Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

axios.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

771–780 of 1001 posts

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#771

Post by peisistratos »

carc wrote: post #749
_7fvc wrote: post #740

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to subscribe to these investment talking points and believed in the US equity market. I adopted these attitudes from reading Warren Buffett, index fund, financial advice. These are sound principles. I occasionally revisit value investing, dollar-cost averaging. But times are changing. The US equity market will unlikely to deliver exceptional returns. Buffett may have a strong bias since he started his investin…

Lots of bold, unsubstantiated claims. I think every time there is a big peak, or a big valley, some percentage of people are always peddling "but this is different"

> I think every time there is a big peak, or a big valley, some percentage of people are always peddling "but this is different"

When stocks crashed in 1929, it was different. In the US we got the New Deal, which still exists in some form. In Germany we got fascism and then a divided Germany for decades. The 1929 crash had effects felt to this day. The DJIA did not recover its 1929 level (not inflation adjusted) until 1954.

The kings and queens of Europe could point to how things never changed over the past millennia, and moved forward as they always had, until Charles I had his head lopped off in 1649. Then things began changing.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#773

Post by mempko »

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,…

What do you say to someone starting to save now when the climate crises is now happening? Humanities ultimate cosmic event is happening. How can you reasonably save for something like that?

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#774

Post by FabHK »

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.

Best study I’ve seen so far (Univ Bern, Switzerland) estimates a CFR (adjusted) for Hubei province of 1.6% (or 3.3% if symptomatic). Worse above 60 yrs, better below 40 yrs.

Presumably you think Korean health care is better? Now what a about other countries?

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.04.20031104v...

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#775

Post by deepnotderp »

Raidion wrote: post #715
deepnotderp wrote: post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of the all the casualties of the virus, the efficient market hypothesis has got to be one of them... Where were efficient markets when all news from China pointed to a pandemic?

They were down slightly, marking the public's general consensus that while the news was worrying, that there was still a good possibility of containment. If you feel like you have a better understanding of risk than the markets do, it's pretty dang cost effective to buy puts, and you can make a LOT of money with very well understood downsides. In November 2002, when SARS was first identified S&P was at ~909, it dropp…

I did buy bear ETFs

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#777

Post by madengr »

bytematic wrote: post #646
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

Well you can be fucked by your employers 401k manager. The day my wife quit, she was locked out of here 401k for 2 weeks. They divest everything during that term, and you have no control over the timing. She quit near market peak last year (and began re-investing this week), but say she quit this week? It's volatile enough presently that you could lose $$$ of they decide to sell at a low to boost their stock, and you can't re-invest in time.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#778

Post by Reedx »

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,…

To help adopt a sober approach, it's worth watching this interview with Warren Buffett who shares his thinking re: market and Coronavirus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvEas_zZ4fM&t=21s

One of the points he makes is that you should think about stocks as businesses. Instead of "I bought a stock" think "I bought a business". That puts you in a better frame of mind and perspective for the long term. i.e., You don't buy or sell a farm based on today's headlines.

The real question is whether things have changed on a 5, 10 or 20 year time frame for the businesses you hold.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#779

Post by wahern »

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%....

2% is the Case Fatality Rate (CFR), not mortality rate. Case Fatality Rate is deaths/confirmed, and confirmed is not the same as number of infected. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_fatality_rate

In most outbreaks, "confirmed" usually means those sick enough to seek medical attention and get a diagnosis. If asymptomatic testing goes up then CFR declines, but then CFR ceases to be a useful metric for comparing and contrasting outbreaks. Arguably it already has diminished utility in this particular outbreak because of inconsistent testing criteria around the world.

I think what most people want to know (and what they believe CFR means) is the percentage of deaths among the infected. But AFAICT this sort of number isn't very common in the literature as ascertaining the total number of infected for most outbreaks[1] is very difficult, and presumably something that can only be deduced post hoc with modeling.

[1] Ebola being one possible exception, given the extremely high lethality and distinctive symptoms.

Post reply on HN