Investing to Wealth

Filed under: After the bell, General Motors (GM), Market matters

The top U.S. indexes were up a little over 1% today. In a perverse way, it was good news. American markets are down almost 40% this year, and the Dow Jones Financial Index is off 55%.

It is nice to be able to say the numbers are in the books and that the year is over. The market does not work that way. December 31 does not look any different than January 5. The same issues are still on the table: No one will lend money; jobs are falling; real estate prices are off; earnings are terrible.

The government will keep dumping capital into the system. There are no reasonable predictions of whether the TARP or new Obama bailouts will work. The market will have to wait until the money is spent.

High oil prices hurt the economy badly early this year. Now they are down and won't go up. Even a violent battle in Gaza has not pushed crude up much. The fear of falling demand has overwhelmed that.

Perhaps one of the telling signs in today's trading was that General Motors (NYSE: GM) fell almost 16% to $3.20. GMAC, which GM still owns in part, got a $6 billion bailout yesterday. GM got its own bailout earlier in the month.

In this market, optimism does not last long.

The unofficial closing numbers:
DJIA: 8,776.39 +108.00 +1.25%
NASDAQ: 1,577.03 +26.33 +1.70%
S&P 500: 903.25 +12.61 +1.42%

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Closing bell, closing year -- good riddance originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 31 Dec 2008 16:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.