Waking up from dormancy

My last post was almost an year ago. The world changed in the last one year.. Here is my recollection of what transpired over the past 12 months:

- Lehman is no more: Lehman Brothers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on September 15th and the world would never be the same again.

- Dow would plunge a record 33.8% in 2008.

- Dow would continue trading under maximum possible 4 digit number and is expected to do so for the foreseeable future.


- Most companies declared Q1'09 as the bottom - The economy is not falling as rapidly as before. Barry's post sums this up neatly.

- We are currently experiencing a big bull rally. Nasdaq Composite is up 41.6% since lows of March 9th 2009, and Dow is up 26.5%.

- Some people already think that June 11th was the top and it is the beginning of a bear phase now. Since June 11th, Dow is down almost 6% and Nasdaq is down 3.5%. I don't hold any opinion on whether the current market is a small dip in the bigger bull rally or is it a new bear rally. I would leave that up to the macro experts to decide, although I highly doubt anyone's ability to correctly predict that.

- Finally, I graduated as the class of 2009 Wharton MBA earlier this May. While class of 2010 would be close, I think that class of 2009 should easily have the honors of graduating in the worst economic year. Whatever done, I cherished the graduation ceremony and a great speech by Prof. Muhammad Yunus.