Saturday, November 10, 2007

Market Suffers From A Bad Week & And Concerns of Holiday Sales

Banks and techs led the way lower this week. I was able to avoid the issues in financials. I think those of you that read this know that by now. However, I was taken down in the tech area. My real life portfolio holds the cubes, QQQQ, which is major tech stocks. With the likes of Cisco Systems and Qualcomm both disappointing and being 2 of the top 5 holdings in the EFT, I took a beating there. I am now back to where I began in that EFT, even.

My portfolio here performed slightly better than the S&P. The S&P was down 3.34% this week. I ended up losing 1.34%. Four of my 10 stocks actually turned a profit this week, PepsiCo, Transocean, CocaCola, and my bigger winner of the week, Davita (DVA) with a gain of 2.1%. Yes, this was just the company rebounding from it's drubbing the previous week. But it is still a good sign that the stock could rebound in the face of a really ugly week.


And now the market is starting to really worry in earnest about the Holiday shopping season. It is now expected to be the worst in years. As a financial blogger and a parent I see two reasons for this:

1) Lack of disposable income with energy costs and food running higher than ever. Many are now trying to save their money instead of incurring more debt.
2) Lack of "must have" toys and items coupled with toy recalls that scare parents to death.

This week, for example, Toys R Us pulled the AquaDots toy off the shelves because the dots would release a date rape drug if ingested. And you guessed it, yours truly had bought an AquaDots toy for my oldest child for her birthday back in August. Thankfully, we ran out of dots a long time ago but we still find stray dots now, months later. It's scary and I really don't want to buy a lot of toys this year.

Oh yeah, and gas is expensive. And oh yeah, yeah, I still have to pay for food. And oh triple yeah, my wife wants a remote start for her car. It all adds up. Hopefully, the market turns in the next few weeks so Daddy can cash a little in for a nice surprise for everybody.

No comments: