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

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#531

Post by aazaa » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 6:45 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…

Don't forget the part where the Fed swoops in, making a murky situation even murkier with market manipulation.

Expect a massive rally when the Fed announces QE4. Buy the rally at your own risk.

The largest DJIA rally in history (15.34%) occurred in the middle of the Great Depression in 1933. Second place was yet another Depression-era rally of double digits.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_daily_changes_...

Bear markets suck people in and spit them out. Every rally seems like the end of the misery, but it's just more of the same.

Only consider buying stocks when nobody but nobody thinks it's a good idea. When "buy the dip" has utterly left the popular vocabulary. When dividends + valuations are at bargain-basement levels.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#532

Post by Kluny » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 6:45 PM UTC

sjg007 wrote: post #224

totaldude87 wrote: post #184

To be honest , the market was in dire need for correction, BUT wonder where we will be when companies starts reporting their quarterly results and impact of that. So far this looked more like a correction than a precursor to the recession. To make things worse, OPEC dropped bombs which spread the wildfire further..

Why was or is the market in need of a correction? What is your evidence for that statement?

I don't know about "need" and I'm no kind of expert, but it seems to me that there's a hard drop roughly every ten years or so and the last one was 12 years ago. I've only been in the market myself for about 15 years, so I don't know that I have the instincts to call it, but historically this seems to be true.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#533

Post by pjkundert » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 6:46 PM UTC

beambot wrote: post #512

cletus wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't think this could still be true but apparently you are correct [1]. Wow. That being said, there are factors to contribute to this: - Essentially zero population growth [2] - A government and a system that propped up an insolvent banking system that likely extended the downturn significantly [3] - A massive asset bubble that we really haven't seen the likes of, not even in the subprime era. [1]: https://www.ma…

US fertility rate is approx. 1.8, well below population sustainability. If it weren't for immigration (a political policy question), the US would have negative population growth too.

We’re about to discover that uncontrolled immigration != societal regeneration, unfortunately.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#534

Post by kortilla » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 6:48 PM UTC

kasey_junk wrote: post #328

noja wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they have circuit breakers in the other direction?

No. This is just one of several places where the laws systematically favor the bulls.

Because bulls and bears aren’t equal. The laws should be favored towards not destroying the economy needlessly.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#535

Post by habitue » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 6:48 PM UTC

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.

> 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

Yes, hedge funds do this. They hire a lot of smart people to dig full-time into all the same hunches you or I might have (plus some more things we haven't thought about), and make bets about what's going to rebound. What happens is that to the extent that the future is unpredictable, the hedge funds lose those bets (along with everyone else on average), and to the extent that their predictions are right, they make a profit.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#536

Post by Kluny » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 6:48 PM UTC

tempsy wrote: post #342

fsloth wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just buy index decade after decade... this of course does not work if you attempt to beat the index or have timespan that is short.

The index has become a bubble in of itself. It's also not as diversified as you would think when Microsoft makes up 5-6% of the S&P and over 10% of Nasdaq.

You don't have to stick to the S&P index. There are others that follow tech, or commodities, or the Canadian stock market, green energy or what have you. You can diversify yourself.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#537

Post by strunz » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 6:49 PM UTC

blackearl wrote: post #411

allovernow wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? That's how you minimize risk because there's a good chance the markets will continue to slide. It's literally why the markets are down - because investors are pulling out and parking their cash in safer havens.

If you're not yet close to retirement, what happens today in the markets will have almost no effect on what your portfolio looks like in 10, 20, 30 years. Making any big changes would be stupid. Maintain a diverse portfolio and basically forget it exists outside of maxing it out every year. This is especially true if you're lazy and have it all in something like a retirement target fund like Vanguard.

Vanguard retirement funds do exactly this for you, what are you talking about?

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#538

Post by arcticbull » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 6:49 PM UTC

ncallaway wrote: post #516

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.

0.5% is still well over 5x as bad as typical flu. SK is closer to 0.7%. SK also has a far lower recovery percentage (SK total cases: 7478, total recoveries: 118; 1.5% of cases have recovered, 0.5% of cases have died). Compare to the worldwide CFR and recovery rate, which has a much higher CFR (3.5%). total cases 113,432, total recovered 62,494, 55% of world-wide cases have recovered. That means SK is catching their c…

The reason their numbers are lower than elsewhere is the widespread testing is catching the low-grade infections, the asymptomatic and the so on. Those cases are not reflected in, for instance, US numbers as there hasn't been any wide-scale testing. In a huge quantity of people you wind up with sniffles, a cough or mild flu-like symptoms. They don't go in, they don't get tested, so they're left out of the denominator.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#539

Post by senordevnyc » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 6:49 PM UTC

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.

Yes, but I think a week or two is laughably naive. I think we could easily drop another 20-30%, maybe more. The market dropped ~50% for the great recession and I'm unconvinced that this isn't going to be worse.

But I got out almost at the all time high, so as long as I get back in before that, I'm good with sitting on the sidelines. I don't need to call the exact bottom. I'll likely buy back in once I can see that there's some kind of realistic path forward with COVID-19 that doesn't destroy the economies in its wake.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#540

Post by codingslave » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 6:50 PM UTC

the_gastropod wrote: post #466

tempsy wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The end game is to save the value of my account without having to sell holdings I want to keep long term for tax reasons. I'm up 8% for the year instead of down 15%.

Maybe you really are more clever than the rest've us, and have beat the market. Or maybe you got lucky. Or maybe we're only hearing about the winning trades, and you've got some losers we're not hearing about... I suspect it's option 2 or 3. Regardless, this is bad advice.

No he just dampens his returns by protecting against extreme downside black swan events