On Wed, 02 Mar 2011 20:54:29 -0500, Wayne.B
wrote:

On Wed, 02 Mar 2011 11:38:55 -0800, jps wrote:

I know
more about the equity markets than you'll ever know.

That is highly unlikely but I'm not going to compare resumes with you
in this forum. Suffice it to say that I spent 40 years in the
industry. If that fails me, my youngest son is an ivy league MBA and
CFA.

Most of the
valuations are bogus and financial reports are manipulated to match
the analysts expectations.

Really? There are people who would pay you very well if your findings
are correct. Why not sell those companies short or buy put options?

You're uninformed and sound like you worked at arm's length.

The books are prepared to support the
message, not reality.

Perhaps you could cite some examples other than the outright frauds
like Enron, and the recent fiasco with mortgage backed securities.

Again, you sound naive. How many CFOs of publicly traded companies do
you count as friends? The whole financial reporting practice of most
firms is driven by maintaining or pushing the stock price. Numbers
are regularly manipulated by booking altering revenue recognition,
timing write offs, closing deals, etc. It's all to satisfy the
analysts and expectations. The pressure for these departments to make
the numbers right is extraordinary and it happens everywhere and in
every industry.

It's a rigged game that favors those with the tools to predict and the
resources to manipulate.

If you don't have the know how to study, predict and analyze you are
definitely playing with half a deck. There's an old saying in poker
that if you look around the table and can't figure out who the patsy
is, it's probably you.

You still think Wall Street is a safe gamble? You'd be better off in
a casino betting on craps. Smart people took their cash out of the
market in the late 1990s and never put it back in.

Poor analogy. The market is not without risk but it is most
definitely not a casino. The casino always wins - it is a
mathematical certainty. The right way to think of the stock market is
as a collection of companies in which you can individually assume a
part ownership, or not. Would you want to own a piece of them all?
Most certainly not. My investment returns since the late 90s are very
substantial and there are many others who have done much better.

Best odds in any gambling house is craps. The odds are as even as it
gets.

Maybe you'll be lucky enough to have a boat to live on when the next
dump takes you to naught.

Anyone who goes to naught in a crash is asleep at the wheel, and more
than likely, poorly invested prior.

Let's hope you're not one of them.