O.T. tick rule

If not being able to sell short, “except on an up-tick“, will solve so many of the stock market’s problems, maybe an “only buy long on a down-tick rule” would solve the rest of them. Go figure.

I think that is just a handy target. The basic problem is that too many people don't have enough money to pay their bills. Yeah, some people got in over their heads, but here in Michigan, most mortgage forclosures are due to job losses or bankruptcies due to medical bills. Our real estate values have lagged the rest of the country for years, so we don't have a lot of people buying 200K plus houses on bad credit. They can play around with those stock market stuff all they want, until the economy really improves, we are in for problems.

As far as I could see, the new rules did nothing for the market today. The Dow was down about 200 points when the Feds announced another loan to the USA banks. It was that news that drove the Dow up 620 points off it's low.

The US Feds also loaned world banks $180b.

There is so much AP news to night it's hard to keep up with it. Things are really changing fast. What goes up fast, falls down even faster. Hold on too your tussie, it ain't over.

Should be a big pop open tomorrow but then where?

The Feds want to loan the bank some money tp help with troubled mortages. It supposed to help the homeowner keep there homes.

T_Bone

Wow, talk about change. Now the SEC has band ALL short selling on some stocks. There not telling which ones???

The Brits did the same today.

Tomorrow is going to be a interesting day!

T_Bone

Actually, the short sellers did what needed to be done....shouted out that the King(s) were wearing no clothes. These Wall Street boys have balance sheets stuffed with funny paper that has no value, and the short sellers called their bluff. If their balance sheets were legit, they could have easily withstood the onslaught. They have "cooked" their books for years, getting greedier every year as they operated a giant Ponzi scheme and finally ran out of suckers to keep feeding them.

"... The Feds want to loan the bank some money tp help with troubled mortages. It supposed to help the homeowner keep there homes..."

Not sure throwing more money into the mess will help. I.e. Helping someone keep a home they cannot afford is probably not the best solution. It's a complicated issue, with lots of contributory causes: crash in real estate values causing speculators to go upside down on their mortgages and walking away, ARMs that reset to higher rates than people could not afford, drop in housing market caused drop in truck sales coupled with high gas prices tanked the auto industry causing layoffs, etc.

Recently, we increased our equity credit line on our house to buy a replacement for a vehicle whose lease was up. Current lease rates are sky-high and we wanted a payment that was within our means, so we downsized the vehicle and purchased instead of leasing. That is the key: live within your means.

However, I suspect that this is "preaching to the choir" and that most people on this forum are pretty fiscally conservative.

And I think Bradley Martin is right on the money. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is and someday you'll have to pay the piper. We went through this before (remember Michael Milliken and Drexel?), the dot.com, real-estate crash in the early 90's.

How is using your home equity to buy a new car "living within your means"?

Just curious.

(quoted from post at 09:53:07 09/19/08) How is using your home equity to buy a new car "living within your means"?

Just curious.

Click to expand...

Goose,
The lease was up on my wife's car and when we decided that a purchase was the best way to go, we considered all financing options. Instead of using dealer financing, we are financing it in a manner that allows us to deduct the interest. Also got a lower interest rate and other benefits from doing it this way. We are making roughly the same payment that we would have if we financed it through the dealer and quite a bit less than if we leased. I.e. we are living within our budget regardless of who we make the check out to. I agree that it may be slightly riskier, i.e. the collateral is our house and not the car.

We do have credit cards but use them as a convenience and pay off the balance each month (have NEVER paid interest on any over the last 35 yrs) In fact, we get a rebate from Discover Card each year and accumulated over $3500 in GM card earnings which were used in the vehicle purchase.