Goodbye to 2009. Earlier, I had been hearing a lot of people grumble about how glad they are that this year will soon be over. It was a pretty tough year for a good lot of people (particularly the first half of the year) so I’m sure most of you are relieved that we’ll now be “starting afresh”.
As for me, I’m starting the year “cautiously hopeful” (or as the oft-heard, well-worn cliche of recent years states: “cautiously optimistic”). For a change, I thought to channel a more rowdy mood for the start of this New Year and present you with a slightly obnoxious 2009 retrospective, a humorous and satirical view of the year that was:
The Digerati Life’s 2009: A Year In Review
Now how about I peel back some of the pages of time and offer you The Digerati Life’s own retrospective and show you a sampling of what we wrote about over the past year? Here are some of the highlights, commentary, opinions and discussions that we had in 2009:
JANUARY: Millionaire Secrets of the Super Rich: The Big Problems They Keep
Pondering some grim realities of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression: why do some of the super rich find themselves so troubled? What type of problems and terrible millionaire secrets do these people harbor?
FEBRUARY: Obama’s Foreclosure Bailout Plan: Should There Be Help For Homeowners?
What do you think of Obama’s foreclosure bailout plan? It’s a whole separate plan that’s not part of the stimulus package details.
MARCH: 1929 Stock Market Cycle: Are Technical Indicators, Stock Trends Repeating History?
So is the buy and hold strategy dead? I’ve been reading a lot of articles about this lately. But do you believe it?
APRIL: Credit Card Spending Down By 10%, Ours Is Down By 50%
This article describes our own response to this relentless economic downtrend. Let’s cut costs!
MAY: Good Business In A Bad Economy? Grow Your Business In A Recession
I’d like to look at our economic situation as a glass that’s half full, rather than half empty. When tough times call, opportunities are just around the corner.
JUNE: I Need A New Credit Card Fast
Here’s a post that was inspired by the story of how Advanta closed my credit card account, causing me to scramble to try to get a new credit card to replace it. It was a situation repeated many times over around the nation: credit card companies folding under the strain of defaults and a tough business environment.
JULY: Great Stock Market Performance, But Will Dow 9,200 Hold?
The Dow Jones finally breached the 9,000 mark. Here were the thoughts and speculations that swirled around this event.
AUGUST: California Unemployment Rate History: A Visual Guide
Here’s where I cried a little about the state of unemployment in the nation and in my own backyard.
SEPTEMBER: How One Debtor Resolves Her Credit Card Problems
The year wasn’t being too kind to some people. There were those who were at wit’s end about their credit card problems, as they found themselves facing unexpected interest rate hikes.
OCTOBER: Double Dip Recession: Why Dow 10,000 May Not Last
With National Unemployment Statistics showing jobless numbers at record highs and Economic Growth apparently on the upside, we’re seeing mixed signals. Are we vulnerable to a double dip?
NOVEMBER: U.S. Unemployment Rates and the History of Recession: A Visual Guide (Map)
As the year winds down, I had to take a peek at U.S. unemployment rates again.
DECEMBER: Zhu Zhu Pets: Top Toy For Your Christmas Stocking
Eh. Just had to end with the year’s must have toy.
I’ll close by saying that I’m one of the 69% who’s hopeful about this coming year. This CNN poll shows us that while more people are feeling more positive than not about their future, such confidence levels are lower than what they were a decade ago: in 1999, an overwhelming majority of people (85% of poll respondents) were hopeful about their situation for the following year. But these results are far from surprising when you’re coming off a recession vs riding the wave of a huge boom. I don’t find the poll that meaningful (the CNN news title is in fact, misleading) given that it pretty much just states the obvious.
So it’s all up from here right? I’d love to wish everyone here a Happy New Year! I’m 100% certain I’m starting it off right with a game of Catan with a couple of pf bloggers — the bundle of fun known as Cap and Lazy Man 
.
A Virtual Toast To 2010 and A Happy New Year To All!
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
I feel the same way about 2009 as everybody else did… I’m glad it over. But I also acknowledge that 2009 was an important year too. It was (hopefully) the year of bottoming (or turnarounds), and a pivotal year that we desperately needed.
So, I gave 2009 a respectful and courteous nod as it’s time expired, and welcomed 2010 with a big open armed embrace as it popped through the door smiling!!!
Happy New Year, and here’s a virtual “ting” to your virtual toast!
-Don
I’m only glad that the latter half of 2009 is over. I thought that the first half (my recollection is that we fell to somewhere near DOW 6500 in March) was encouraging.
This take is opposite to the conventional wisdom because the conventional wisdom is rooted in the Buy-and-Hold Model of understanding how stock investing works. Under the conventional model, price gains are always viewed asa a good thing. My view is that price gains are good only to the extent that they are justified by productivity of the economy. The U.S. has been sufficiently productive to support stock gains of 6.5 real (but nothing more than that) for many, many years. My view is that any gains beyond 6.5 percent are financed by a lowering of gains in subsequent years. So we are really only fooling ourselves when we pretend that Bull Market price gains are lasting.
Early in 2009, we had returned to fair-value stock prices. Had we stabilized there, we could have avoided a second crash and the economic depression that is likely to follow from a second stock crash. Now we are back at dangerous price levels and I would put the odds of us seeing a second crash sometime over the next three years or so at about 75 percent.
I’m not all gloom and doom, however. I believe that many people are going to open up to the idea of ditching the Buy-and-Hold Model after it causes another crash. We have learned so much about how to invest effectively over the past 30 years (that we have not been able to tell others about) that I believe we are going to see a great economic expansion after things get bad enough that we achieve a consensus that Buy-and-Hold can never work.
I am rooting for a crash big enough to bring us to our senses but not so big as to entirely destroy our economic and political system, to be followed by the greatest economic surge ever seen in U.S. history as knowledge of how stock investing really works spreads to millions of middle-class investors.
Rob
I had a great year. But I accept I was lucky – I kept most of my freelance contracts, and I kept my head when the market fell. It could have all gone very badly, as it always could, but I get a lot more nervous near the top of market cycles than bouncing around near the bottom!
happy new years
happy new year my friend
wish u luck
So far, the first month of this new year has been fabulous! I hope it has been for the rest of you readers of this blog too!!
Mya