US stock markets will be closed Monday and possibly Tuesday in the face of Hurricane Sandy. Hurricane Sandy is currently a category 1 "megastorm" putting 50 million people at risk along the East Coast. NYC is in the path which is why the markets will be closed.
Natural disasters are sometimes golden buying opportunities. Average investors are prone to panic at any hint of bad news, I wouldn't be surprised to see stock markets opening lower when trading resumes. Natural disasters happen from time to time, it's normal. Barring cataclysmic events, hurricanes don't concern me (although I hope nobody gets hurt). I've made it through two typhoons here in Korea this year.
I'll be monitoring news the next couple days and will put in a couple limit orders in case Mr. Market overreacts.
Edit 10/31/2012: I deleted a statement I made the other day because this hurricane turned out to be worse than I originally thought. I've been through category 1 typhoons (same thing as hurricane, just depends on the ocean) this year and while it's not exactly fun I never felt truly threatened. They had me stay at work through one of them to supervise soldiers, and monitor the equipment as well as wind speeds. There are procedures I have to follow depending on wind. I witnessed trees snapping and debris all over the road the next day. Roads were closed and we were stuck up there on top of a mountain. Not fun. I didn't have to deal with flooding or my posessions being ruined.
I don't want more natural disasters to occur, but I hope that I'll be sent to help clean up if it happens in the future. I really hope to get a humanitarian mission like that sometime. I know soldiers who were ordered to go help Haiti, I want to do something equally as awesome!
I was hoping to get to make some purchases today, but it looks like that won't be happening. Depending on how bad the damage is, it might be time to jump on some kind of property insurer that's in the northeast if it's price sells off. I don't know of any in particular, but it could be a chance like with Aflac after the Fukuskima disaster in Japan. I like the new layout. I've been working on changing mine as well.
ReplyDeleteTurns out the hurricane didn't really affect the market much at all!
DeleteI've had some limit orders sitting around for a while that I thought wouldn't get filled but hopefully after this storm prices drop down enough. I hate having capital just sitting there but I also hate paying more than I have to.
ReplyDeleteAnd yep Japan get's the typhoons as well. I'm a heavy sleeper so no problems here.
Turns out the hurricane was worse than I originally thought. While typhoons are pretty common in Korea & Japan, they are pretty rare in New York. I think that's why people were so worried about it. That and it was massive in size.
DeleteLiving in the SE USA on the coast of the Carolinas, we are constantly on alert for hurricane related duty, but so far havent been called up...and Im glad, both for the fact it means people in my community arent being impacted, and also for the fact when the Guard gets called up on such duty, we are being paid by the States we live in, and State pay is abysmal compared to when we are on Federal orders. This storm was worse than I anticipated, and my heart goes out to the people in NYC...it seems there was a general lack of preparations, and the decision, now retracted, to go on with the NYC marathon even though they were still searching for bodies on Staten Island makes me think people in charge are even more foolish and out of touch with reality than even I assumed. Thank goodness they cancelled that fiasco.
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