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Dow plunges 1000 points

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Re: Dow plunges 1000 points

#72
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now we have high prices. We're also in the boomer retirement period, of 2014-2023 or so. I wonder what it's going to take to cause boomers to get skittish and panic sell their portfolio. In 2008, they still had time. Now it's a bit different.

There's also apparently something interesting happening with the bond market. A fairly standard retirement strategy is to gradually move your investments into more stable bonds as your retirement date approaches. Except that because of boomer retirement, there's quite a lot of people doing this - mix in some quantitative easing, and suddenly a lot of money is chasing a limited pool of bonds, causing low yields and ot…

>ultimately you're always relying on the current working population to pay for your retirement, no matter what investments you put into your pension fund. What happens if that goes pop?

Exactly. The corn you eat needs to be grown today.

Re: Dow plunges 1000 points

#73
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now we have high prices. We're also in the boomer retirement period, of 2014-2023 or so. I wonder what it's going to take to cause boomers to get skittish and panic sell their portfolio. In 2008, they still had time. Now it's a bit different.

There's also apparently something interesting happening with the bond market. A fairly standard retirement strategy is to gradually move your investments into more stable bonds as your retirement date approaches. Except that because of boomer retirement, there's quite a lot of people doing this - mix in some quantitative easing, and suddenly a lot of money is chasing a limited pool of bonds, causing low yields and ot…

On some level, though, all of retirement is a little ponzi-like; ultimately you're always relying on the current working population to pay for your retirement, no matter what investments you put into your pension fund.

Well, no, not really. You're relying on the fact that you own some assets, which you can sell to someone else who wants to own those assets. That's very much not "ponzi-like".

Re: Dow plunges 1000 points

#76

What's with the 600 pt 3pm sell-off and recovery within 5 minutes? Algorithms? I thought massive swing effects are supposed to be under control now?

Most are speculating a large asset manager getting hit with margin calls. The buy back was likely algos with limits getting hit.

Re: Dow plunges 1000 points

#77

What's with the 600 pt 3pm sell-off and recovery within 5 minutes? Algorithms? I thought massive swing effects are supposed to be under control now?

> are supposed to be under control now

Why would you think that? Massive swing effects are often caused or exacerbated by algorithms trading on momentum.

They do that because trading on momentum usually pays, and doing the hard work of fundamental value investing is difficult and also hard to scale.

Momentum trading is fine if only a few people are doing it, but if enough of the market transitions to having 'no opinion except following the crowd', then you get instability just like this. And many factors since 2010 have made flash crash-like events easier to cause, not harder.

Re: Dow plunges 1000 points

#80
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Short Overstock. It moves very closely in align with crypto.

Why is that? Do they have exposure to crypto?

Yes, they have been accepting crypto in payments for awhile and famously held a bunch. CEO is invested into it.
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