Category Archives: The World at Large

WSJ and Net Worth

Posted on by

Someone posted this data on a Fool discussion board, and lamented the poor state of savings in our country.

Median net worth for U.S. households by age as of 2000



                 With Home      Excluding     
 Age             Equity         Home Equity      
75 and older    $100,100        $19,025      
70-74           $120,000        $31,400      
65-69           $114,050        $27,588      
55-64           $112,048        $32,304      
45-54           $ 83,150        $23,525      
35-44           $ 44,275        $13,100      
34 and younger  $  7,240        $ 3,300


Source:  U.S. Census

It is kind of scary. When Social Security goes, who’s going to take care of these folks? Do I need to start saving for their retirement, too?

*sigh*

A very astute Fool Post

Posted on by

I really like this Post of the Day, from the Living Below Your Means Fool board.

http://www.fool.com/community/pod/2004/040319.htm

Simplify, simplify, simplify.

But, of course, I’m not giving up my wireless network. I’m just awash in hypocritical self-contradictions.

A Rave at the Fool

Posted on by

I posted a post yesterday in the Hidden Gems Stocks We Like board at the Motley Fool. At the time of this journal, it had received 36 recommendations or “recs”. (For those who aren’t on the Fool boards, anyone who reads a message can recommend it. You can only recommend a post once, and you have a limited number of recs a day. The top rec earners are sometimes featured on the Fool Post of the Day or week or something).

At the bottom, I also tagged Tom Gardner’s response, which was enough to make me walk around this morning feeling full of myself. It’s nice to be shamelessly self-confident now and then.

The Post

Spam Man

Posted on by

So I glanced at the cover of the Wall Street Journal in our breakroom just now, and there’s an article about a many named Orlando Soto who loves to get SPAM. He opens every single piece he gets and often buys stuff because of it, or visits casinos advertised by it, or whatever.

So, basically the article described him as a sample of why SPAM continues, because people like him like it.

And, I thought, is the WSJ trying to get this man killed?

Small Victories that mean nothing

Posted on by

My small victory of the day is that my post regarding the general market valuation on the Fool HG Market Valuation board now has the highest number of recs ever received on this board, 7. Narrowly edging out the previous highest number of recs, 6.

Of course, there have only been 50 posts, since the board is only about a month and a half old.

But still, something to start the morning with, meaningless as it is.

Buffett Reloaded

Posted on by

I posted the following on the Motley Fool HG Valutaion board, sort of an improvement on an earlier journal entry I had made. So I thought I’d put it here too, for posterity. It also gives me an excuse to try out the lj cut function. And reveal what a total geek I am, in case there was any confusion on that point.

Back in December 2001, Warren Buffett wrote an article for Fortune magazine, which was a followup to a November 1999 article about the valuation of the stock market (actually, it had a lot of good stuff in it, but overall market valuation is what I’m going to discuss here).

continued…

Warren’s Market

Posted on by

Warren Buffett wrote an article in Fortune a while back where he showed some numbers that stated there was a bubble. He wrote it in 1999, and then another followup in 2001.

Basically, he had a chart going back 80 years that showed the total value of the stock market as a percentage of the GNP. For the greater part of the time period, the stock market hovered around 70-90% of the GNP. With a few exceptions: 1998, and 1929. In 1998, it reached 200%, in 1929, it was something less than that (160%?).

His point being at the time that he didn’t find equities appealing. In the 2001 article, he showed it still being around 130%.

He hasn’t updated us lately, so I thought I’d do a few updated calcs.

I couldn’t find the total market value anywhere, so I used the S&P 500 index as a stand-in, and I found some historical GDP instead of GNP, but they’re usually pretty close.

So:

beginning of 2001:

GDP: 9953
S&P: 1320

beginning of 2004:
GDP: 11252
S&P: 1111

for 2001, if I played with and normalized the numbers (basically moving the decimal point on the GDP) I calibrate to Warren’s numbers:

1320/995.3 = 133%

So, going forward to 2004:

1125/1111 = 101%

Warren says that 80-90% gives good odds for stock investment in general.

So, we’re not out of the woods, but getting there.