You must be very young. A number of decades ago, some people were predicting absolute disaster if Kennedy won, because, you know, being Roman Catholic he was under the control of the eeeevil Vatican.
Every single election, ever, some group has predicted horrible things would happen if Person X won. Those predictions are rarely accurate.
This is one of the beautiful things about the Constitution – checks and balances.
That’s one of the things Warren Buffet does, BTW.
I’m not predicting catastrophe if McCain wins. I’m predicting depression – my own. And no, I am not young.
Those are pretty much contradictory statements:
It is not possible to time the stock market. It’s also not possible to know how an Obama victory will affect the stock market. Not one single person anywhere can truthfully tell you what may or may not happen.
If that is your only motive for investing, you’ve got a lot to learn about investing.
Yes, you’re right, it is somewhat contradictory on the surface. The example was of one stock that is actually very slightly up for the year. Almost everything else is down. That indicates to me it is a company with strong basic value, to have stayed steady during a bad stretch. It is probably undervalued now. So are many others. The intelligence – or luck – is to pick the right ones. People have lost fortunes guessing wrong, even after doing a lot of research, which is why one should not put into the stock market anything you can’t do without if the market tanks.
You mean like your retirement fund?
I would never put all of my retirement fund in one stock, or even in a small set of stocks. It is in a well-managed diversified fund, with a fair proportion in bonds and some in money market funds. Yes, it’s worth less now than it was a year ago, but it’s not gone. I didn’t mortgage my house to get it. I am just really glad now that I am no longer working for the brokerage company that at the time required any employee investments to be done through them, and to keep their 401K in a company fund. Said brokerage company is Not Doing Well Now.
To the extent that you have choices in your retirement fund(s), you should consider them very carefully in terms of your total financial picture and the stage of life you are in. If you are a young person, these latest difficulties will turn out, I am sure, to be merely a bump in the road. If you put all of your retirement savings in something extraordinarily safe, like T-Bills, you will not get very good return on your money. Each person has to evaluate his/her own situation as far as risk tolerance.
One problem now is that there are people who have just now realized that the stock market can go down, too.
In particular it shows that investors think people will keep buying Campbell’s soup in an economic crisis, which looks like a pretty safe bet. But as far as it being undervalued - as you noted yourself, it’s not like the stock took a dive this year as so many others did. Over the last two years it’s essentially flat.
Campbell’s, like Proctor & Gamble and General Mills, is one of those companies with a huge and loyal consumer base. Their stock is perennially graded at “strong buy” because of their financials and customer support.
Well, the soup lines gotta get their food from some place. 
What do you think is in my cabinet at home? It’s also cheap soup.
Stephen Colbert did a bit on this recently - he said he was putting all his money in Campbell’s soup stock, then put a big tray of Campbell’s cans on his desk (“soup stock” rather than “Campbell’s Soup stock”). And his financial analyst guest told him it was actually a good pick.
GM stock might be worth a look. If the new Chevy Volt is all is is suppose to be, it might make a difference on the GM bottom line.
The Chevy Volt is still a very long shot. There are a lot of technical hurdles, and it looks like it’s going to cost around $40,000, which is a lot for a family car. And how many can they expect to sell. (That said, I’m a big fan of bet-the-company long shots. The 747 was one for Boeing and it turned out well.)
The Volt is “bail out bait” for GM. They’ll build a few of the cars, then show up at Congress with their hat in hand, asking for help to keep running. They’re already pushing for subsidies so that they can sell the car for a “reasonable” cost.
American auto makers have proved time and again to be idjits. No matter what, I won’t be putting any money into any of them.
Its as safe as investing in AIG! 
Seriously, if I had any spare cash right now, I’d be putting it into GM. Yeah, they’re being run by idjits, but no matter how badly they fuck up, the government (with a McCain or Obama win) will prop them up, because there’s just too many jobs involved. Heck, the government might even force them to enact sensible reforms before giving them money. The only way the Feds will allow GM to go tits up is if they can transfer ownership of the company over to another domestic car company that’s solvent. In such a scenerio (say Tesla has a massive hit with their next car and are rapidly turning into a major automotive company), you’ll get shares in the company that takes over GM in exchange for the shares you have in GM. It won’t be a 1:1 swap, of course, but you’ll come out better than someone off the street trying to buy shares in Tesla (or whomever).
GM has deep pockets, and a lot of resources. I expect them to pull through, even if they do need a little help from the their friends (aka the U.S. Govenment.)
Actually, GM’s pockets are pretty much empty, and nobody wants to loan them any money. IIRC, GM’s got about six months worth of operating capital, and the amount they’re getting from the sale of their vehicles is nearly nil at the moment.
Only if you can get money for recycling the paper its printed on.