Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet • Hacker News Board

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#491

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 6:34 PM UTC

grandmczeb wrote: post #460

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are misrepresting my argument and attempt to dismiss it in an odd way. I am arguing that rules set up by the market do not automagically enforce free market. I am arguing that rules explicitly do the opposite by introducing guard rails, which DO restrict movement in that free market. Do you honestly believe that rules derive its effects from who sets them up?

To be perfectly honest I’m not sure I find your argument coherent at all. Can you define what you mean by free market? Is two parties freely coming to a mutually beneficial agreement that they are then constrained by (i.e. a contract) consistent with that definition?

It is possible I have not made it very clear. For the sake of the argument, I am ok with the definition presented by you.

That said, I am not sure what you disagree with. Please elaborate.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#492

Post by badfrog » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 6:34 PM UTC

virgilp wrote: post #412

mensetmanusman wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, over half of GDP growth is tied to population growth. If 2% of humanity is about to die...

2% (maybe more actually) is the mortality rate of those infected. But so far infection rate was 0.001% ; it would need to be 3 full orders of magnitude worse to even approach an infection rate of 2%....

For reference, there have been 3,000 deaths out of 11,000,000 people in Wuhan. That's 0.03% of the population dead and the number of new deaths per day is declining. If the rest of the world comes even close to being as good at quarantine as Wuhan, we'll be way under 2%.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_ou...

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#493

Post by throwaway_tech » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 6:34 PM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #454

mensetmanusman wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, over half of GDP growth is tied to population growth. If 2% of humanity is about to die...

2% of humanity is absolutely, in no way, shape or form about to die. The Korean numbers are approaching 0.5% case fatality rate, and those numbers continue to fall. It's about the same as the flu, and no, the flu isn't killing 2% of humanity either. Y'all need to settle down and get back to work.

Why use S.Korea's numbers? Haven't they lead the best response in terms of testing and don't they have universal healthcare? It seems to me fatality rates would likely be higher in countries that: 1) aren't testing so aggressively and 2) don't have universal access to care.

Maybe I am wrong though and there is good reason to believe S.Korea is the best example right now to use as a statistics model to apply across the entire world.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#494

Post by tech-historian » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 6:34 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #315

So, children of summer (there are many here who have only known the longest bull market in the last century), let me give you some free advice. If you're looking at this and wondering when to get in, to bargain hunt essentially, and you're asking yourself questions like "today? next week?", you need to step back and think again. Some points to consider: - If your time horizon is 10+ years out probably none of this ma…

As an investor, if you believe the market is going to drop, there are various ways to profit from this. One of the easiest is buying ETFs that move inversely to certain market indexes (shorts them).

For example, SH [0] is an ETF that moves inversely proportional to the S&P 500 index. So if the S&P 500 is down 2%, SH goes up 2%.

More exciting are the leveraged ETFs that track double or triple the underlying index. SDS [1] moves 2X the inverse of the S&P 500.

ETFs can be bought like stocks. Unlike mutual funds, their prices change throughout the day. These funds can be used to hedge against losses in your retirement or option portfolios. Trade with care!

[0] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/SH/

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/SDS/

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#495

Post by hrpnk » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 6:35 PM UTC

rsync wrote: post #317

walrus01 wrote: post #188

Serious question, is anyone watching this carefully and trying to determine when things will bottom out (perhaps in a week or two), to buy stocks, ETFs, and such at the bottom of the dip? Hindsight is 20:20 of course, but there's a number of equities that one could have purchased shortly after the 2008 financial crisis that proceeded to make significant gains between 2009 and 2019.

"Serious question, is anyone watching this carefully and trying to determine when things will bottom out (perhaps in a week or two), to buy stocks, ETFs, and such at the bottom of the dip?" I am watching very carefully to see if the VIX goes to an outlandish number, such as 90 or 100. To give some context, the all-time high of the VIX was ~80 during the 2008 financial crisis, etc. It is a fools errand to try to predi…

VIX converges long-term towards 0, so you will be successful investing in this instrument only for very short periods of times with close to perfect market timing...

