Dividends

Dividends. When the stock market changed rapidly after 2001 it became very obvious that if one were a conservative investor(by the way 'conservative' in this sense is not political but the way one positions investments so they make money in a less risky way) that the only practical way to own stocks was then to own dividend bearing stocks both for the safety of companies that give dividends and for the actual dividends themselves which make it worthwhile to invest in stocks at all. I wrote a Blog recently that I titled "11,000" being the number at which my wife and I were considering to be a good number to sell all our stocks so we didn't have the same problems we encountered in 2001 when the market crashed big last.

However, now I'm beginning to see some signs that things might not be as bad as I thought a few days ago. The first Change is the 150 Billion that the President and Congress want to give to companies and the public to infuse the marketplace with money to jumpstart the economy. The second change is that the price of oil is dropping and that is a potentially very good thing for the world economy. These two factors plus several more on the horizon are beginning to give me personally a little hope that 11,000 won't be reached in the next 6 months.

This is not to say that factors beyond possibly anyones control are not in place now worldwide. Factors like Governmental Hackers from China, Russia, Iran or wherever. Factors like the price of oil or severe weather in too many places at once. In other words too many Hurricane Katrinas or droughts or the like. All these things must be factored in daily to make any sense at all of the worlds stock markets