what will happen to the stock market few years later?

[Coolguy11]

What do you predict will happen to the stock market in couple years from now?
A lot of people say that by then, the dollar value will collapse, and by then, we'll be using silver and gold only. Is that possible?

I don't know who's being smarter. My friend, who's planning to buy gold and silver just in case the dip happens, and me not caring and thinking that its a dumb idea.

Also, if you wanna give out some additional advice or comment or anything you wanna tell me, thanks.

[sophieb]

People used to buy gold and silver for investment purposes, they would buy when it was low in cost and then sell when it is high. And the government used to be on the gold standard where money was backed with gold. But our money is no longer backed by gold. And gold is too high in price to buy anymore. Some thought they could exchange gold for money but it's only places like china, russia, saudi arabia that have gold now so they'd have to do their exchanging with those countries, that is if they would take money or if those people want to move there (I think not). Therefore it could only be used as an investment, but in what currency would they be paid back in? During WWII the government collected all the gold from people. Will the government demand that again, idk.

The stock market goes up and down all the time. I can say though that what we are experiencing now is unprecedented (never happened in the history that we know of) so we don't know what the future holds. Some say double digit inflation, some say a bad depression. Whatever it is I suggest you prepare the best you can for it.

[Chickadee]

If anyone tells you what the stock market is going to do in a few years...THEY ARE LYING!!!! No one knows what it's going to do, the Housing Bubble of 2008 was unpredictable resulting in extreme losses, but we saw substantial gains in 2009 and 2010. And this this year with the down grade of United States debt and the whole Greece mess, there's no telling where the market going in the short run. Investing is for the Long Term, focus on whats going to happen over the next 20-30 years...the market is on a roller coaster right now. That means buying opportunities if you can withstand some volatility. Buying gold is not a guaranteed investment, gold has sky rocketed over the past few years, it's probably a "flight to security" for a lot of investors. You shouldn't care of whats going on in the market now depending on when you'll need your money. Think about your time horizon, if you can ride it out, it'll probably be beneficial.

[John W]

And an asteroid will hit and kill all the living dinosaurs on the planet. There have been doomsday predictions since the first rain fall, that's why we have the story of Chicken Little. Yes things can get bad, things can get really bad for some people but the world won't end.

It's probably a good idea to save for a rainy day when a moonsoon is approaching but Treasury bonds despite their flat interest rates are still better than gold or silver which can be anywhere on the map. Of course having some equities to rebalance with will actually lower the risk. Just shove your money into the retirement accounts cause they won't take that away from you in a bankruptcy and you can't be sued for it, don't ever touch it, declare bankruptcy before touching retirement funds.

[Mr.2can]

Gold and silver are DUMB buys. Yes, the price will go up to offset inflation and a crashing dollar, but we will still use paper currency and what the government will do should the dollar collapse and gold soar is that it will impose fees for exchanging gold in to dollars.

Like right now, if you want to exchange one currency in to another, you usually end up paying the bank 2.5% of the amount of money being exchanged. What they will do with gold is charge you 50-60% to exchange it in to dollars that you can actually use to buy stuff with.

As for the stock market, there's a major crash coming that will make 2008 look like a walk in the park. Right now the markets are being artificially inflated due to money printing around the world (or speculation that countries will print money to solve the debt issue). The assumption is that countries would rather face massive inflation (thorugh money printing) than to let countries and banks go bankrupt.

So the markets are currently in what's called a 'melt up' - there no 'real' reason for them to be going up, they are simply going up because there's bad news happening right now. The moment we start getting bad news again, which we'll probably get nera hte end of november, you'll have another melt down.

The actual massive crash won't happen for a while though. Most likely what we'll see...

early 2012 - markets will start to fall apart
mid 2012 - bernanke will print trillions and do QE3 to raise the markets back up long enough for Obama to get re-elected
late 2012 - massive inflation kicks in resulting from all this stimulus spending
early 2013 - economic systems aroudn the world crash as debt issuance becomes unsustainable despite money printing.
Mid 2013 - massive riots and rebellions around the world as politicians and bankers are hung by lamp posts for stealing and wasting the worlds wealth. Social unrest and government break down will cause stock market to crash worse than in 2008 or even in the 1929 great depression.

That would be my prediction as to how this will unfold.