Interesting perspective on the stock market dive....

bailey bud wrote: here's what I don't get ---

The rating went down (which means risk is up).

Why the heck did the yield on securities go down????
(the yield moves in the opposite direction of the price for a note)

My hunch - a deal was made - most likely between Treasury and the Fed -
to insulate federal notes/securities from further price erosion
(market manipulation).

I don't believe its any deal, the bond market is a bidding market just like stocks, buying and selling and today alot of money exiting stocks and entering the safer investment of treasuries and money markets. It works both ways and someday money will leave the bond market and cause rates to rise.

There was an article a few days ago that so much money was pouring into bonds so fast that some very short term rates went negative, that means investors were paying a small fee to store the money with the gov't. Its nuts. But money has to be parked somewhere.

I personally would like to invent a new kind of bond. I call it the "Joe keep your F*^*ing hands off my money bond, 0% interest, just safely store my money in a vault. I don't want these Bas&ar&ds using my money for free anymore.

That's called a savings account.

Well it used to be called a savings account, today the majority of them pay you 0 and use your money to make 2 or 3%. I guess you have not looked at rates in awhile.

the only thing I can think of that one would use a savings acct for is maybe a kids acct.....a place they can put their money and it's difficult to spend it, you can't write checks from it. Otherwise they are worthless. Even money market accts don't pay much, maybe .075%. CD's short term, not much better and long term CD's tie your money up and still aren't paying a whole lot. Thus the appeal of the stock market.

Savings accounts - FDIC protected $250K
CDs - FDIC protected but locked up for time period
Money markets- Not FDIC protected and rates are near 0
Bonds- Not FDIC protected, price and interest varies daily, rated for safety by the "experts"

towermonkey wrote:

AspenValley wrote: [Just wondering, does your ISP charge you per punctuation mark? And like ten times more for periods than commas?

"Is that supposed to be funny? Because it isn't. It's just juvenile, like your friends in Congress."

As a matter of fact, it wasn't meant to be funny. The Viking's habit of breathless, run-on sentences make his posts tiresome to decipher, if not downright unreadable. Most of the time I ignore such annoying habits but once in a while they grate more than usual. Sorry about that. I did try to point it out playfully, as opposed to rudely.

But I don't suppose you meant to be funny, either, did you, by throwing my own words back to me?

Just another in a long line of really irritating habits on this forum that make it even more difficult to communicate across the partisan gulf, eh?

I call 'em like I see 'em. If you don't like your own words, don't use them to begin with. You might find that the whole partisan gulf problem goes away if you are the one to start being civil.

towermonkey wrote: You might find that the whole partisan gulf problem goes away if you are the one to start being civil.

So it's okay for you to "call it as you see it" but if I do the same I'm failing to be civil. Interesting.