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When? You gotta love prophets who don't clarify their predictions. 

Personally I agree we will get back to around 10 on USD, but in around 2-3 years time. For now we are more likely to bounce around the 14 - 15 level, until elections and the Eskom crisis is over. The silver lining with Eskom could hopefully be that we see it break up into generation - transmission - distribution, and we get a deregulated power market, and steadily falling prices.... Wow, that would be nice, and we could finally join the developing world with a free market.

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Let me tell you my story that I have already told here before your time and the older members may recall it even from the old Sharechat forum.
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Guess I must have missed your story. I was also migrated from the early days of the sharechat forum although my posts here are generally few and far between. Of course individual shares can offer incredible returns over time. Warren Buffett is famously able to pick some of these. Very few others can, in the fullness of time.

As for the baby-boomers kids seeing to it... Well, research shows that their grandchildren are seriously under-invested in the market. They prefer to "experience" life and travel etc. Like wow, ah-we man, have you experienced the Pamplona Bull Run yet, or Diwali on Goa? The Boomer's kids themselves are fewer in number than the baby-boomer generation, hence the fact that most retirement plans are seriously underfunded i.e. not enough new contributors to cover current benefits.

Of course we must all do what we do. I don't give a continental whether anyone listens to my ponderings here or not. In many ways bulletin boards simply offer a way to jot down one's thoughts. But it would be foolish to outright ignore what many people are starting to think now.

... and Optionsellers.com goes bust with the CEO's apology video already being parodied across the net. Selling deep out the money options is a great trade, about 90% of the time. Problem is, the remaining 10% of the time will bite you every single time, especially if you have not covered your delta. In NatGas you need to be seriously covered as vol can range intra-day between 10% to 80%.

It's definitely not a bust like Lehman Bros but some of their clients will be seriously pissed off. They had probably invested their profits already, only to learn that they won't be getting any. Ah well, c'est la vie! 

With markets in sell-off mode, you can expect a slew of news articles coming out about how one should always buy and hold in stock markets long-term. Well, that may have been true for the past 50 years but we are facing a very different future now.

The baby-boomer generation (born after WW2) threw away the austerity of their parents and were responsible for fuelling the mass consumerism we have today. The money men of Wall Street convinced them not to save for retirement but rather to give their money to the bankers and brokers and they would grow it in the markets. Of course this worked quite well while the baby boomers and their children have all been earning salaries. The massive bull run in stock markets we've seen since 1950, apart from a few minor corrections along the way, has been fuelled by boomers and everyone else seeking ever higher risk returns. The music has hardly stopped playing, until now....

Because those baby boomers are now all retiring en-masse. They are not earning like they used to and they are not buying the dips like they used to. Their children and grandchildren are mostly mortgaged and indebted (house, student loans etc.) up to their eyeballs with expensive property and toys. With markets in sell-off mode, we can expect greater and greater runs to the safety of cash and boring instruments such as government bonds. We should not expect markets to recover quickly again as there simply isn't the volume of readily investable cash lying around any more. The retirees need it now.

The 2008 GFC saw a massive deleveraging of wealth from consumers to businesses and HNW's who were able to turn the easy money into easy profits, in housing and stocks. This has created an even greater wealth disparity and inequality across the world. The average man in the street in New York, London, Sydney and Maputo feels poorer than ever before, and that's without hardly any inflation at all.

Pension and tracker funds have propped up markets for the longest time now. Of course we can expect these to continue but in an uncertain world with rising interest rates and inflation, and with low growth (even in the US) the best we can expect is stagflation. I've said this before here but Japan was once the world's no. 2 economy before stagflation hit them in the 90's. They're only kinda recovering now.

Yes, of course markets will recover. But I suspect we're in the early stages of a slow grind downwards. As I said here before, this feels like October 2007 again, where there was a slow but steady decline, before the final crash came in 2008. Depending on how macro events play out here, I expect a similar situation this time, only at twice the speed now. So we should know if we're into proper crash mode by Christmas / early Jan, or if this is just a prelude.

Either way, I reckon the fundamentals of the stock market are changing for good now. Too many people chasing returns. The mathematics of Capitalism doesn't work like that i.e. it asymmetrically rewards the top 20% with great wealth, whilst the bottom 80% must get less than average returns.

Top 40 is heading for a crash setup

Doubt it. Market already quite oversold and recent profit-taking hasn't even hit the 50% retracement level of last week's move. Medium term momentum is going into positive territory. So not exactly boom or bust, better to sit on interest-earning liquid bonds for now.

But watch Nassim Taleb on youtube about how the system is more fragile now than in 2007 going into GFC. Couldn't agree with him more. All that QE has found its way into the market. Household debt has become corporate and government debt now, and interest rates are starting to push up fast around the world. No nation in history has even been able to handle an excessive debt bubble and the US is not immune, even though they have the world's reserve currency. The GFC led to an excessive widening between rich and poor as the rich milked the system on easy money. Expect a levelling pretty soon with property (especially high-end) coming in for some of the earliest and biggest knocks. Then the markets will of course bleed. What we've seen so far is just early jitters from the professional community. But the dumb money and tracker funds have all kept investing, keeping a bottom under the market.

The global crash is coming although it's impossible to tell when. Meanwhile, best to keep watching momentum for those early signals....

Agree with gcr. SA only really has room to move upwards from here, after next year's elections. But we could end up becoming a net food importer and that will cost us dearly. Global equity markets should see a nice bounce this week and perhaps next week too, but we are not out the woods yet. Trump's trade rhetoric, US debt issues and bond market wobbles have all seen cash fleeing equities so that markets will likely end in the red this year. However, I reckon best Xmas presents will be equities as next year should see a nice recovery, albeit not shooting the lights out.

Blood is good, I want to buy stuff on the low. (we need a bear market, it's been a decade since the last one.)

As Orca says, SA has been in a bear market of late. SA typically runs counter-trend to other markets with Rand hedge effects as well. I expect US and European markets to keep taking some hits for a while, whilst SA stocks should find some support quite soon. The pro-business Ramaphosa approach should also start having an impact within about 6 months, freeing up investment capital and growth in SA markets.

Anyone else thinking it's looking like buying time? I have some cash due to clear in a few days...

Remember the crash of 2008 began in Oct / Nov 2007.... I'm seeing similar patterns in monthly and weekly momentum now. Of course we could pull out of it but then again, when the US finally has to face its debt mountain, the financial world will implode. Trump is trying to grow his way out of the problem but its having knock-on effects around the planet. Everything is inter-connected now and when the US goes down it will take everything with it.

The gold bugs are starting to froth at the mouth again....  On another note, I appear to be losing more than my entire capital on the leaderboard. Something is seriously up with the feed for the NewWave USD:ZAR Currency ETN.