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Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

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Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#641

Post by Hoasi »

icebraining wrote: post #562
Hoasi wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Genuine question: They can just do that ? Issue a trading halt because they don't like the direction it's going ? This is a dangerous game, in that it is indeed revealing the artificial, make-belief, nature of financial markets.

Were people under the belief that financial markets grew on trees or were formed by lithification?

That's funny. But I was only pointing out that this is akin to markets saying: this game only works as long as we can change the rules. This kind of statement is not conducive to trust. Unfortunately, the whole financial field needs trust to thrive.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#642

Post by cletus »

rmah wrote: post #600
cletus wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before you get too excited about Spring essentially solving this problem, I present to you the history of the Spanish Flu [1]. > Reported cases of Spanish flu dropped off over the summer of 1918, and there was hope at the beginning of August that the virus had run its course. In retrospect, it was only the calm before the storm. Somewhere in Europe, a mutated strain of the Spanish flu virus had emerged that had the p…

And the decade following the spanish flu epidemic -- which killed a massive # of people -- was great (financially).

True, before it all fell apart. This sort of thing isn't unprecedented either [1]:

> In this downturn, however, the ground for the next economic explosion after 1500 was being laid. Wages rose and huge swathes of society had more money to spend on consumer goods, from beer to clothing to furniture. With fewer people to feed, the largely agricultural economy could focus more on livestock or specialty cash crops like hops or sugarcane instead of grain. Diets improved and, plague aside, so did health. More and more people were drawn into the market economy and trade networks grew wider and deeper.

[1]: https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/after-the-black-death-euro...

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#643

Post by rafiki6 »

malandrew wrote: post #521
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...

I'm wondering if what 2% dies matters. This disease is mostly going to kill people past their prime working years. There are going to be tons of sociological changes. Just speculating here: - Social security could have it's date of insolvency extended. It's currently predicted to be insolvent by 2037. Most pension programs in the world will be relieved of pressure if many of those over 60 years of age die. Many state…

This exactly. Another important point, those who are most likely to succumb to an infection are also those who put the largest strain on public healthcare systems. Please note, I want our older relatives to remain alive and healthy for as long as their quality of life is good. We all benefit, and we all get to enjoy each other. But at the same time, the rhetoric from alarmists is getting non-sensical given the reality.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#644

Post by anigbrowl »

csomar wrote: post #630
thefringthing wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The practice of referring to increases in the price of an instrument as "gains" but any decline as a "correction" is bizarre.

It's not. It's trading lingo. If the pricing was on a downturn "losses", then an upward move is a correction.

Except that in practice nobody says that. I've worked with both large financial institutions and tiny hedge funds going back nearly 30 years, traders are cognitive bias on legs. There's a reason Wall Street has a statue of a giant bull but not of a bear.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#645

Post by ct0 »

pgwhalen wrote: post #479
ct0 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market was not always driven by computers like it is now, and people running it needed to sleep.

The market is still very much driven by humans; the computers just help out, to varying degrees. The idea that computers are trading unattended is a myth that I hope would die.

Sure, while humans are critical to maintaining the infrastructure of the various markets, but we are beyond the days where markets were tracked on a chalk board. The NASDAQ is very much running on servers from an undisclosed data center off route 95 in New Jersey.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#646

Post by bytematic »

ttul wrote: post #625

I notice that there are many commenters here offering opinions on the future price of equities. Note that nobody has any idea where equity prices will be in one day, never mind one year or ten years' time. As a retail investor (i.e. not extremely rich), you can't gain any advantage over the market that overcomes your transaction costs. So relax. There's nothing to do here. If you're contributing to a retirement fund,…

Most people don't seem to understand that you don't pull all your retirement out at once, so the market going up or down doesn't really affect that

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#647

Post by nostrademons »

malandrew wrote: post #521
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...

I'm wondering if what 2% dies matters. This disease is mostly going to kill people past their prime working years. There are going to be tons of sociological changes. Just speculating here: - Social security could have it's date of insolvency extended. It's currently predicted to be insolvent by 2037. Most pension programs in the world will be relieved of pressure if many of those over 60 years of age die. Many state…

I think it's likely that there'll be second-order consequences that are worrisome, too. For example, war and revolution is extremely likely as the demographic order is remade. Already North Korea is saber-wrattling toward South Korea, the U.S. blames this on China, China (and Iran) blame it on the U.S, and a large portion of the Iranian government may be dead or incapacitated.

If we get war after the plague that'll carry the death rate down into young men, and perhaps spark further plagues.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#648

Post by nostrademons »

in_cahoots wrote: post #522
ouid wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The doubling rate is 3 days. Either we will be in a 3 month long quarantine, or in three months the infection rate will be slowing because there's no one left to infect.

That’s only true under current conditions. If we move to social distancing themselves the doubling rate may slow down significantly, which would actually increase the time to burnout.

That's the "3 month quarantine" case in his comment.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#649

Post by 01100011 »

throwaway34241 wrote: post #616
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…

> 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. > Bear markets are paved with the blood of optimists. I agree with exercising caution in the sense that trying to time the market is difficult and probably inadvisable in general, but I don't agree that people should be careful spe…

Cash may be a perfectly fine choice over the next year. You don't have to invest in something if the conditions are not right.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#650

Post by kaycebasques »

ttul wrote: post #625

I notice that there are many commenters here offering opinions on the future price of equities. Note that nobody has any idea where equity prices will be in one day, never mind one year or ten years' time. As a retail investor (i.e. not extremely rich), you can't gain any advantage over the market that overcomes your transaction costs. So relax. There's nothing to do here. If you're contributing to a retirement fund,…

> Note that nobody has any idea where equity prices will be in one day, never mind one year or ten years' time.

> So relax... keep buying

lol

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