The Dow topped out at 14,168.53 on Oct. 9, 2007. As of right now, it’s at 6,672.93.
Just how low will it go? Post your predictions here. Winner gets to say “I told you so”. Bonus points for tying it to a time frame.
I think it will bottom at 4600 in 18months.
10,000.
Wishful thinking.
Why worry about the Dow, unless it mirrors your portfolio?
My company’s stock has gone up about 40% since 2008. Cha-ching!
Poor Apple’s been down 50% in the same period. Google too.
I predict the rich will stay rich, the poor will stay poor, and as usual, the middle class gets reamed.
I don’t see it dropping below 5000. I’d place bets that it bottoms out around 5500 and turns around early next year.
I’m not sure what the Dow even is, and I would google it, but from the sound of this thread it seems really boring.
Wow…I don’t know what too say. You don’t know what the Dow(Dow Jones Industrial) is?
I’m feeling pessimistic: By the end of Obama’s first term, 1000. _
Nope. I’m assuming it has something to do with stocks or somesuch just because of the responses to this thread, but I’ve never paid any heed to that stuff as it bores me to tears.
I have very little that’s not either in a money market,CD, or savings account right now. I’ve already lost more than I care to. …I may put a little in Net Flix though.
Still, predictions are fun! C’mon people! Post em! We’ll revisit this thread when its all over and see who was closest.
Dow is the correct pronunciation of Tao, as in the Tao of Physics, the Tao of [Winnie the] Pooh, etc.
This current period is a great time to not own any stocks. At least to not have owned them a year ago and still have them… 
The big question will be when’s a good time to buy?
Probably listens to Rush.
Maestro, what’s your company? Are they in the foreclosure auction business, by any chance? 
What about owning, with intent to hold for as long as it takes for markets to regain health? Assuming my stocks don’t evaporate completely, the ones I buy now should appreciate immensely if my timeline is longer than the duration of this current crisis.
My question is: does anyone really advocate a mass sell-off of all stocks?
[edit: forgot to offer a prediction, I say 4600 or so is the bottom, and that will happen sometime around Halloween or Thanksgiving this year]
Ha, no.
I’m not too in touch with the economy. I see the numbers go down and I say, “That’s not good.” 
5500 ish 
If you don’t hold now, when it comes time to buy it’ll be too late for you.
People like us just cannot time the market.
I believe the standard answer is that it depends on how close you are to retirement. If more than 10 years away, I hear most people being told to stay in. If less than 10 the rules are different. All I know is if we’d gotten out six months ago, we’d be well-positioned to buy back in now. We’ve been holding on to some “liquid” assets and are waiting for what we feel will be a good time to invest.
Mostly we have various funds, not specific stocks. I owned some Intel stock for a few years, including the Internet bubble bursting. I ended up slightly below where I started.
I still don’t have a “real” prediction, just my wishful thinking above. My Rollover IRA is still more than half of what it was at the top of this hill…
5001
(it’s an old The Price Is Right strategy…)
With hind-site, all becomes clear. One might argue that the time to get out has already passed. It will certainly take a decade or longer for stocks to get back to their 2007 highs. If the Dow drops down to 5000 or lower, it could even take several years to get back to todays numbers.
If you buy shares today, and the market continues to drop, it may take years just to break even.
…personally, I don’t really advocate anything, but I put my money where my mouth is when I say I moved the vast majority of my 401k funds into money market accounts when the dow was at 8000.
As the Maestro points out, there will always be individual winners. However, you’d got to know something about something to pick them out.
There is current support around 6500 if or should I say when we break thru that the next support is at 5500-5600 and if it breaks thru that the next support level will be around 4400. so far there is nothing in the economy to be optimistic about so therefore there is no reason for people to reinvest in the market. One thing to remember the DOW consist of only 30 stocks so even though it is the most publicized number it does not give the best representation of what the market is really doing. The S&P 500 though consist of 500 stocks and is a good representation of what is going on in the economy and it has gone from the 1500’s down to 682
The shares of one of the nations largest banks, Citbank, is currently at about $1. 
The economy has become more interesting over the years
The underlying cause of the stock crash is the housing bubble destroying wealth when all these loans go bad. 40 % of the world’s money has disappeared so far. This is because the money was created from debt, as debts go bad, the money supply shrinks. This explains the collapse in the value of commodities as measured in dollars.
Historically, a house could be rented for enough to pay off the mortgage in 15-20 years. However, people like me (I am 50), had never seen home values decline in our life times. After decades of watching others get rich by living in a series of ever finer houses, the speculative fever took hold. This speculative fever will not return for decades . Houses were being bought for prices that could only seem sane if you were sure the price must always rise. The connection between what people were paying for property, and what the property could be rented for was far off historical norms.
Housing prices are still to high by historical “cost to rental value” ratio. They must and will fall. Unemployment and deflation will cause rents to drop. Vast numbers of properties have difficult paper work, sit empty now, but will go on the market in ever increasing numbers over the next 2 years. As housing prices decline perhaps 50 % further, more “debt created dollars” disappear, reducing the value , in dollars, of everything, including stocks.
In a deflationary economy there are no good investments in a broad sense. Sorry to be so long winded, I wanted to explain why I was predicting these outcomes.
Corporate profits will tank as high unemployment, and the general reluctance of people to buy anything in a deflation economy, ruins business generally.
I predict a further decline in housing prices of 36 % reaching a bottom in 2 years, March 2011 ish. The general inflation rate will be - 10 % yr. for the next 2 years.
This leads to my prediction that the Dow will reach bottom in 18 months, 20 % below what it is now. I will say 5360, on Oct 22, 2010. 
Gold will steadily lose value because alarmists will gradually catch on that in this period of deflation, all commodities will lose value, but gold is way over priced now due to it’s primitive attraction during periods of economic confusion , compared to other commodities, so it must fall further to get back in line. Durable commodities, such as copper, tin, gold etc. are bad bets now, as they will all be worth less $ in 2 years. I predict a further 20 % decline in the value of copper- alum - steel etc. Gold will drop below 400 $ USA oz.