The recent stock market gyrations have really taken a toll on investment portfolios.

I truly believe that we are witnessing history and this is going to be a buying oppoortunity of a lifetime. (there, I said it)

Wondering if these recent market swings have affected your wine buying habits. I know that I am being more selective because of what is happening and trying to keep cash available for buying opportunities in the market.

thoughts?

Has not effected my buying patern but it has effected my drinking. Going for three glasses of wine tonight instead of my normal one or two.

Did buy Citiback and Bank of American this morning. Super cheap, might get cheaper but then I will buy more.

I know it hasn't seemed like it, but I have been slowing my purchasing, even before this economic chaos.

That said, in light of all that is happening, I'm stopping for now to see just how pricing goes for several items I'm watching, to see if I can pick them up cheaper. So, in that light, yes, it has affected my patterns.

My advisor has officially told me that I'm in the "Freedom 105" plan. Since the LCBO prices do not reflect the market or my significant losses, cash flow is non-existant and I'm definitely in a holding pattern. Now, if the wine prices were reflected in the world markets, that would be a different story altogether.

Seeing that our dollar closed at 82 cents vs the US dollar, I am wondering if we will still continue to see the prices for US wines fall as I am sure that there has been plenty of wines purchased by the LCBO with a stronger dollar.

Wondering if the LCBO will use this as an excuse to raise prices on US wines in the coming months, particularly in December holiday season.

I have been paring down the number of labels that I collect and trying to buy older vintages when I travel. with our dollar falling, I am starting to get hesitant with pulling a trigger.

quote:

buying opportunity of a lifetime

For stocks, real estate or wine? So far I haven't seen but a few sales with wine....but the others....

I figure, if we all drink more wine, we can get ourselves out of this mess. Farming wins, bottling wins, winemakers win, restaurants win, trucking companies, cork makers, chefs, grocery stores, you name it! I see potential for job growth here. And, you know, "it's all about job growth". I'm going to get back to stimulating the economy now...

been pretty dry.

tbird never seems to invite.

quote:

Originally posted by maverickdrinker:
The recent stock market gyrations have really taken a toll on investment portfolios.

I truly believe that we are witnessing history and this is going to be a buying oppoortunity of a lifetime. (there, I said it)

Wondering if these recent market swings have affected your wine buying habits. I know that I am being more selective because of what is happening and trying to keep cash available for buying opportunities in the market.

thoughts?

Mav,

My wife and I were planning on knocking our house down and having a new one built this year possibly next but now I am very tempted to pour the cash into the market in stages over the next 6 months.

We want a new house soooo bad...3 kids in a small bungalow!! But I agree opportunities like this don't come along very often in a lifetime. As Warren Buffet likes to say be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful! So delay lifestyle and new house for another 5 years and invest or go ahead and build??

As for wine likely to slash spending in half until things turn around. Hard to walk into the house with 3 cases of wine as my wife watches our RRSPs evaporate.

We were supposed to drive down to NYC this weekend but cancelled for a variety of reasons. Given the move in the dollar, trip would have probably cost us $300-400 more than we had planned. Also had been putting off ordering a few wines from US stores (just laziness and could not decide how many bottles of which wines I actually wanted), and now they will all cost 15% more than I expected...and makes me think back to how few purchases I made when the $CAD spiked up to almost USD$1.10. Curses!!

Check out Suckling's most recent blog on wine pricing at auctions the past week or so. Interesting read. Seems that many high end wines are going below estimates or not at all. A correction in all markets, across the board.

quote:

Originally posted by WineDaddy:

Mav,

My wife and I were planning on knocking our house down and having a new one built this year possibly next but now I am very tempted to pour the cash into the market in stages over the next 6 months.

We want a new house soooo bad...3 kids in a small bungalow!! But I agree opportunities like this don't come along very often in a lifetime. As Warren Buffet likes to say be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful! So delay lifestyle and new house for another 5 years and invest or go ahead and build??

As for wine likely to slash spending in half until things turn around. Hard to walk into the house with 3 cases of wine as my wife watches our RRSPs evaporate.

One thing about life, is that you should never go through it with regrets.

The second thing is that something you use to cover your head is more important then something you put away for 5-10 years , never look at, hoping that someday it might go up.

And mr. buffett so far has been very dearly wrong with his bets.

I personally have a "punt" fund. Every year I'll stash away 3-5% of my savings into this punt fund.
It's a fund where I'm happy to just lose it all. This market for me is a good time to put that punt fund into use.
I lose it, it's not going to affect me anyway. If it makes money, I take out the gains and leave the punt fund to grow next year when i stick another 3-5% in. Even so, I bought in with mr. buffet and am now down 20% off the bat in 1 week =)

quote:

Even so, I bought in with mr. buffet and am now down 20% off the bat in 1 week =)

You're not the only one. And, that's pretty good considering the DOW is down 40+% for the year.

Hasn't affected my buying patterns, but sure as hell affected my drinking patterns.

quote:

Originally posted by WineDaddy:

quote:

Originally posted by maverickdrinker:
The recent stock market gyrations have really taken a toll on investment portfolios.

I truly believe that we are witnessing history and this is going to be a buying oppoortunity of a lifetime. (there, I said it)

Wondering if these recent market swings have affected your wine buying habits. I know that I am being more selective because of what is happening and trying to keep cash available for buying opportunities in the market.

thoughts?

Mav,

My wife and I were planning on knocking our house down and having a new one built this year possibly next but now I am very tempted to pour the cash into the market in stages over the next 6 months.

