First Rental Property

What’s up Everybody?

How scary was today, if you are investing in the financial markets?

If you missed all of the fun today…here is what happened…

Dow Jones

As many of you know by now, today the major averages including the Dow Jones saw saw the biggest one day drop since 1987.

The averages have since rebounded, however remain lower by approximately 5%. (As of today’s date — May 6th 2010.)

At today’s low the Dow was down approximately 1000 points as low as 9869, representing a 9.2% decline.

That’s right… a 9.2% decline.

It has since rebounded approximately 600 points to 10,492.

The S&P

The S&P was down approximately 100 points, and eventually rebounded to cut the loss in half at -40 pts at 1121.

After the markets closed today, news stories have been coming out, that have been trying to explain what caused the markets to drop like a stone in water.

Evidence now suggests that a bad trade might be behind the market drop.

Bad trade or not, as real estate investors and as potential real estate investors, we have to learn from this event.

Today’s event shows us how extremely volatile the financial markets can be.

Depending on where in the world you are, you are either still feeling the effects of the Global Economic Crisis that began in late 2008, or you are slowly on the road to recovery.

For the Canadians, we have been fortunate in that we are on the road to recovery from the recent recession.  Our financial markets were battered, just like the rest of the world however, for many (not all) of us real estate investors, our real estate holdings did not experience any decline over the recession.

In fact, through all of the economic turmoil, many rental properties located in strong economic cities and towns in Canada experienced good appreciation over this time period.  A lot of credit needs to be given to Don R. Campbell, President of The Real Estate Investment Network for his education on the economic fundamentals of strong investment cities and towns in Canada.

Personally, I have been very fortunate in that all of my real estate holdings have gone up in value during the unpredictable economic time. In addition, many of my friends who are also fellow real estate investors have done well with their real estate holdings throughout this period of time.

I cannot say the same for many people that I know who are invested in the financial markets.  Many people over this same period of time had lost 30%, 40%, and even up to 50% of the value of their investments.

It has been an observation of mine that the more experienced one becomes with real estate investing, generally speaking, the less they start to believe in the financial markets as a vehicle to create wealth.

Please stop right now. Re-read the statement above.  Let it sink in….

On that note, leave me a comment in the comment section below and let me know what you think of the financial markets.  Do you believe in them?  Why or why not?

If you are not keeping up to date with my blog, please do so by entering your e-mail address on the left hand side of the blog.  Or you can click on the orange RSS button at the top right hand corner of the blog.

In conclusion, I would like to highlight a recent article written by fellow blogger and real estate investor Dineen Jogola. Dineen, a young up and coming real estate entrepreneur published a recent article titled 10+1 Core Success Principles.

I thought that Dineen’s article was a very well thought out and an authentic article worth sharing.

Don’t forget to check out the new video content on my YouTube Chanel.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0T2GuSqu3F4[/youtube]