The oil industry helped form US dominance in plastics, pharmaceuticals, chemical processing, electronics, and shipping as well as making the US dollar the reserve currency of the world. Those who make light of this industry or want the US to give it up know little how important it is the the US and how it impacts more than just autos, power, and transportation.

Yawn, the biggest worry is actually if the dollar weakens more. Second to that is N. Korea bluster which may eventually get a response from the US which is deserves. France is interesting but I don't expect much. It is already heavily socialistic already. Any change won't be as great as Trump in the US which had no major affect to the market.

There is truth to this posting. The sad fact is the Federal Reserve is slowly and quietly killing the free market with its manipulation and with it capitalism which it is doing a disservice to by trying to make it adverse for all besides banks to hold or accumulate capital. There is much more wrong with this than just destroying proper price discovery. For one, it has destroyed our strong growth economy and made housing unaffordable for all new entrants.

Sadly, the author is right in the fact few are investors anymore, because more and more people are simply paying people to invest on their behalf either through brokers, mutual funds, hedge funds, or derivatives. This only lopes money onto the beast with very little thought and leads to worse investing. Anyways... I could go on but I think you get the point. Buy stocks yourself and avoid the service charges and be cautious. The bubble won't deflate overnight, but who knows when it will. When it does the Federal reserve won't be able to dent the decline with lowering rates much and can't expand its balance sheet aggressively because it already has done so and can't unwind very fast.

I assume this is mainly the typical firsts reaction to rate increases. Sadly it tends to set the stage for an ugly collapse because it is premised on people buying at elevated levels to get the low rates before they end and typically leads to bad decisions in their ability to afford what they buy.

Buying a house with a low rate at high prices is much worse than buying a house at lower prices at higher rates. You can negotiate your mortgage down as rates drop but you can't negotiate your debt down as rates rise.

It is very much worth looking at if it falls further. Even so, don't expect pharma stocks to do well given Washington's pressure on what they call overpriced drugs and the anti-Obamacare proposals. If they actually get passed you will see a collapse of many pharma stock prices and biotechs.

J&J is a fine company and long term the company is worth buying here anyways. The price declines are just rightly factoring in unusual risk in the pharma industry.

Most of this is probably due to weakness in the dollar.

A downturn in the market in the normal band of trading trend lines is not a correction. We will see if it manifests into a correction if it keeps declining. Even so, if it is, it seems to be a slow moving not particularly significant one so far.

The only really major change is the dollar weakness which has been visible after Trump's election which is not very good for the US.

As you can see with your graph the Trump effect was over lauded and was merely the market acting within norms leading to no major breakout within the normal trends. The effects of Trump will come when something major is actually passed by his administration. So we will see the real Trump effect sometime later.

Right now it seems things keep carrying on as if nothing much happened.

The market is Fed on Federal Reserve chicanery and government deficits. Sadly, I don't see either one ending soon, so the badger is free to frolic until it gets to fat to run away from anything and pops under its own massive weight. Right now the weak US dollar is masking the weakness and the strong growth expectations are being yanked like the last 20 times they were promoted.

I agree with the author to curb your risk. That said, it's not the end of the world for stocks anytime soon. The best place to look for a asset bubble collapse is housing prices because the Fannie Mae Freddie Mac make the government and taxpayers hold the bag game is still very much alive and well.

Sadly the downward drop is less transparent to most because it is masked by the weaker dollar which is not good as many may say. Your assets are worth less and US exports. That said, large global companies can use sales outside the US to support their numbers. What is another concern, is the lower dollar stokes inflation which gives the Federal Reserve less lateration in their policy decisions.