Good observations, Bill. One exception to the recovery in the stock market is financial stocks. For example, I have 270,000 shares of one regional bank. Three years ago, stock was in the $23.00 range, and dividends were .40 a quarter. Today, dividends are .01 a quarter, and stock is in the $7.00 range.

Doing the math is pretty depressing. $400,000.00 in annual dividends are now $4,000.00. Since the downturn, dividends are down almost $1,100,000.00 and the stock has lost over $40,000,000.00. I have several other bank stocks-less shares. Believe it or not, the losses, as a percentage, were even greater.

Retired people and older investors have traditionally put lots of money in these poor performing but, formerly "safe" investments, and counted on the modest income to live. Lots of folks are hurting, because they have lost a major portion of their life savings and reliable income streams. For them, the recovery will take many more years and considerable suffering.

For years, I've been able to live comfortably on the dividends from this one stock...no longer. While I don't plan to retire anytime soon, it was nice to know that I could have, if I wanted to (still could, actually).

I'm pretty pissed off about the rampant mismanagement in the financial sector. The president of the regional bank I mentioned above went on a family vacation the day he got Federal bail-out money, on the company money-made front page of the WSJ as a result. He spent $19,000.00 on the vacation-one week-end, if you include the cost of the company jet. To put that in perspective for me, that was equal to 6 months of care for my father-in-law at a VA, and nearly twice his funeral expenses.

Pretty disgusting!


Russ

[This message has been edited by captain Russ (edited 12-01-2010).]