The stock market really has no memory from day to day. Yesterday, investors shrugged off bad news out of Italy regarding the country's financial system, while today the market lost over 3% on "bad news out of italy regarding the country's financial system". Such a tough market to trade, I'm starting to have the mindset that now is a great time to start pickin at stocks a bit. To repeat for emphasis, OUR banking system is in great shape, OUR economy is growing albeit slowly, and OUR corporate profits look pretty good. This is a European led market. Period.
So with that in mind, I'm going the way of the contrarian and I'm starting to slowly buy some stocks. Today I bought some Suntrust Financial (STI) at $18.75/share, some Etrade (ETFC) at $9.82, and some Clorox (CLX) at $64.48/share. I only bought small amounts because I'm giving myself room to pick up some more if the market continues to trade down.
In other news, Yahoo and Etrade have both gotten private equity investors and companies to sign "non-disclosure aggreements" recently as both Yahoo and Etrade open their financial books to these individuals who are looking at buying these two respective companies (basically this is very good news for someone that owns stock in either of these companies).
All in all, today was a nasty day for the markets, but the important thing to remember is that you buy stocks when they go down, and you sell them when they go up. Right now they are going down, so you know what I'm doing...
