Thread: Long Term- Future of the Market

Due to the extreme volatility and investor concerns, some traditional indicators have become very bullish. Cash in money market funds could buy 27% of the S&P 500 - the highest level in 24 years. The last peak in 2003 was roughly 22% - and resulted in a vigorous rally. A bull that lasted for five years - could it happen again.

Mrs. Belliston's mantra for surviving tough times was, "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without!" Wish more young people knew that little rhyme. Now you can hand me my "Fuddy" badge.

http://www.tsptalk.com/mb/showpost.p...&postcount=158

Love the new thread idea, James! And I've eaten Poor Man's Casserole before, but when I was growing up it was called "Sunday Dinner"! If you put in a big enough head of cabbage, it can feed a lot of hungry boys!

Lady

What, no recipes involving ramen noodles?! If you want to know how to eat cheaply, just ask a college student or recent grad.

Originally Posted by Mike

What, no recipes involving ramen noodles?! If you want to know how to eat cheaply, just ask a college student or recent grad.

Ramen instant noodles hadn't been invented yet during the last Great Depression.

( See the story of Momofuku Ando, inventor of the instant noodle, in 1971.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momofuku_Ando
The invention made Ando rich, and the college student full.


If you have some good recipes involving ramen noodles- please, by all means- feel free to post them here!

Another cheap staple dish is beans and rice. You can use small red, or black or pinto beans. Or if you want a really sweet bean, use anasazi beans. Tomatoes and chilis provide the vegetable and the beans/rice mix is a complete protein. If you have to have meat in your meal, you can add some ham or hamburger to the beans.

If you're using dry beans, sort them (to remove pebbles and wrinkled or broken beans), wash them, and then cover with water to hydrate them overnight. You can speed hydration by putting them in boiling water, removing from the heat and letting them sit for an hour, but the beans won't be as tender as the overnight method.

When beans are hydrated using the speed method, or if you're using canned beans, now you have to decide if you're going for more flavor or less gas. If you want more flavor, keep the liquid. If you want less gas, drain the liquid and wash the beans one more time. (If you're using the overnight method, a teaspoon of dried ginger in the soaking liquid also helps reduce the gas producing properties - make sure you wash the beans one more time after soaking before cooking them.)

Cook beans (bring to a boil, then reduce heat to simmer) until tender. Again, keep the cooking liquid if you want more flavor, discard if you want less gas. Now add a large can of crushed tomatoes, salt to taste (I add 1 tsp. of sea salt to 3 cans or 8 oz. of dried beans), a 4 oz. can of diced green chilis, 1/2 sweet onion sauted until golden in 2 Tbl of butter, and a few dashes of fresh ground pepper. Simmer until flavors are combined and serve over white rice. I prefer the medium grain (sticky) rice, but long grain rice works too.

Enjoy,
Lady

When things were tight as a kid, we could always tell because we would have pinto beans and cornbread for a week straight. It was only broken up by periods in the summer when we would have a meal entirely of squash prepared in 2-3 different ways.

One of our family favorites was Welsh Rabbit (some people call it Welsh rarebit, but evidently that's a "politically correct" renaming, per Wikipedia and other sources). It'd be our main dish for dinner and we kids absolutely LOVED it and would eat our fill. Had no concept of it being a cost-cutter, just something we had now and then (not often enough). It was one of the more complicated recipes my mom taught me as a kid. There are 2 main versions, one made with milk, one made with beer or ale. Coming from a teetotalling family background, my mom made the version with milk (dad not a teetotaller but he didn't like beer anyway).

Here's the version that comes closest to my mom's (as I remember it). From the Good Housekeeping Illustrated....

MeasureIngredient
¼ cupButter or margarine
½ cupAll-purpose flour
½ teaspoonSalt
⅛ teaspoonDry mustard
⅛ teaspoonCayenne pepper
2 cupsMilk
1 tablespoonWorcestershire
2 cupsShredded sharp Cheddar Cheese
Toasted white or rye bread

We substituted Velveeta for the cheddar cheese (easier to melt?)
We also substituted saltine crackers for the toasted bread

1. In 2-quart saucepan over low heat, melt butter or margarine. Stir in flour, salt, mustard, and cayenne until blended. Add milk and Worcestershire; cook, stirring, until thickened. 2. Add cheese and cook, stirring, just until cheese is melted and well blended. Pour hot cheese mixture over the warm toast and serve immediately.

The history behind the name of the recipe goes something like this, from Wikipedia...

The first recorded use of the term Welsh rabbit was in 1725, but the origin of the term is unknown.[1] It may be an ironic name coined in the days when the Welsh were notoriously poor: only better-off people could afford butcher's meat, and while in England rabbit was the poor man's meat, in Wales the poor man's meat was cheese. It may be a slur against the Welsh, since the dish contains no meat and so was considered inferior. Then again, because the word Welsh was at the time used by the English to describe anything inferior or foreign, it may allude to the dish's Continental European origin.
It is also possible that the dish was attributed to Wales because the Welsh were considered particularly fond of cheese, as evidenced by Andrew Boorde in his Fyrst Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge (1542), when he wrote "I am a Welshman, I do love cause boby, good roasted cheese."[10] In Boorde's account, "cause boby" is the Welsh caws pobi, meaning "roasted cheese". It is the earliest known reference to cheese being eaten cooked in the British Isles but whether it implies a recipe like Welsh rabbit is a matter of speculation.
A legend mentioned in Betty Crocker's Cookbook claims that Welsh peasants were not allowed to eat rabbits caught in hunts on the estates of the nobility, so they used melted cheese as a substitute.

So, as we close the year, how are we doing?

The Thrift Board said “No one can time the market. Put your money into stocks, where it can grow. Stop moving your funds, as you can never beat the market”

So, now, 8 months after the trade restrictions went into affect, how are TSPTALKER doing? Even when limited to only two moves per month?

Well, not so bad, it turns out.

Here are the results from the Autotracker, in the period of January 1 to December 20, 2008. There are currently 165 TSPTALK members being tracked in the autotracker:

Over the period:

155 did better than the I fund. 10 did worse than the I fund.

131 did better than the S fund, 23 did worse than the S fund.

119 did better than the C Fund, 28 did worse than the C fund.

6 did better than the F fund

11 did better than the G fund.


IN a time when the market was down overall by record amounts, and even the vaunted L funds were negative,

….yet more than half the TSPTALKERS beat the L2020, L2030, and L2040 funds.

Something to think about……

I will be everlastingly grateful that I found this site in 06 and started learning from and following the leaders, even before I ever joined the Board a year ago this month. To Tom and fellow MB members, thanks for teaching me things I never knew I needed to learn. You'll never know how much difference it's made in my real account. (slightly better returns so far than my play account YTD and last year better than most funds also, even before I joined tracker).

I'll SECOND That Alevin!

I'd a been deep down the hole otherwise. Thanks everyone!

Sittin' on the porch,
T'horse

If double digit inflation, even hyperinflation, comes as a result of Fed miscalculation, where is the best place to ride it out? Apart from trading occasional opportunities, given our TSP limitations, where should one park everything in that event? What would happen to G fund returns, to the F fund, to stocks?