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The Everything Bubble [infographic]

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71–80 of 122 posts

Re: The Everything Bubble [infographic]

#71

Whoa - five stocks (Amazon, Facebook, google, Apple and ?) account for most of the gains in SP500 this year?! Seriously?

This isn't what it looks like! Because when you take the whole S&P500 you get stocks that go up and stocks that go down. If you pick just stocks that go up, you can get numbers well over 100%. Or negative numbers - imagine if the S&P 500 had fallen slightly but Apple had gained slightly - you'd have that Apple was -1000% of the S&P500's gains!

Though I just checked the data: in order to get past 100% with YTD from [1] you need to go to around top 112 companies, so my complaint isn't that valid. Only 159 of the S&P 500 lost value this year and almost all of those were very modest, so there isn't as large a cancellation as you might otherwise see. Nonetheless, you can always select the top performers and point out how they're outperforming the rest. If this were an honest infographic it would compare this value (% of total gains obtained by top N performers) to previous years.

[1] https://www.investing.com/indices/us-spx-500-components

Re: The Everything Bubble [infographic]

#72

Meh to almost everything here except maybe housing. Corporate debt is high because DEBT IS STILL CHEAP (fed is changing that). Of course they're going to borrow fuckloads of money, it's practically free by some measures! The indexing "bubble" is actually a correction for a lack of value from active funds. I don't expect the correction to be corrected. The cryptocurrency bubble is tiny. 65 billion? That's a rounding e…

[deleted]

Re: The Everything Bubble [infographic]

#73

The reason? Too much capital, not enough growth to invest in because demand isn't growing. Demand isn't growing because 60% of the population is barely scraping by. How do you increase demand? Roll back the tax cuts to the wealthy who have nowhere to put that money except into speculation and bubbles. Redistribute it back to the working class in the form of tax cuts, credits, higher minimum wage, and social programs.…

Yes there is too much capital, after all the US printed over a trillion dollars to avoid the collapse of the financial industry. None of those banks except for two went bankrupt, which means that now you have an extra trillion dollars that will eventually funnel through the system.

Well, look we are nearly a decade later from that moment so that money has gone through the system, aggregated usually with the 1% and then dispersed.

Additionally the world continues to become more global. If you look at some of the main residential markets in America like NYC and Miami, you will see that a significant percentage of purchases aren't from US citizens, but instead, international buyers that are moving their money into a more secure asset offshore and away from their government.

In Miami there is a lot of money from Russia and South America. In NYC it is a lot of money from China.

Then consider that after the housing bubble popped it would only be natural that money would look for another asset class to invest in so it shifted to the stock market.

Certainly there is speculation there, that's the nature of the stock market but the largest companies that have the majority of the growth are simply larger due to higher revenues. What made them successful five years ago are macro trends that are still playing out.

As massive as Amazon is it's only a small percentage of overall sales, which still occur at retailers, however the macro trend of more sales happening online hasn't stopped so you are seeing that continuation.

Apple could be argued is under valued, not over valued.

Google is still continuing to grow.

Sure, Tesla could be considered a bubble, but eventually it grows into the valuation or the irrational exuberance stops and the stock will decrease to it's real valuation. Similar to what happened to LinkedIn. But again, that is too small to really matter on the global scale.

The question of reducing taxes to spur more demand, well that won't really work. Think of it this way, if you reduce taxes even 10% that isn't going to lead to more cars being bought. Sure things that you need like groceries and maybe making your rent, but you aren't going to be making massive purchases.

That tax cuts would benefit the rich the most, because 10% of a $10MM salary means an extra $1MM of cash after you already have enough for savings, so that really does become discretionary spending money. But those people would again purchase the most expensive assets and drive up real estate prices.

Also very unlikely that you could push through a tax cut for a single class or even two classes without a tax cut for the rich, otherwise it would be called socialism, which is misunderstood, but still hated and feared in America.

These are just normal shifts of money moving depending on the barriers that it encounters. We all are exposed to inflation so money needs to be shifted as inflation is it's own version of having limited timeline. Leave the cash under a mattress and 50 years later be surprised by how much spending power you lost.

If you look at the American economy manufacturing is only 10% of salaried positions and 80% is the service sector. So you are seeing how this plays out over time.

The reality is that the world was never equal, and unless you want to move to communism where everyone has the same stuff, it will never be equal. As such there will be some winners and some losers.

Now if you really want to reset this imbalance, it isn't about tax cuts for the poor, but instead massive taxes on the rich. That would then move those funds back to the government, they could focus on more infrastructure which is sorely needed, and it would be coming from the very class that can afford to lose that money.

This would decrease some of the real estate prices, but that could lead to problems in building as well, which means that sector will lose jobs.

The reality is that everything is interconnected, you can't change one thing without affecting everything else.

But certainly if you want to tax those that have the most you could move forward.

Plus, check out what the highest tax rate was on the largest income earners 80 years ago and be surprised by how high it was.

Re: The Everything Bubble [infographic]

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Among the things that people can't afford and really need, the most common ones are healthcare and housing. The problem with giving people more money to stimulate demand for those things is that it only solves half of the problem. Healthcare is limited by the supply of doctors so no matter how much government subsidizes it, the amount of people who can be seen by the constant number of doctors will be the same. In pr…

US spends significantly more money per capita to healthcare than other countries. US healthcare problem has nothing to do with lack of resources (human or financial resources). US could save money in healthcare while improving it by reorganizing the healthcare. Even wealthy people get worse treatment than they could because the way incentives work. https://www.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/6addvo/the_wealth...

