Interesting Data Points

Study done in December (I wonder how much worse the numbers look now)
* 7% of 32 million U.S. Households owed more on their home than their home was worth.
* Estimated that 760,000 homes will be foreclosed on (is that proper terminology?) in 2007 and 935,000 in 2008. This compared to an average from 2000 to 2006 of 440,000. Since every estimate of this U.S housing downturn has been woefully optimistic compared to what actually has happened I would not be surprised if this one is as well.

PE Ratio using LTM Last Week, Year Ago (I can't get this to line up right)
DJIA = 15.74, 22.02
S&P 500 = 16.99, 17.44
Seems the really big boys in the DJIA have become much cheaper than the S&P 500

The market has really done a bunch of nothing the last two weeks.
Last week 2 of the 3 indexes (DJIA, S&P 500, NASDAQ) were up slightly.
This week DJIA ended down 1.2%, S&P 500 was down .5%, and the NASDAQ was down 1.6%. Grant it the volatility makes all this seems much more painful but the indexes finished above correction level as of the close Friday. The broad indexes really have not gone down all that much. My guess is this would go down as one of the shortest corrections ever if we are indeed done.

Yet the damage is worse digging into the numbers
The average S&P 500 stock was down 20% from its 52 week high and the average small cap stock was off 25%

Be wary of false rallies
Close of the NASDAQ May 31st 2000 - 3400
Close June 1st - 3582 up over 5%
Close June 2nd - 3821 up over 6%
The NASDAQ was up 18% for that week!!!!!!
Stayed around those levels for 4 months before falling all the way to 2615 by December 31st of that year.

I was perusing some old stuff and saw this on an old blog after the close June 1st 2000 - "Woo Hoo! More economic data out this morning shows the economy is slowing and stocks surged in appreciation. Some one reading this a year from now will think we are all crazy" - What a prophetic statement.