I don’t have a lot of faith in Wall Street anymore but I sure as hell hope this prediction pans out! Our investments and retirement plans went down the toilet in 2008 like most everyone else.
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Wall Street is betting a new U.S. president and a fresh stimulus package will prod stocks higher in 2009, following a year most investors would gladly forget.
Investors are expecting gains of as much as 10 to 20 percent next year, partly reversing a dismal 39 percent drop in the S&P 500 in 2008 as trillions of dollars that have been sitting on the sidelines are plowed back into the markets.
Signals from President-elect Barack Obama that he and his team will be ready to hit the ground running have boosted confidence that the government will do whatever it takes to tackle the year-long recession, prompting hopes of a so-called “Obama rally” in stocks.
Bear-stricken Wall St bets ’09 will be a bull year | Reuters
Happy New Year, Elaine. I also hope there will be some recovery, if only for the sake of those who have lost so much of their hard earned savings. It is going to be interesting to see how we deal with the aftermath of 2008 and the last 8 years. Strangely I am not as pessimistic as I have been recently.
Happy New Year indeed. Elaine, I just don’t wanna look. I will probably take a peek around tax time, but sometimes there are more important things to do than watching investments. My biggest investment is in people, my family, my friends, and my work mates. Be well.
Mary – I feel the same…optimism is alive again.
Grandalfe – well I don’t watch mine all the time but I do open monthly statements and pay attention. If most of yours is in MS I don’t blame you for not looking though, that stock has taken a beating and yet I still hold on to it, despite the losses.
When our company was sold I had a little bit of money left in a retirement account that I didn’t roll into anything larger. The money grew year after year … until just recently.
The account lost enough money so that the balance is low enough that the company managing it is going to start charging me a service fee.
They’ve done such a poor job managing my money that they’ve lost enough of it that I no longer have the minimum required for them to waive maintenance fees. (I’m not upset — everybody tanked — but it is ironic.)