Virtual Money

Online stock trading can reveal market conditions and history for anybody who is paying attention.

It takes a little research, but snap shots of market history and conditions are available.

Probably the most important thing is to recognize the various bubbles that come along. This is where the strength of online stock trading can be front and center. So much data is within our grasps. There is no reason to float up in any bubbles up higher than you want to go.

In the 1990’s, we had the technology stocks bubble. There was to be no end to the rise in technology stocks.

The internet had reached a critical mass of sorts, though it was (and is) still evolving; yet, like the rise of past communication systems — telephone and radio– there was a huge run up in the stock of many companies that really had no viable business plan.

IPOs were made on the basis of promises that held no more heft than a cool breeze in the tropics. Venture capitalists emptied their pockets into the piggy banks of kids still in college that started businesses with names that sounded like a baby talk, such as “Google”.

A few of course made it, Google being the shining example. Most startups of the time didn’t. Even some older companies that had a solid history in technology left their straight and narrow and tried to innovate way beyond their curve, most with disastrous results.

Then September 11 disrupted the markets and threatened to send the country and the markets into a tailspin. Interest rates were lowered and even though many had lost millions and billions in the tech stock bubble, the easy and now cheap money was flowing into a so-called bedrock investment: real estate.

There have always been bubbles and manias. Just ask the Dutch, who saw tulips trade for more than gems centuries ago. The madness of the crowds not wanting to be left out creates a “me too” type of thinking. All the lemmings buy.

Real estate has always had a speculative side. Levittown, NY, the first mass market tract housing suburb, was built largely on speculation. However, it was not pie- in- sky, as a number of factors such as better roads, returning World War II service men and the desire to leave the inner cities came together in the right factors to make the smart money spend a little there.

Today’s problem in real estate has been exacerbated by government distortions in the lending standards and free and easy money. These two prongs of the pitch fork have been added to a third prong of packaging up this devil’s brew of promises and selling them across the globe.

All well and good when the bubble is floating upward; a real stab to the heart when the bubble starts to lose altitude.

I wasn’t the only one facing financial trouble in Flint Bankruptcy seemed to be epidemic, with every other person, it seemed, filing one type of bankruptcy or another. I tried to stave off the trouble as long as possible, but I eventually couldn’t pay even my mortgage. This was the end, I thought. I needed to try to at least save my home. I had worked all these years to try to make something of myself, and I couldn’t let this set back ruin my life. I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to sell the house and move to a better economic client and a better weather climate. I had studied hard to get a degree in hospitality management, and had paid my dues with a series of low end jobs, working the graveyard shift, and now, when I just started to make some money and get ahead, the economy lets me down. This wouldn’t stand! I would not be beaten by the economy. Just because there was a recession, or a depression as far a the auto industry is concerned, I wouldn’t be stopped. I just refused to participate in the recession. I would file if I had to, save my house, reduce my bills, pay them, and leave.