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Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

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Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correction is way overdue. Problem is, Fed has no ammo left with interest rates at near zero. We're in for rough days, people.

The yield on the 10 year... Now is the perfect time to finance a bunch of govt spending (not that I expect this admin to embrace fiscal policy)

This administration has a single minded project that has been a struggle to get financed. It would be a huge coup for them to use this downturn to get it financed without borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. Then again, this is all probably just fake news.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correction is way overdue. Problem is, Fed has no ammo left with interest rates at near zero. We're in for rough days, people.

The yield on the 10 year... Now is the perfect time to finance a bunch of govt spending (not that I expect this admin to embrace fiscal policy)

Right. Borrow $5 trillion for infrastructure and pay <$50 billion / year. That's a positive ROI for sure. Only issue is you would flood the markets and raise those rates, so you wouldn't get all of it, but still a lot. I have always though that the government should act strategically and take advantage of low rates like other market participants.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#133
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehh... I mean ... if the whole rest of the world was somehow unaffected by this ... then ... You do get that a reasonably conservative projection is that within a year most people in the world would have gotten COVID-19? How the heck did Trump do that? The only means of slowing COVID-19 has massive effects on the economy. There is now way in hell this would not have had a massively negative impact on the world econom…

Trump running massive deficits and forcing rate cuts when times are good is Trump’s shaky ground.

Trump's shaky ground? Or everybody since at least the turn of the century?

(Also, note that Trump doesn't get to run deficits. That's Congress's territory.)

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This will be blamed on COVID-19 Good. Because I don't buy for a moment that without COVID-19 the situation would be what it is now. Hindsight is 2020 and predictions of doom and stock market collapse is a dime a dozen.

markets knew about covid for a month before it started tanking

They didn't (and still don't) know the true financial impact of the virus (even epidemiologists don't know what it's going to take to get it under control), so the true effect of the virus wasn't priced into the market, plus now many investors are trading on fear.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#135
post #128

how is this "circuit breaker" meant to help? surely it will just fuel emotions and make things worse if people can't get rid of stock they don't want?

I thought it was more about kicking automated trading bots to the curb for a while. Stop an algorithm-driven flash-crash.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This will be blamed on COVID-19 Good. Because I don't buy for a moment that without COVID-19 the situation would be what it is now. Hindsight is 2020 and predictions of doom and stock market collapse is a dime a dozen.

markets knew about covid for a month before it started tanking

I also knew about it a month ago, I was more optimistic then. If no new information ever comes into play or if views and outlooks never changes then markets would be static. People knew about viruses for decades now also ... does not mean all possible consequences of viruses are already priced in.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Fed has as much ammo as there is wealth held in dollars. Which is to say, a lot. First, there is negative rates. Punishing people for holding cash. The ECB and Bank of Japan have done a lot of pioneering work there, the Fed will have already extensively studied what they did, what worked, what didn't work. Second, they have QE, monetizing debt & debasing dollar wealth, which is exactly what they'll unleash for th…

==First, there is negative rates. Punishing people for holding cash. The ECB and Bank of Japan have done a lot of pioneering work there, the Fed will have already extensively studied what they did, what worked, what didn't work. Second, they have QE, monetizing debt & debasing dollar wealth, which is exactly what they'll unleash for the next recession. Inflation isn't much of a concern right now, so they'll feel free…

Housing is not a household item?

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#139
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is widely being blamed on oil prices (edit: the virus would have been priced in last week to some extent, but the decision by Saudi Arabia to increase oil production happened over the weekend and hadn't been).

Oil prices going down is a good thing for the economy. I think people are confusing cause with an effect/correlation. Oil going down usually indicates a recession. Bad economy -> Lower demand for Oil -> Lower oil prices. In that case it's a signal/trailing indicator. In this case it's: Increased oil supply -> Lower oil prices -> Everything gets cheaper to make -> Increased economic activity

"Increased oil supply -> Lower oil prices -> Everything gets cheaper to make -> Increased economic activity"

There would be increased economic activity if businesses don't close left and right because of a combination of decreased demand and supply as both consumers and workers self-isolate and live in quarantine, and the knock-on effects of China's reduced manufacturing capability (soon to be followed by reduced manufacturing capability of much of the rest of the world).

This stock market crash is just the tip of the iceberg.

The tops of political, administrative, business, and military hierarchies tend to be overwhelmingly old, and most susceptible to succumbing to this outbreak. As many of them die, as the bodies they govern are plunged in to chaos and societies around the world go in to crisis mode, the markets will respond even more adversely than they have already, as the markets don't like uncertainty, and there's no end in sight to such uncertainty for the foreseeable future.

There is little economic upside from this pandemic. Few ways of profiting from it except by shorting nearly everything and buying gold. The bond markets and treasuries are also likely to suffer as governments default.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#140
post #10

This will be blamed on COVID-19, but the problems go much deeper. Last year the Fed lost control of the repo market. the event was widely discounted at the time as an end-of-tax-year fluke. It wasn't. Six month ago, the yield curve inverted. People who should have known better said "this time is different." Speculators have been trained over the course of 10+ years to buy the dip. The Fed has your back. What we're se…

Would it have happened without COVID-19?
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