I am not a stock market expert. But maybe the stock market and your land sale don't necessarily have to go the same direction.

I do listen to Market to Market every week from Iowa Public TV and then podcast. Last Friday they had a couple of their most respected market analysts on the show.

What I heard there makes sense:

US dollars have long been the most stable currency in the world/did not go wildly up and down as manuy local currencies and therefore used around the world to price global commodities like oil, grains cotton, etc.

However with the staggering increase in our national debt, the analyst said, the world is losing confidence in the US EVER being able to live within its means (tax sufficiently to cover expenses such as Iraq) and politically we chose to borrow rather than pay as we go.

He said this is what is causing the dollar to dramatically lose value compared to other currencies around the world. Oil for example is going up because the value of the US dollar in their own currency to foreigners who produce it is going down. An oil producer anywhere in the world who sells oil in US dollars is going to raise the price to maintain his income in his local currency.

IF you think fuel and fertilizer are high priced in the US now, think about what they would be if priced in Euros! Originally, as I understand it, one Euro was was intended a few years ago to have about the same value as one US dollar. The Euro is now worth $1.46 US dollars. So if oil was priced in euros it would have to be much higher than it used to be in US dollars. Therefore the world oil price in US dollars is self adjusting upward by about 1/3 to correct for the drop in value of the US dollar by about 1/3...or more. 

We are starting to see the effects of our US dollar value going down in the minds of the rest of the world due to our domestic policies. In simple terms, we are now finding out that there is no such thing as a free lunch, nor a free war, nor free..... everything comes at a cost, eventually. We have been financing our government's expenses by selling treasury debt mostly overseas. And those folks are starting to wonder. The more we borrow to finance spending/deficits we don't have the political will to raise taxes to pay for, the lower the dollar will go and the higher dollar based world commodities will go.

This will have the effect, according to these Market to Market analysts, of more or less permanently raising the "normal" prices of commodities such as corn, beans, wheat etc which have traditionally been priced in US dollars to correct for the change in US dollar value world wide. I seem to remember him saying $10 beans and $4 corn may be the "normal" prices in the future to compensate for the drop in value of the US dollar used in international trade.

This is good for farmers who bought land at old dollar values and it seems land may ride upward along with commodities.

While they did not discuss the stock market on the show, if the basic logic is reasonable, then maybe the stock market will go downward also to correct for the decreasing value of US corporate earnings in other currencies such as the Euro. Foreigners are not as interested in US stocks when their earnings have dropped by about 1/3 due to the drop in the value of the US dollar.

To get back to your original question, you mention selling land at the end of January and worry about the "bottom falling out of things" meaning I assume you feel the stock markety and farm land prices are intertwined. I think that FARM land (different from office/industrial/residential buildings etc) because it is used to produce crops which ARE adjusting upward to world prices should adjust its value upward to the new dollar exchange rates also. In short if their logic holds it seems like farm land is not necessarily going to follow the stock market.

As those who are traveling to Agritechnica in Germany this week will tell you, it takes a whole lot more US dollars to live/do/buy about anything outside the US than it used to. (Other than plane tickets this time of year because they have to fly and have a lot of seats to fill)

The Market to Market show really got me thinking about this. I have done a fair amount of business overseas over many years. This now is starting to make sense.

Simply put there must be some theory of economics that says:

1) there is no such thing as a free lunch

2) you will get the lunch bill in many different ways (one way is the decline in the world value of the US dollar)

While we used to think that we as individuals did not need to be concerned about the value of the US dollar, maybe we should be concerned. As we us foreign investment to cover our deficits, what these foreign investors think about us, like the opinion held by the local ag banker, does matter. And the more you and the US need their money to cover our expenses, the more what they think matters....or something like that. 

Here is a link to the podcast of Market to Market, I strongly suggest taking the time (about 15 minutes or so) to read the transcript or listen to this (click on play audio).

http://www.iptv.org/mtom/market_analysis.cfm?ShowNumber=3310

and as always, jmho.

Jim at Dawn