OK guys, we did this last year and here are the poll results.

Over 12,500 (up more than 20%) 0 0%
11,500-12,500 (10-20%) 4 16.00%
10,500-11,500 (0-10%) 10 40.00%
10,500 (flat) 3 12.00%
9,400-10,500 (-10% - flat) 1 4.00%
8,300-9,400 (-20% to -10%) 4 16.00%
Below 8,300 (more than 20% decline) 3 12.00%

The question was where will the DOW end 2004? We closed 2004 at 10,783.01, just about 3% up. Where will we finish 2005. Please vote to register your thoughts, even if you don't think you have a really good reason for your choice. If you do, let's hear that too.

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Jason Priest
1999 E430
1995 E420 - retired
1986 420SEL - retired

For those who are interested the Dow actually lost 4.25% in 2004 when measured in Canadian dollars (dividends not calculated). The Canadian Market was up 21% in '04 when measured in US Dollars.

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Jason Priest
1999 E430
1995 E420 - retired
1986 420SEL - retired

What about in 17th century gold dubloons?

Or 19th century beaver pelts?

We need some sort of standards here.

Love my Canadian stock. If you had bet against whatever the Bush economic team was selling last year, you won.

I am not one much for market prognostication, but I have done well the past year by being a bear. My personal feeling is the US market will show some recovery in the 1st Quarter bringing suckers back to the market, but then the fall in the value of the dollar will catch up with the market in the form of rising interest rates, choking off the recovery. This will also cause the deficit to rise as government receipts begin to fall due to this slowdown. Economies that are operating at a surplus, China and the EU, will begin to attract more and more equity investment away from the US. Results: Market stalls, 10,000 for another year.

It only reached that point in the last few weeks of the year. It was essentially a flat market, which when inflation is factored in, means it was a loser.

I don't know about 17th Century Gold Dubloons , but in valued in regular gold the Dow lost about 2% in 2004 and valued in Euros it was down 4.3% (again with no dividends factored in).

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Jason Priest
1999 E430
1995 E420 - retired
1986 420SEL - retired

It would be interesting to base money on something objective. Like say, the energy release in the ATP-->ADP + P reaction. See, if that reaction fails, then you die. So it has real value in easily understood terms.

We could base the dollar on say, the energy released by a mole of ATP which happens to be about 30 joules. Knowling that, we can relate money in proportion to a fundamental process of life. Conveniently, we can also relate it to things like oh, hydrocarbon value, which has a latent energy associated with each type of molecule.

By knowing these things we could then tell exactly what things should cost, in constant, universally understood terms.

All I'm hearing is a lot of clicking sounds......

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Enough about me, how are you doing?

I guess nobody wants to come out and play with this one.

can you think of another measure of wealth that would be both universally accepted and rock-solidly immutable? I think physiological constants are pretty cool. The closer we can get to a binary system (if it works you live/if it fails you die) the more realistic it would be.

What would the value be of an absolute currency? A currency that is always profoundly, immutably important.

Using the Dow as a barometer is for rookies.

Wow I didn't even read this post until I posted the above...go figure.

"Using the Dow as a barometer is for rookies."

I have to dissagree on this one. While I certainly agree that using the DOW to benchmark your portfolio returns is for rookies at best, and insane at worst, the DOW is still one of the best measures of investor sentiment available. When you consider the fact that 99% of investors and their advisors are rookies, there is a significant majority who feed into this barometer.


"The Stock Market Barometer" by William Peter Hamilton is an excellent book, and even much more sophisticated technical analysis techniques still rely on movements in the DOW to provide confirmation of either directional change or momentum.

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Jason Priest
1999 E430
1995 E420 - retired
1986 420SEL - retired

Using Dow as your only decision making tool you are making the same mistake many investers are making today by trying to guess trends. Many Wall streeters make the case that the S&P 500 is the best indicator. Using the Dow only also does not indicate inflated value's on stocks which will lead to problems ahead.

Who bought Amazon when it was $325 a share $321 dollars over book value?

I didn't mean to suggest that the DOW should be used as the only decision making tool when it comes to investing, or determining asset allocation, or that it should even have prominence on a long list of factors to consider. The point of the poll is to get a gauge of sentiment of investors on this board. Liike all sentiment polls, most people respond based on general feelings or ideas, or based on what they heard Kudlow and Kramer say while chanel surfing. If I take my vote out of the poll, we currently have 75% of respondents indicating they feel the DOW will be up more than 5%, and only 25% say they expect the DOW to decline. While this survey is very unscientific and based on the number of respondents is statistically insignificant, it surprisingly does miror other recent surveys I have seen.

Investorsintelligence.com puts out a lot of market research. They track, among many other things, the bullishness or bearishness of investment advisors across the US. This survey currently has the highest reading of bullish responses since just prior to the crash in 1987. This number gets little attention in the media, and when it does, it gets the same treatment as consumer confidence numbers (which were pretty good this past month). The media, and most advisors declare a high bullish sentiment or a high consumer confidence number as a positive indicator for the stock market. If you take a look at the charts however, what you find is that these gresat numbers generally conicide with market tops. Most people are the most confident when things are already going well and when their investments have done well, not when conditions are generally poor, but about to get better.

I have been using the DOW because it is the index that most people are familiar with, that most people understand, and that most people are exposed to in the media. I'm not saying that exposure is warranted, and I'm certainly not saying its the best way to make investment decisions. There is a gresat deal of investor pyschology tied to those thirty stocks and combining the technical and behavioural aspects of what that index is doing in addition to the fundamental work can be beneficial to an overall understanding of the market movements.

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Jason Priest
1999 E430
1995 E420 - retired
1986 420SEL - retired

Pretty cool post 420. It looks like the majority was right if I read your poll results from last year correctly!

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The internet is over-rated.