Wall Street Showed Resilience

January 1, 2008

Wall Street ended in mixed and showed resilience in a year of economic turmoil.

After a year of high up and down swings, the Wall Street managed to finish 2007 with a modest gain regardless of crises in credit and housing market and concerns about an economy possibly headed for recession. Probably it was a mixed year of bull and bear and many analyses predict that the same will continue in year 2008 also.

The US stock market started 2007 with a short-lived rally and plunged in late February, with the Dow cracking almost 416 points in one day as concerns about subprime mortgages swept through the market, but within weeks, the stock investor were optimism about a strong global economy and solid domestic employment began pushing the stock price higher and on May 30, the S&P 500 hit an all-time high, surpassing its record reached at the end of the tech bubble seven years earlier, but all that distorted almost overnight in mid-summer with the subprime concern morphing into a credit freeze..

Financial stocks took a hard hit as their earnings outlook fogged up as well as shares of automakers, consumer goods that produce household goods, textiles, etc were also beaten down as stock market investors doubted the aptitude of consumers, who fuel two-thirds of the economy, to keep spending.

Even though the stock market gain was skimpy at best. Most of the analysts and stock traders noted that initial public offering activity was high, share buybacks were at record highs and investors in certain sectors were handsomely rewarded.

At the end of the year, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 13,264.82, up 6.4% for the year. The broader Standard & Poor's 500-stock index closed at 1468.36, up 3.5 % for the year.

According to me for stock investing I will look for sectors such as energy and healthcare and specific stock pick from power sector, internet companies and might take some risk in financial related stocks also, however for stock trading there are lot of stocks hanging around which could be good bet on a short term basis.