4/15/04 - If the market is down...

[tsptalk]

As I mentioned in today's comments (http://www.tsptalk.com/comments.html)if the market, in particular the S&P 500, is down close to the deadline, I will move back to the G fund for tomorrow. If it is up, I won't do anything today. It looks like it's going to take me down to the wire as it's been up, then down, now about flat. Stay tuned.

Tom

[puertorico]

I hear something about japanesse released,may good

news help a little:?

[NatX]

Any suggestions what you'd do in my case ... over here in the I getting hammered! (again). I'm afraid if I get out now I'll miss an upswing tomorrow. ugh! :P

[tsptalk]

Well I guess I'll stick to my game plan and get out (the S&P is down as I write this).I just sent the email alerts. I did this last month and it burned me but last month was not on the Friday of options expiration week.

Sometimes I can get a reading off of my own fear whether the market is going to rise. I am feeling some fear but I think the "buy the dip" mentality may burn some traders in the days ahead. It's been too easy to buy the oversold condition. As I thought would happen inMarch we may get that one more blowout push down here in April to really stimulate some fear. I could be wrong but my account will be safe until I know better.

This is for short term investors. If you are a long term investor this is just part of the wiggles. Since I am getting out Nat, I don't really want to recommend anything else. No one wants to miss a rally but my main goal is to preserve my account. The gains will come once we are out of this consolidation.

Tom

[GTO1970]

I"m staying in! for long termer Tom is right this is the normal path of ups and downs

The way I see it, the market maybe only down about 2.50% now and to me a 5.00% down market is normally and even good for the market to keep the checks and balances aligned and will come back stronger than before everyone got the jitters!

Fear=BUY :)

GTO

[tsptalk]

If I get burned again by my own fear, somebody smack me. Fear does = buy and I should know that asI write about itevery week. It's these stats I keep finding that have been messing with me.

If the stats turn out to beright, please disregard the smacking part. :oo

[tsptalk]

I expected a pivotal day today that willdetermine the next move by the market. Instead we had a wishy washy, up down, flat day that left us with more questions. The Dowand S&P 500 were up slightly and the Nasdaq and small caps were down. More earnings announcements coming after the close with IBM being the main attraction.

It wasn't a day to get too excited about. The bulls had there chances to scoop up some beaten down stocks, in particular the chip stocks, but the buyers never really stepped up. The good news was there was no "water fall" decline.

[tsptalk]

IBM just reported earnings meeting expectations. Nothing too exciting. I think investors would have liked to have seen a little more than that.

[thinks]

I have a question that I hope not to sidetrack your thread much....

I had made some changes online on Wed. morning and just received email confirmation it was completed .... I'm central time and my understanding reading at the TSP site was thinking this should have been done before now because I did it online first thing in the am but is it done a little late sometimesor maybe I've misunderstood... I'll go back to see to reread it now and I'll search here too tosee if you've mentioned this more(should have done it first ..sorry) . But I was just wondering since it seems like you make moves often if you find they do move your changes on the correct dates and if you now how long it takes from your experience.... also do you get their emails saying your changes were completed? Thanks for any guidance on this. I'm learning and I should head off to bed.

[tsptalk]

thinks -
I do make a lot of moves and I have never had a problem. Sometimes the site itself doen't show your transaction timely but it always gets done on time if you do it before the deadline, in your case 11:00 AM CT.

So if you made a transfer Wednesday morning before 11:00 AM CT, your money will be in your new allocation for Thursday morning.

Also, I do get my email confirmations.

Hope that helps.
Tom

[smine]

I have made 2 transactions before the time limit, that were never actually "received" by TSP. This can be very disappointing. The good news is now an email confirmation can be made. TSP doesn't do this immediately so it may be late in the day or the next day that you receive confirmation (better than by snail mail). Also I suggest after you made changes, allow the confirmation page to load entirely (bar seen at the bottom of the page). Because of those 2 disappointments I did write to TSP and recommend that anitinerary be assigned to all transactions, to track these moves better.

[puertorico]

I find a point here !

S fund has been hammered more than others fund

so,when the times comes ,S fundwill be up more

than others fund ?

I 'm thinking doing a LITTE-move to be in stock effective on

monday,fROM 100-G TO 65-G 15-C 20-S :^

[tsptalk]

You are always a step ahead of me PR. :!