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

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#691

Post by swader999 » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 8:45 PM UTC

speleding wrote: post #674

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.

I realise this sounds cruel, but the age group that's most likely to die is not the most economically productive part of the population. So even if a substantial percentage would die, that does not necessarily mean the economy would be affected by a similar percentage.

They have a lot of assets that would be disposed, inheritance tax, capital gains. More selling.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#692

Post by AnimalMuppet » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 8:48 PM UTC

bumby wrote: post #386

read_if_gay_ wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> train of salt Nice Freudian slip.

Oops, my phone is not optimized for my cro magnon fingers...

Don't apologize. It was a beautiful typo. In fact, I may steal it for deliberate use...

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#693

Post by IAmEveryone » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 8:49 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.

There is no market separate from society that has any “interests” such as not being manipulated. We get to design such systems in whatever way best serves us.

It’s funny how this “ideology of the pure market” has become popular. This idea here is essentially the same as the outrage when obviously wrong transactions are rolled back. The number of people willing to, or entirely oblivious of the possibility not to, let (others) be harmed by fraud or mistakes, in pursuit of some romanticized purity is astonishing.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#694

Post by 01100011 » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 8:49 PM UTC

kortilla wrote: post #637

csomar wrote: post #622

Despite all the blood, I see a bull case for Tech and the USA. In the last 5 years: 1- The Nasdaq has gained 99.77% until it's peak. It has corrected by 17.41% since the peak. Total gains till today: 64.9%. 2- The Dow Jones has gained 65% till the peak. Corrected by 21.71% since then. Total gains till today: 35.85%. 3- CAC 40 has gained 20% in the last 5 years till the peak. Corrected by 22.12% in this sell-off. Tota…

Tech doesn’t look too rosy if there is a problem with the entire hardware supply pipeline in China.

The entire pipeline isn't in China. Taiwan seems to hold some of it and they're doing just fine. They've apparently managed to contain the virus quite well.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#695

Post by grey-area » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 8:49 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #376

neural_thing wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Nikkei is still ~50% below its 1989 high. Hasn't even approached that level since. Downturns can go on for decades.

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…

Sounds just like the situation in the west after 2008.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#696

Post by allovernow » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 8:50 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.

China shut down it's economy for two months. Mecca is closed. 8% of Iranian parliament was infected as of last week and two were dead. Democratic nations are putting millions of people on lockdown overnight (see Lombardy, Italy and the 2AM press conference).

This isn't the god damn flu and its irresponsible to say so at this point.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#697

Post by aaron_m04 » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 8:51 PM UTC

magicsmoke wrote: post #141

pradn wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we can use garbage-collected languages in trading systems without turning on the garbage collector - just collect it all at the end of the trading day. I'm joking but this is a real technique.

It is, there was this HFT firm I interned at once that rebooted all their servers at the end of the trading day to make sure they would start clean and fast the next day.

Did they also warm up caches before open?

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#698

Post by narner90 » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 8:51 PM UTC

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.

A lot of trading is indeed done by minimally supervised computers, i.e. a human only looks at the computer if alarm bells ring. Source: was one of those humans

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#699

Post by AnimalMuppet » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 8:53 PM UTC

forkexec wrote: post #452

Well, according to a Harvard epidemiologist, 40-70% of humans will contract this virus, which implies 120-168 million people will die. That's going to impact economic activity and so will a Saudi / Russian oil price war. It's going to lead to the dreaded "R"-word and usually sinks whomever happens to be the current POTUS and their chances for re-election.

Hmm. It might also boost Sanders with respect to Biden...

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#700

Post by jfengel » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 8:53 PM UTC

phreeza wrote: post #677

jfengel wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The error, actually, is in the first part rather than the second. We don't know where it will be in a day or a year, but there's good reason to think we know where it will be in ten years: about twice where it is now. It might be only 1.5x or it might be 3x, but it's not very likely to fall very far outside of that range. Given that, if you have ten years to wait before you need your money, it's as good a place as an…

The counterexamples that have been brought up elsewhere on this post are Gold (still below 40 year high) and the Nikkei (still below 30 year high).

The Nikkei high was wildly artificial; its price-to-earnings ratio indicated that there was an enormous bubble. The US stock market is (probably) currently inflated, but by a factor closer to 2 (or less) than 10.

(I've looked less into the price of gold, which has a weird place in people's minds and would require a lot more research than I've put into it.)

It's entirely possible, of course, that the US is entering a long-term economic disaster of a kind it has been courting for decades: government borrowing, student loans, Baby Boomer retirement, etc. But US companies have been earning money, and in general that does justify the belief that they merit a stock price that's roughly where it is now; somewhat lower, but not radically different.