We want a new house soooo bad...3 kids in a small bungalow!! But I agree opportunities like this don't come along very often in a lifetime. As Warren Buffet likes to say be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful! So delay lifestyle and new house for another 5 years and invest or go ahead and build??

As for wine likely to slash spending in half until things turn around. Hard to walk into the house with 3 cases of wine as my wife watches our RRSPs evaporate.

i am in a similar situation. the housing market really hasn't cooled off in Toronto so we have picked putting money into the market.

I haven't gone whole hog wild buying stocks. just selectively buying some bank stocks with good dividends, commodities and manulife stock.

as for Warren Buffett, he has made $8b during this downturn where Bill Gates has lost over $15b.

I think that if you are a very long term thinker, this is a good entry point. just don't look at your portfolio for a few months. i think that all of the fast money is out of the market as well as all the hedge fund managers are leaving as well.

In terms of your housing situation, the real question is 'what is best for your family?' We held off as we have enough space right now and can hold on for the next 5 years so we are putting money into the market.

Hopefully, this market recovers over five years, we make some return in our investments which provides more equity for an even bigger house.

we are only putting money in that used to go to 'fun things'

i am in the states right now and you wouldn't know that the economy has slowed down from driving the parking lot at jersey gardens or walking around the malls. Everyone seems to have a lot of cash to spend still on crap.

quote:

Originally posted by Machine:
We were supposed to drive down to NYC this weekend but cancelled for a variety of reasons. Given the move in the dollar, trip would have probably cost us $300-400 more than we had planned. Also had been putting off ordering a few wines from US stores (just laziness and could not decide how many bottles of which wines I actually wanted), and now they will all cost 15% more than I expected...and makes me think back to how few purchases I made when the $CAD spiked up to almost USD$1.10. Curses!!

i hear you. we converted some CDn cash to USD when the dollar was trading at 1.10. Clearly, i should have converted more.

i was talking to a few currency experts and they feel that this is a result of fear and that the dollar should recover. i hope that they are right as i have a few trips planned....

quote:

Originally posted by maverickdrinker:
[i am in the states right now and you wouldn't know that the economy has slowed down from driving the parking lot at jersey gardens or walking around the malls. Everyone seems to have a lot of cash to spend still on crap.

Funny you sat that, as I was thinking that very thing at a nice restaurant I was dining at last evening. Very busy. No sign of negative impact with those patrons.
Seemed business as usual to me.

quote:

Originally posted by maverickdrinker:
as for Warren Buffett, he has made $8b during this downturn where Bill Gates has lost over $15b.

Do you think either one of them really feel this though? They know things will reverse and this is temporary for the most part for them.

Now the Ford family (being majority share holders) on the other hand..........

quote:

Originally posted by KSC02:

quote:

Originally posted by maverickdrinker:
[i am in the states right now and you wouldn't know that the economy has slowed down from driving the parking lot at jersey gardens or walking around the malls. Everyone seems to have a lot of cash to spend still on crap.

Funny you sat that, as I was thinking that very thing at a nice restaurant I was dining at last evening. Very busy. No sign of negative impact with those patrons.
Seemed business as usual to me.

was reading somewhere that people tend to splurge more on certain things when times go bad,
dining, lapdances, trips.

an interesting note that wine was singled out as the one thing people would cut back on though.

can't find the article =(

Mav: not sure where you got Buffet made so much ..
his 5 billion worth of warrants strike at 115 a share is completely worthless right now unless goldman stock goes up 20% sometime in the next 5 years.

brk-a went from 147,000 on sept 19 and is currently trading at 113,100 which would put him down 23% like the rest of us =)

No changes...

quote:

Originally posted by g-man:

quote:

Originally posted by KSC02:

quote:

Originally posted by maverickdrinker:
[i am in the states right now and you wouldn't know that the economy has slowed down from driving the parking lot at jersey gardens or walking around the malls. Everyone seems to have a lot of cash to spend still on crap.

Funny you sat that, as I was thinking that very thing at a nice restaurant I was dining at last evening. Very busy. No sign of negative impact with those patrons.
Seemed business as usual to me.

was reading somewhere that people tend to splurge more on certain things when times go bad,
dining, lapdances, trips.

an interesting note that wine was singled out as the one thing people would cut back on though.

can't find the article =(

Mav: not sure where you got Buffet made so much ..
his 5 billion worth of warrants strike at 115 a share is completely worthless right now unless goldman stock goes up 20% sometime in the next 5 years.

brk-a went from 147,000 on sept 19 and is currently trading at 113,100 which would put him down 23% like the rest of us =)

There was a recent article mavbabe showed me that showed how Bill Gates is now the #2 richest man in the world because of the recent market downturn and that Warren Buffet made $8b. I will get her to email me the article and post it. Pretty interesting.

I am afraid to look at my portfolio now....

So far I'm approaching wine sales with cautious optimism. Still buying, but not quite as much. My job is fairly recession proof, but we have been slow this past month, and I know it's not because teeth problems don't exist anymore! Which is sad because I know there are people out there who need to come in, but don't feel like they should spend the money to do so right now.

At this point in time I think the crisis is too ethereal. Most people still have their jobs, and their homes. And, many who don't have their homes still have their jobs. People still have money for the most part, and the losses, for many, are unrealized and only on paper should they choose to sell. Cash flow hasn't changed much. The real problem will be when more people lose their jobs as a result of more businesses going under. When cash flow for everyone seizes up then we'll feel it. Right now is mostly a lot of fear IMHO.

quote:

Originally posted by maverickdrinker:
was reading somewhere that people tend to splurge more on certain things when times go bad,
dining, lapdances, trips.

Is there ever a time when people aren't willing to splurge on this?