Zak I'm with you on the sentiment side.
I'm semi-retired and was hoping that I would be able to earn extra cash with my investments until it becomes a full retirement. Not to mention that I also hoped for a cozy nest egg for the actual retirement.
I suspect there are many here that feel the same, that is part of the reasom for my previous post.
The upward trend will come when people start buying. For the buying to start we need a change in the outlook of future investors with regard to their prospects in this market.
This ( I mainly mean us and ECU) market is largely dependent on the US investor and this investor is saddled with a large debt from government, mortgages, credit card etc. and the sorry state of the mismanaged institutional financials.
So in that situation how can there be any substantial investing to boost us back and over what we were. Those who still have cash to invest should be smiling but it seems there are very few of them.
I'm afraid that you may be right, there is still more bleeding before we can expect any decent recovery.