Bear Mountain Bull

It’s time again for a little BMB R&R, especially with the market behaving as bizarrely as it’s been. Maybe if we stop watching it start to behave a little better…

Posting will be very light and variable over the course of this week, but we’ll put up an open thread each market day for our readers to comment on the day’s market activity or to post any interesting links they might run across.

Check the space below for whatever the latest might be during this ‘off’ time, and please visit the various sites in the ‘Links’ and ‘Regular Stops’ for up-to-date market news and analysis.

BMB will be back in full swing by next weekend.

Borrow and spend. It’s the American way. In his article on the amount of home equity debt currently being carried by Americans, Eric Fry says:

Most folks in the world feel rich by virtue of what they have saved. But we Americans feel rich based on what we’ve spent. And so we spend and spend and feel very rich, while making ourselves very poor. We might consider ourselves rich because we are able to park a brand new car in the garage of our brand new home. But the People’s Bank of China - effectively - holds both the pink slip and the mortgage.

Don’t take money out of your home to buy stocks (or cars, or boats…). You should actually be doing the opposite - take money you’ve got invested in stocks and pay down the debt on your house. You get a guaranteed return on your money that way, equal to the interest rate on your mortgage. Is there a guaranteed return in the stock market?

BMB is of the belief that most people that you think are “rich” are actually not - they have lots of things, very little money, and a lot of debt. Those that don’t have all of the “things” are more than likely a lot wealthier than the others - they haven’t spent all of their money and are carrying little to no debt.