Meltdown

As I sit here poring over the news of another day of financial carnage, it makes me think….  Our nest eggs have had cinder blocks dropped upon them and at the end of the day we throw up our hands and tell ourselves that there’s nothing we can do.  You can’t argue with the market.

News of the stock market troubles is hardly a secret.  It affects nearly everyone.  But there has also been destruction wrought upon other markets.  Markets that aren’t followed closely by CNBC or the pundits who claim to have explanations for everything.

In my little corner of the world, there exists a Market for Personal Property.  It’s a market every auctioneer follows closely and if you roll that whole market and all its respective auctioneers into one big ball, it actually amounts to tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars of sales.  Basically, it is the aggregate market demand for all the things we have in our homes.  TV’s, sofa’s, pots, pans, bicycles, furniture, figurines…you name it.

Over the past decade this market has, with few exceptions, been in steep decline.  Ask any auctioneer who conducts a lot of household and estate sales and he or she will tell you about the “good old days” when an old chest of drawers would bring $250 and a good china set would bring the same amount.  Those days are gone.  Today, those numbers are down 50-75% across the board.  Try swallowing a number like that on Wall Street.

Because the Personal Property Market isn’t followed, nobody realizes how bad it is.  When I explain it, I’m invariably presented with an argument that grandma’s mahogany buffet is certainly “worth more than that.”  No.  It isn’t.  It’s worth what the public is willing to pay for it and nothing more.  Nothing I can do will change that fact or the fact that Bank of America stock lost 20% of its value today.  The market has spoken.  Because nobody reads or regularly hears about the Personal Property Market, the horrific declines in the values of household items at auction aren’t taken seriously. 

When market realities are delivered by a source perceived as credible….like CNN, they are taken to be truths….but I’m just an auctioneer.  I’ve probably sold hundreds of thousands of items of every sort in the local marketplace over the last decade or so.  I’m not on TV….yet.   My words don’t carry the credibility of Neal Cavuto or Maria Bartiromo.  If Personal Property prices are low, then it must be…my fault for not finding the right buyers.  Try using that argument with your stock broker today.

Is this auction really any different from...

This one?  Other than the cool clothes and a few extra computers?