muzie_IHB
New member
[quote author="Hormiguero" date=1225520650][quote author="muzie" date=1225514215]You're getting ahead of yourself there if you think you got the whole next decade all figured out.
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I'm not claiming to know the particulars, and am very long on stocks at the moment despite my long-term gloom. But the demographics speak for themselves, and it is a very dark picture. How many times a day do I hear mentioned that the Boomers are just starting to retire, and that this bear market has been a great way to scare them out of stocks permanently? Or that rotten demographics were a big part of the deflation Japan experienced a decade ago (along with all of the other moves we've made to emulate that disaster)? About zero - we're a collective ostrich nationally in terms of our reaction to the Boomer retirement wave, and have made what would be a tough predicament into a 100% certain crisis through our mountain of present debt and future entitlements.
US population growth hit a very low nadir in the early 70s - those are the people approaching their peak earning years in the next decade. Do you think they'll have the same positive feedback loop with their investments in the stock market as Boomers enjoyed in the 80s and 90s?
As investment goes, proper use of timing and leverage are almost impossible to get right - but spotting the larger trend is easy. And it ain't pretty until the median Boomer dies, and takes some of those trillions of AARP-mafia entitlements with them. That will be a great day for the country, but it is at least 15-25 years off. Once the stock market starts to look PAST that event, we'll be able to set up a real bull like 1982-2000, with some help from the kids born in the past fifteen years.</blockquote>
Boomers are only one part of the overall picture. Investing is much more international now, and whereas 20 years ago most people were 100% domestic more and more people from different allocate a weighting to other countries in their investments. Now we have Arabs with huge investment stakes in our banks, which would have been unthinkable just ten years ago, and national investment funds chasing worldwide returns. There's way more pieces on the chessboard than you and I can imagine. Money flows somewhere, it goes somewhere else.
Fact is the boomer theory doesn't hold much water, right now. The boomers are just starting to retire now - just starting. If anything we should have had a roaring bull for the past ten years because that was the peak earnings for most boomers. Yet the return for the last ten years is flat.
Whatever influence the boomer had, other factors had way more importance, and other factors will have more importance in the future.
</blockquote>
I'm not claiming to know the particulars, and am very long on stocks at the moment despite my long-term gloom. But the demographics speak for themselves, and it is a very dark picture. How many times a day do I hear mentioned that the Boomers are just starting to retire, and that this bear market has been a great way to scare them out of stocks permanently? Or that rotten demographics were a big part of the deflation Japan experienced a decade ago (along with all of the other moves we've made to emulate that disaster)? About zero - we're a collective ostrich nationally in terms of our reaction to the Boomer retirement wave, and have made what would be a tough predicament into a 100% certain crisis through our mountain of present debt and future entitlements.
US population growth hit a very low nadir in the early 70s - those are the people approaching their peak earning years in the next decade. Do you think they'll have the same positive feedback loop with their investments in the stock market as Boomers enjoyed in the 80s and 90s?
As investment goes, proper use of timing and leverage are almost impossible to get right - but spotting the larger trend is easy. And it ain't pretty until the median Boomer dies, and takes some of those trillions of AARP-mafia entitlements with them. That will be a great day for the country, but it is at least 15-25 years off. Once the stock market starts to look PAST that event, we'll be able to set up a real bull like 1982-2000, with some help from the kids born in the past fifteen years.</blockquote>
Boomers are only one part of the overall picture. Investing is much more international now, and whereas 20 years ago most people were 100% domestic more and more people from different allocate a weighting to other countries in their investments. Now we have Arabs with huge investment stakes in our banks, which would have been unthinkable just ten years ago, and national investment funds chasing worldwide returns. There's way more pieces on the chessboard than you and I can imagine. Money flows somewhere, it goes somewhere else.
Fact is the boomer theory doesn't hold much water, right now. The boomers are just starting to retire now - just starting. If anything we should have had a roaring bull for the past ten years because that was the peak earnings for most boomers. Yet the return for the last ten years is flat.
Whatever influence the boomer had, other factors had way more importance, and other factors will have more importance in the future.
.