It has been a pretty good ride, hasn’t it?
I mean, since the dark days of the “great recession” when the DOW bottomed out at 6443.27 on March 6, 2009, the market has gone pretty much straight up.
Remember those guys in the office that spent all day with a browser window open to their E-Trade accounts so they could “trade” their mutual funds?
They were all over the place before the DOW tanked. They got killed during the crash. And now that they’ve built their 401ks back up a little, they’re back with a vengeance and they’ve all been partying.
Which is all cool. I don’t ever begrudge anyone their success.
But the funny thing I’m noticing is that people have really short memories. One of those trader-guys even told me that the same thing can’t happen again “because the government won’t let it”.
Wow.
The other thing I’ve noticed recently is that those guys are a bit less euphoric. The reason is pretty easy to determine.
The DOW closed at 16,576 on December 31, 2013. Last Friday it closed at 16,544.
So those clowns day trading their index funds are now negative for the year.