Yep.

And watch for bargains for your Roth IRA.

If your retirement account is up, see what you can do to minimize exposure IF you feel this is it. Sell funds you are up on and move that money into cash. If this continues there should be (more) buying opportunities coming up.

If you've stacked enough physical PMs and want to get more exposure, consider some gold and silver mining stocks that are currently really cheap. We bought Avino at $.72 a share a few years ago and sold most of it at > $2. about six months later.

Oil related companies like some of the MLPs have done really well lately and some pay 10% or more dividends yearly as well. Buy them cheap if you can and build up your dividend income taking distributions as cash to your money market account and then buy more when prices are good versus DRIP setups.

REITs have had a good run the last couple years, but MAY take a clobbering if rates go up. Course I was advised to stay away from REITs 2 years ago by a financial advisor. I bought Armour at $19.40 and it's distributes $.19 per share every month and not too long ago was at $27. per share.

There is opportunities out there. Of course if I couldn't feed my family for a year and didn't have my preps in order, I wouldn't consider going nutty with investments of any kind.

Sorry I didn't read the entire thread.

Part of my life has been buying other companies.  First let me tell you, a company is not worth what its stock can be.  The stock market is fueled by speculation of where it will be and influenced by profit taking.  You can gain control of a company if you own or control the majority stock but its not what its worth.

It would be an fair indicator if everyone didn't reinvest their dividends in stocks but most of us do.  I'll give you an example of one I recently researched.  Harley Davidson their sales have been down 8% the last few years.  Their stock however if you drew a line over the last five years at the average, hasn't really seesawed its average more than $2 on a $47 a share stock.  Yet, its had some highs as high as $70 a share in 2014.  Time is a factor and those nice stock charts would be a lot better tool if it had an operator horizontal line that gave you the price at the intersect thus an average.  Now if you go back in time, if I had invested in HD stock when my son was born, some 25 years ago and reinvested the dividend, it would have been five times what it was worth at buy in.

That takes you full circle to make a buck making one part or make a buck making ten parts.  Conclusion, HD isn't going anywhere anytime soon.  What brought this on was their announcement of them closing their Kansas facility.  Well, I could have told them a 750 cc Harley wouldn't do will in the US.  Its not the first time they tried that.  They play in the premium market and people don't pay a premium for a bug and premium toys, motorcycles, boats, etc. don't do well in a down economy.  Now this said, HD built the 750 cc not really for the US market but the Asian market.  It remains to be seen whether that's going to be a major hit for them.

That's what I mean about the market doesn't tell a story, even a plant closing doesn't tell a story.  In fact, plant buying is a move by other companies to try to shore up their profits short term and can be an indicator of long term problems.  Buying your competition isn't a good thing in a down turn market.

That takes us to your question.  No, I don't see a down turn market in the US.  In fact, just the exact opposite.  I'm seeing more jobs in the US, jobs that matter with enough pay they can buy more durable goods and even the beginnings, very beginnings, of overseas jobs I saw leave this country coming back.  We're not going to be some China that their internal market is so large they have had amazing economic growth every five years but we're already the star of the Western Nations again.

Here's another point, you pour Federal monies into social programs, its like throwing it in a fire.  There's no return on your investment.  Throw it at defense spending, it creates jobs, tax revenue, spurs the economy, and you get a return.

I'm not a stock market pro so I won't predict what it will or won't do.  There's all sorts of reasons why people take their profits when they do.  For example, our stock market has long been propped up by 401Ks and higher interest rates will mean less speculation.  Its going to do what it does but at most, the very most, its just a rough indicator of actual economy.

Don't take my word for it, look around you?  They building more houses?  More jobs in the paper?  If anything, I'm amazed how how fast we're bouncing back from regulate to death eight years of the Democrats.  Like I said, we're no China but getting back to pre-2008 is a relief.  Another eight years of fat cat idiots that couldn't make it as lawyers and never took a science class going "I do't want to be in this industry", I don't know where we'd be.

Tj