Since the stock mkt peaked in Oct, Dow has dropped 16%, Nasdaq 23%. Is this the bottom? Is the effect of the housing/financial mkt bubble burst over?

Q4 2007 is the first quarter where GDP\'s growth dropped, to .6%. To be textbookly correct, GDP\'s growth needs to be negative to start counting toward recession requirements. Therefore, at the current rate, the earliest Fed can officially declare \"we are in recession\" would be July 2008. Assume the recent avg recession span, it\'d last 8 months. So we are looking at a projected March 2009 to be \"officially\" out of recession. But that does mean that all will be well at that time.

Last recession, caused by the tech bubble burst was counted from 03/2001- 11/2001.
If I remembered it right, the first rounds of massive layoffs started around March/April time in 2001. I\'m talking about 20, 30% cuts in lots of companies here. Job mkt sure did not recover in Dec 2001. It remained down much much longer. It was very common for people to spend 6 months to find the next job.
Stock on the other hand, started down one whole year earlier. Since it was caused by tech bubble, it\'s better to look at Nasdaq. It peaked (@5133) in March 2000. By the time recession officially started, it already dropped to 2100, a 59% drop. It did not bottom out until Oct 2002! (@1108) And that was supposed to be a short recession!

I have no doubt in my mind that we are heading into recession. How long is it going to last? How deeply will we be affected?... The truth is that we are already a lot poorer than before the dollar started softening, even if we do not count stock/MF losses.
Maybe I\'m just too pessimistic, maybe it\'s too early to talk about recession, but I think it\'s better to think about the worst case, and plan ahead.

For those of you still considering buying a house now, are you leaving enough emergency cash at hand? What if you max out your ability to buy a house, then get laid off? Gone are your cash reserves, still need to cough up the massive monthly mortgage with no income or half-ed income... What then? Sell the house? What if the house has also dropped in value? Or it\'d take months to sell the house?

Stocks are heading down. Gold & oil may be peaking. What else is there to do?
Until someone can convince me a safer way to invest, I\'d rather just sit tight on my cash. But inflation is rising, and interest rates keep on dropping...

结论：折日紫梅乏果了！ KAKA