By Josh Resnek
The uncertainty about the coronavirus and the effect it will have on the world economy has caused stock markets to crash all over the world.
If you are an Everett working class couple saving for retirement you have watched as the cumulative value of your retirement accounts have dropped dramatically during the past two weeks.
Stock prices collapsed so badly Monday that the New York Stock Exchange stopped trading shortly after it opened when stock futures and early morning prices had dropped almost 7%. Although the market came back 1100 points tuesday the market remains rocky and unpredictable.
Nowhere is the precipitous drop more evident than gauging what has happened to Wynn Resorts stock. Wynn Resorts was trading at nearly $130 in January and even into February.
Then the coronavirus hit, tourism sputtered to a stop and even America’s great centers of tourist activity, Las Vegas, for instance, have experienced a downturn.
It is the same all over the world.
The future of the world economy is at stake and now the price for oil has collapsed going from $60 a barrel for crude in January to $30 Monday.
Wynn Resorts stock price was $85 Tuesday, down more than $50 from January. It is nearing its 52 week low.
The value of the company has gone from a market cap valuation of about $12 billion to slightly over $9 billion.
For Everett, Wynn’s fortunes are interrelated.
If Wynn is not healthy, the city’s financial future becomes that much more uncertain, casino gambling or not.
For Everett stockholders the situation becomes critical almost overnight.
What to do?
The real economic geniuses always buy when then market is down. The worse it goes, the more money those people tend to make.
But for Everett folks, the more compelling question is when to get out of the market if it is falling precipitously?
Most smaller investors wait too long to properly discount their losses by selling when the prices have hit lows.
Many others lose big time by selling in the downward tumble.
Sitting still and doing nothing often works as well as selling because the market always comes back.
Knowing when to sell and when to buy in – that takes guts, more money than most of us have, and brilliant timing.