Yeah - if it was that easy we'd all be flush. Apparently you need access to information I can't discern from Scottrade.

 

Too bad George Carlin isn't still alive. He could do a skit on this similar to his old weatherman skit. "Continued dark tonight..."

 

Having the nerve is one thing. All I need is the money to pull the trigger.

 

LOL, I don't think being in the majority makes one a moron. I'm a very conservative investor and make investment decisions based on long term trends. That effectively means that shorts and quick profits aren't in the cards for me, even when I see an obvoius opportunity. I pulled out of stocks two years ago, because the credit/housing bubble was growing at a rate that showed clearly where we were heading. It was at least as obvious as the last two years of the tech bubble, but people missed that one too for some reason. Honestly, and I don't mean to sound like a smartasp, I don't see how anyone could not have seen the tech bubble, or the housing/credit bubble, and I wish someone would explain it to me. Honestly, in what way was it not obvioius?

As for my being rich, I'm not, but we're doing OK. I retired at 47, a tad over 13 years ago, and we've been in and out of the market a couple times over that period. Things are BAD right now, so I'm not certain of any "positioning," but so far we haven't lost any money in the stock market. If you get out when the fundamentals get stupid, you don't take as much of a hit.

Hopefully we're not going to reach the point where canned goods and firearms start looking like good investments.

Regarding the other comments from others, about people making money in the market right now, I'm sure there are people making money, and some are probably making moeny without taking huge risks, but that does require more information than most of us have available (and more courage too). As a conservative investor, the market is just too volitle for me right now, so even though I do see some potential bargains out there, I'm staying out of it. I was watching the ticker today, and some of the prices were making me ill. I could make more money off the dividends of some of the stocks than I'm making from my current investments, and because they're sound companies, it's so tempting that it makes me queezy. My concern is that I don't know how far the credit crunch will reach, and if things get bad enough even the best companies will have major problems. I believe that the market is going lower, and see no solid signs of when a meaningful recovery might begin, so I'm just staying out entirely. I'll be sorry if we see a snap recovery and the market shoots back up to 12,000 in a single high volume day, but I'm really not expecting to see anything like that any time soon.

 

Hahahaha, I use to think the same thing.
It's a little different when your income is entirely a function of your investment decisions. If you make a bad call and take a 50% hit, you have to make a 100% gain on what's left just to get back to where you were before taking the hit. It's a lot harder to pull the trigger when you're dealing with your own money.

 

I only deal with my own money. I still have at least 3 1/2 years of work before retiring. And after retiring I don't plan on pulling my money out of the market.

 

I didn't pull my money out of the market when I retired either. We did pull out completely a few months before the tech bubble burst, and because I felt that the real estate and credit bubbles were going to hit us a lot harder, we pulled out entirely again about two years ago. During both the periods when we were out of the market there was money to be made, but I just don't have the risk tolerance for such things. Fundamentals and time have always been my friend.