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#496

Post by arcticbull » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 6:35 PM UTC

throwaway_tech wrote: post #493

arcticbull wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2% of humanity is absolutely, in no way, shape or form about to die. The Korean numbers are approaching 0.5% case fatality rate, and those numbers continue to fall. It's about the same as the flu, and no, the flu isn't killing 2% of humanity either. Y'all need to settle down and get back to work.

Why use S.Korea's numbers? Haven't they lead the best response in terms of testing and don't they have universal healthcare? It seems to me fatality rates would likely be higher in countries that: 1) aren't testing so aggressively and 2) don't have universal access to care. Maybe I am wrong though and there is good reason to believe S.Korea is the best example right now to use as a statistics model to apply across th…

Part of the reason their numbers are so low is because they're testing, which is revealing the stacks upon stacks of asymptomatic cases or cases which lead to the sniffles. That's why we know the actual mortality rates are so much lower than the media is screaming breathlessly about.

Think about it: not a single story about the myriad people who've recovered completely, right? There've been 114,000 documented cases so far and 66,000 have recovered. The number of active/unresolved cases remains well below its peak.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#497

Post by EthanHeilman » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 6:36 PM UTC

awb wrote: post #379

EthanHeilman wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can easily sell a market to zero, however it is much harder to buy a market to infinity.

* It's very difficult to sell a market to zero, but impossible to buy it to infinity.

Has any stock or financial instrument ever been valued at infinity? I don't know enough about finance to rule that out and it seems unlikely but at least possible.

For instance here is a toy example of unbounded value: Consider a market for a stock in which the only market participants are two bots with the behavior that they trade the stock back and forth at an asymptotically increasing price. The buys are backed by loans from a zero interest government bank. Since the bank is efficiently hedged to losses. Both sides of the trade owe the bank, the seller can also pay the bank the money the bank needs to back the buyers loan. Thus, the bank could allow both these loans to go to infinity causing the value of the asset to approach infinity.

Similar things have happened with flash loans in the cryptocurrency space.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#498

Post by kingkawn » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 6:36 PM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #454

mensetmanusman wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, over half of GDP growth is tied to population growth. If 2% of humanity is about to die...

2% of humanity is absolutely, in no way, shape or form about to die. The Korean numbers are approaching 0.5% case fatality rate, and those numbers continue to fall. It's about the same as the flu, and no, the flu isn't killing 2% of humanity either. Y'all need to settle down and get back to work.

There is no way to state with certainty what you’ve said or the opposite. It is prudent of everyone to exercise caution and avoid panic that increases the potential for harm. Being dismissive is just a destructive as being overprotective.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#499

Post by efficax » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 6:36 PM UTC

bilekas wrote: post #180

Genuine question: They can just do that ? Issue a trading halt because they don't like the direction it's going ? > “There’s a reason why they have those circuit breakers -- it’s to give people time to come back from panicked feelings,” Seems strange that the market is kinda able to be manipulated like that. I'm not saying this is a bad move, just surprised that someone can do it.

investors are herd animals and nobody has any idea what's going on. if everybody else is selling then i better sell too!

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#500

Post by gmtx725 » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 6:36 PM UTC

rtkwe wrote: post #49

aguyfromnb wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Either they are an indicator or they aren't. Because after the inversion the market (and Fed) reacted? No indicator is infallible or static.

I've been skeptical of the whole yield curve as metric thing because it's not directly tied to the actual state of the economy directly just to the sentiment about the market X years in the future. Given how much we know the whole market is prone to group think, self delusion, and outright manipulation I've grown very skeptical of any indicator about the market that comes directly from the market.

I always wonder how much of a self-fulfilling prophecy it is, especially now the yield-curve-inversions-precede-recessions thing is so well known, i.e. people see the yield curve inverts and therefore believe the market will drop, therefore it does. Markets are just a reflection of aggregate human beliefs after all.