The Cascading Crash and You

Posted on October 9, 2008

I’ve been surprised how few people are blogging about the current market situations. Its coming up in casual conversation “around the water cooler” and dominates the news channels, but tech outlets aren’t jumping on the bandwagon.

Today on CNBC’s “Fast Money”, following todays almost 700 point drop, bringing the Dow under 9,000, I heard the first mention of the word “crash”, or more properly what they called a “cascading crash”. IBM perked up shortly but Forbes is saying IBM won’t save tech. Sun shares are back to pre-reverse split levels at $5.21 a share, an 8% drop thats in line with most other tech stocks today.

Despite the markets falling apart it seems to me that most “joe 4 packs” (I drink Guinness) are trying to stay calm. The big question that folks are trying to avoid is at what point will see jobs being cut as a direct result of the markets. So far the people that I’m talking to aren’t freaking out but seem secretively concerned.

The industry wisdom seems to be that this is yet another situation where using technology as a competitive weapon and means to reduce cost may save the day. So far thats what “they” are saying but we’re not seeing the effect quite yet.

As for myself, I’ve been blessed so far. When we recently bought our house we liquidated most of our equities and now have some to give back. I’m jumping on the Buffet bandwagon and looking for value, given that we have very little now to invest, and yesterday picked up some GE shares at a great price. Even though GM and Ford are in the tank and dropping quickly, it looks like a great value for a long horizon investment.

So drop a comment, as a time capsule to ourselves…. how are you feeling about the current financial crisis and its impact on your livelyhood?