This is the sort of thing that happens when there are not enough doctors to go around so rich people use their fortune to hog up a disproportionate amount of qualified medical personnel and resources. With the resources that are used to keep VIP hospitals running, they could probably have dozens of regular hospitals.

It's similar to what happens when there aren't enough houses in an affordable nice place so rich people use their fortunes to outbid everyone else and the nice affordable place becomes expensive and gentrified. With the money and labor spent on huge mansions (or hyper-luxurious tiny houses, because land is inelastic), they could have built hundreds of regular houses or apartments.

Re: The Everything Bubble [infographic]

#75
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the parent comment but in the Netherlands where I live you have to pay tax on your savings once it exceeds about 21K EUR. The government then makes up that you must be at least getting 4% (up to 9% if you have up to 1M) interest, and it wants 30% of that interest of anything over that 21K EUR limit. Meanwhile the current interest at banks is anywhere from 0.05% to 1% here (most major banks are around 0.2%).

The way you describe it, it's not tax on savings, it's investment income tax. Almost all countries have it. As a general principle taxing personal investment income should be taxes at least the same amount as labor income. Taxing labor has more negative externalities than taxing investment income.

I think they're saying that they're being taxed as if they were getting 4% interest on their savings, when in reality they're getting less than 1% because rates are low. So even though it's nominally a tax on interest earned, it's effectively a tax on value of assets held in savings over 21k.

Re: The Everything Bubble [infographic]

#76
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

QE3 inflated the things in question, not 'tax cuts to the wealthy'. in fact, taxes have gone up on the richest and that bubble continued to inflate. if you want to make it about politics, (and if this is a bubble of bubbles), it was done under the fed under a liberal president - who claimed credit for its 'success'. when you put funny money in the market, tech booms, paper assets boom and investment in hard industry…

This is factually incorrect. No funny money is put in by QE. QE is an asset swap, treasuries for reserves, and it nets to zero. The goal of QE is to lower the price of money in hopes that people will borrow more but they are not. All of the lending/borrowing aggregates are going sideways and down. The reason that the stock market is up is the expectation that QE will someday work to bring get the economy growing fast…

I wonder when we’ll admit wholesale that interest rate and money supply just aren’t very good economic levers in the absence of fiscal policy?

Re tax cuts, instead of tax cuts on the middle class, make wage increases tax deductible for corporations. As someone in the middle class, I don’t care what my rate is, I care what the take home is. Reward corporations for passing more money through to employees by lowering the taxes on their earnings.

Re: The Everything Bubble [infographic]

#77

The reason? Too much capital, not enough growth to invest in because demand isn't growing. Demand isn't growing because 60% of the population is barely scraping by. How do you increase demand? Roll back the tax cuts to the wealthy who have nowhere to put that money except into speculation and bubbles. Redistribute it back to the working class in the form of tax cuts, credits, higher minimum wage, and social programs.…

I like how you think comrade!

Re: The Everything Bubble [infographic]

#78
Can the figures for "Real Residential Housing Price Index for Canada" be correct? The quoted index values are:

2010: 36.3

2016: 413.9

I simply cannot believe there was an 11-fold price increase on this index over this period.

Googling I cannot match either of these figures to various Canadian real estate indexes reported on the web.

Re: The Everything Bubble [infographic]

#79
One issue:

Big business have got drunk on low interest rates and corp. debt so cheap, making it very good for big business but negative for the majority of the worlds population.

So they like to see interest rates to remain very low, and have leverage with governments saying their business it at serious risk if interest rates were to return to 'more sensible levels'. Which is kinda true!

Also:

People with sufficient savings or disposable income have choose one of the few obvious/easy investment options and buy into property, either upgrading or buying more properties.

The wealthy who have access to good financial tools have also invested into property, both commercial and residential. Hence so many empty properties in London, that people complain about.

Driving up the price, so further squeezing the population who are not able to follow.

Hence the rise of Trump and others, promising to make America great again, cuz so many voters are being squeezed.

Low interest rates is like a drug addiction, but the addicts (big business) are not the ones suffering.

Hence the rise of popularism and the likes of Trump into powerful positions, but he is sitting on the side for businesses and not the person. He incorrectly believes recovery can only be found with big business, but I believe this just perpetuates the addiction.

Interest rates need to rise (ouch!) and companies must be forced to pay the taxes they owe. Also giving individuals with big investments (risks) into property to exit gracefully without the property market crashing, which hurts everyone.

Re: The Everything Bubble [infographic]

#80
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is factually incorrect. No funny money is put in by QE. QE is an asset swap, treasuries for reserves, and it nets to zero. The goal of QE is to lower the price of money in hopes that people will borrow more but they are not. All of the lending/borrowing aggregates are going sideways and down. The reason that the stock market is up is the expectation that QE will someday work to bring get the economy growing fast…

I wonder when we’ll admit wholesale that interest rate and money supply just aren’t very good economic levers in the absence of fiscal policy? Re tax cuts, instead of tax cuts on the middle class, make wage increases tax deductible for corporations. As someone in the middle class, I don’t care what my rate is, I care what the take home is. Reward corporations for passing more money through to employees by lowering th…

Wages are already tax deductible for corporations.
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