Looks like the Dow dropped over 1100 points today. Part of me wants to be shocked and a little panicky — that’s a big-ass hit, and for us personally it means a significant hit to our retirement savings. I mean, that’s a lot of dollars gone in one day.
Looking at it a little more calmly, though, what we lost is about what we had gained in the past few weeks of ridiculously over-optimistic frenzy. Berkshire, for example (BRK.B, not the hoity-toity flavor) dropped to its early January price. AAPL dropped a little more, down to where it spent the majority of the second half of last year. The index funds, like QQQ, DIA and SPY, have all dropped to about where I’d have normally expected to see them about now. In other words, if you look at the chart for the past year, and extend the trend line — there you are. We just erased a very anomalous growth bump that just reeked of a near-hysterical speculative bubble.
Now, if we can just go a few days without continued hysteria we’ll be in good shape.