Quote from hels02:
That 1966 parallel is only if you are playing indices, and IF at that. I do believe in history repeating itself sometimes, but we aren't going to tell when that will be til hindsight.
Further, there's already a huge discrepancy in the map... you notice that in 1966 there was a 600 point drop we didn't parallel in 2007? They took a HUGE dump, and we went up in our 'correlation'. Pretty enormous move to simply skip over wouldn't you say?
And even if you want to call the correlation, we are on the UP leg of that move before another down. This is no news, what goes up, must come down. That's the entire nature of the market, it's a matter of when you bought and sold in that up and down.
In the meantime, if you pick your stocks carefully, do unemotional due diligence research before you buy (there ARE companies that perform well even during recessions and crashes), ignore other people's personally biased pumps to dump (most article writers), and buy only when others are selling (this is the big one for me, contrary as it is), it's pretty hard to lose. Finally, if you're worried anyway, cover your longs with options.
Can you lose money doing the above? You could, but you'd have to try really hard to.
The people who have to sweat are those who only play indices. How would you know how ALL the companies are going to do, vs those you focus on and follow? One's educated guessing, the other is just guessing.