates are driving them and I dont see rates going down in the near term so no reason to buy. 

Wall...All of what you said seems logical, but I disagree with you on the possibility of bank failures. I just don't see it being as bad as you potentially do. Pre 2007-9 was a totally different story. There were billions in bad debt spurred on by poorly documented loans, fraud, and cheap money. At the fed, Paul Greenspan fell asleep at the wheel and exasperated the collapse with his free money policy in the face of the bubble. In short, I think you will be proven wrong on this one. If there is one thing I have learned as an investor for the past 3 plus decades, is that the markets always recover. 10 years from now this downswing will be long forgotten and the markets will be significantly higher. Did you know that over the past 100 years, the markets have had 206 downturns over 5%. Of those, roughly half of the downturns exceeded 10%. This downswing is a perfectly normal incident and should be expected to happen. Yes, investors over the past decade have been spoiled by a continuous upward sloping trend line, so more is being made of this correction than it should be. It's part of the process of making money. The shakeout might not be over, but I don't see the collapse you foresee when we are hitting 3% growth every quarter. If Trump meets with Xi next month and makes a deal, the markets will explode to the upside. That's a real possibility! Trump wants the markets to do well. He is defining his presidency to a degree on it. 

What a nice rally for buy and hold investors! I don't expect that we scream right back up to new highs though. The markets are a little bi-polar no?