Re: Did any stocks go up during the depression?

Max — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 04:03:09 GMT

I would suggest you read anything about great investors like John Templeton or Ben Graham. Both of them looked upon the stocks in the 30's as a once in lifetime buying opportunity. In fact the first printing of Graham's Security Analysis (1934?) deals with the choosing of stocks during that period. All versions of the book were recently released and should be pretty easy to find.

Re: Did any stocks go up during the depression?

pauled — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 01:27:02 GMT

Kent C:

Don't know if this is the best place to post this, but did any stocks go up during the depression of the 1930s? I'm just trying to determine how I can use that lesson for our current depression.

That's a smart question. Another good question is this: how similar will the coming depression be to the great depression? In what ways will it be different? For instance, we're already at war - what does that mean? Another is: a great deal of the pain in the great depression was the effort to keep prices high even though they simply should have fallen. So there were artificial shortages of productive labor and agricultural products - meaning great waste - as well as a great deal of regulations to put limits on other productive enterprises. Will this repeat, or rhyme? Or will it unfold quite differently with stagflation, as in the 70's? It's a crap-shoot. You have to take a view and play the game as you envision it playing out.

As an example of how unpredictable things can be, especially short-term, note the banking industry which is slated for collapse, or bailing out, or combinations of both, both sequentially and in parallel. People may successfully sell a bank short today, or he may get creamed for it, should the state intervene to artificially and temporarily prop up that bank or its insurer. There's as much present day psychology to be considered here, as there are lessons of history and praxeology to be studied. It's not all science, that's for sure.

More directly to your question, I will speculate on who hit home-runs during the 30's. Those who invested in the heavy industry and manufacturing firms. The one's who got the juicy government contracts to build guns, bombs, war-ships and war-planes. Anyone who knew, or suspected, what FDR really was up to would think in that manner. It takes nerve. You have to believe it when a platform involves never sending our boys to a foreign war. You have to believe he's a lying, scheming, criminal son of a gun. It seems that's where the smart money would have been.

Did any stocks go up during the depression?

Kent C — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 00:50:01 GMT

Don't know if this is the best place to post this, but did any stocks go up during the depression of the 1930s? I'm just trying to determine how I can use that lesson for our current depression.

General

Re: Did any stocks go up during the depression?

Re: Did any stocks go up during the depression?

Did any stocks go up during the depression?