re: Dow futures fall 100 points

My stance is I have no fricking idea.

Yeah. If you're right 60% of the time, that's pretty good. Excellent if you're disciplined and only take small losses, don't get greedy, and at least take some money off the table from time to time.

I have no major issue with buy and hold. But buy and plan to hold, but also plan a maximum loss to get out at, and plan to take at least some profit at a certain gain. My opinion only, but the lack of doing this is the largest mistake everyone, including myself, makes.

I don't make it very often. I should have sold more silver when it was at all time highs. I didn't. Mistake. If I had, I could have moved the part I sold to a different asset class, which at that time would have been equities for me. More cash for the run up.

I should have bought real estate in the down market. I didn't. Mostly because I didn't want more real estate headaches, but that's a poor excuse for missing that opportunity.

I should have absolutely loaded on GE and Minnesota Mining and Mfg. I kept the same position I've always had. How good more of these two been going forward at a lower cost basis?

Years ago, I put way too much in Calpine after Enron went broke. I needed cash and sold way too soon. Mistake.

No one knows the direction. I'm personally skittish about the more aggressive growth stocks right now. An example being FB. Maybe I'm crazy, but how, given the present uncertainty, anyone would want to buy FB at these levels is beyond me. Tesla. Same. TwitterTwatter. Same. And people say I'm aggressive. What's that junk trade at? 80 times meeger earnings. I find it absolutely crazy.

Today made some sense, insofar as DJ was getting bought, and Q's not as much. RUT still lags in my opinion, and if I'm going to get aggressive anywhere, it will be in a RUT stock. Albeit with much more volatility.

It's an interesting time to really look at your portfolio and try to balance some aggressiveness with some defense and wealth preservation. I've been reading a lot. Paying more attention during the day, and watch a lot more of the shows in the evening and early afternoon.

I really enjoy managing my own investments. However at some point I can see paying someone to do it for me.

The scary part for me is I believe in order to have a balanced asset class portfolio you should own income property. And as I get older, I can see not wanting any of this. My experience with property managers has never been good. I'm in my 40's, and there are times I'd like to sell it all. But frankly it has performed so well, I don't. It's a worry. I'm not interested in REITs. I probably don't know enough about them to be frank.

The other two areas that concern me are I don't own a lot of tech stocks, or any biotechs. There's guys on here that seem to know the products and growth potential, but I don't understand this stuff, and the one thing I never do is invest in something I don't understand. This is another place I can see me paying someone to help me with.

I mean I own 0 biotechs. I played options on more of them mentioned on here by a guy that seemed to know what he was doing. I bought a hundred shares and sold covered calls. I ended up collecting premium, and I eventually sold the stock at a small gain. Outside of that, I have never owned another one.

I have some areas I need to work on. But I guess I own mutual funds, so maybe I own stuff that I have no idea I own. Actually, I'm sure about that. One the reasons I'm going to change my company's retirement advisor as soon as my partner retires.

But seiriously, my biggest concern is what is the best and quickest food to get for dinner this evening. Yeah, in a lot of ways I'm a loser.

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I'm in the camp that says the lows are in and we aren't sniffing them again.

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Been reading various stats on volatility of last week. Kind of mind blowing. Can't remember volatility like this except '08.

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Can't remember volatility like this except '08.

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I've been waiting for this week since 2009. It's been wonderful! I've had a good year this week....

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We need higher interest rates, and another 15-20% decline in equities. Healthy thing to knock some over leveraged players out. Hopefully the Fed does the right thing here.

I still dont see the markets getting close to the lows. I'll buy a little if they do

Testing the lows of last week. I think the low holds and the market gets to all time highs before the end of the year. Blue Light special time.