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The stock market and economy have parted ways

washingtonpost.com

231–240 of 542 posts

Re: The stock market and economy have parted ways

#231
post #219

Conspiracy theory time! I don't really believe either of these with any non-trivial degree of probability, but I figure at worst I'd get downvoted, and maybe I'd get some insightful takes. There was an opinion expressed after '08 that the crisis was used by "elites" to conveniently get rid of (as in fire, mostly) a bunch of people that were, to them, superfluous. Like, that was long overdue and there was a good excus…

My issue with this (and largely with the arguments that the market is up because money is cycling into bigger businesses) is that the collapse of small businesses is going to create substantial economic pain that's going to really hurt the large businesses - maybe not in the very long run, but certainly in the medium term.

People are going to lose jobs, only some of which will be replaced by big companies (since they're inherently better at scaling people's work as well as automating jobs), so we're going to be stuck with a bunch of unemployment. Unemployment and the economic uncertainty that comes with it will cause a substantial drop in consumer discretionary spending, which I believe makes up like 70% of spending in the economy.

If you're Amazon, maybe that's fine because to your point, if the pie shrinks significantly but their share of it goes up enormously, they may still benefit even in the short term. But what about Apple, which is hitting new highs? People need to buy stuff, and since Amazon has everything, even if the type of stuff they're buying changes, they'll still go there. But they can (and I suspect very much will) put off buying new high end luxury devices like iPhones/iPads/Macs. Similarly, businesses that would be buying those devices will probably lengthen their upgrade cycles as well.

Same story with Facebook - stock is doing great, but small businesses represent a significant portion of their income. Plus a huge amount of the advertising is for consumer discretionary stuff, and it's a very easy kind of advertising to dial back quickly when marketing dollars go down.

Re: The stock market and economy have parted ways

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I go back and forth on gold a lot. I keep a very small amount of my money in gold, but I’m literally thinking “if things really get down to it, I can trade this for food” But that type of mental exercise does not work well for many people. Especially imagining a system where our fiat currency is effectively useless.

I mean, in world where you’re trying to trade gold for food gold is a “fiat” currency as well. It has no intrinsic value and if we’re struggling to get food and water I’m not going to want to accept anything for my food except strict bartering. If you’re buying gold for the end of the world you’d be better off buying cigarettes and tiny bottles of booze.

Not sure that makes sense? Gold's value was typically based on scarcity and it's multi-millennial status as a thing of value? Why else would much of the world have based their currency on gold itself?

Re: The stock market and economy have parted ways

#233

I spoke to my financial advisor a month ago and he told me he was not worried of a major and sustained drop as FED and Congressional intervention had helped curtail that before it spiraled out of hand. But I cannot help but see current market prices and see current for lease and boarded up building. I wonder if he was correct. I wonder if the advice he has given me is wrong? I believe we are about 9months away from t…

>I believe we are about 9months away from the greatest financial disaster of our times

Why 9 months? What would precipitate that?

Re: The stock market and economy have parted ways

#234
post #6

The amount of friends I have that are out of work and posting screenshots of robinhood on ig and snap right now is wild. This feels like crypto 2017 all over again. I suppose the difference is there is a real market under it all and retail traders aren't entirely driving this, but they're the ones left holding the bag when the curtain drops.

Well you should be like Kennedy then, when the shoe shine boys were giving stock advice it was time to get out in 1929, perhaps High School dropouts and convenience store workers "getting rich" gambling with options on Robinhood might be a useful signal of things breaking down now.

Re: The stock market and economy have parted ways

#235
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or real estate circa 2006. When your cab driver starts offering unsolicited stock tips, that's the time to get out.

Where are you getting out to? A 40% inflated money supply of US dollars?

Bitcoin?

Re: The stock market and economy have parted ways

#236

I have no way to read the article, but I will nonetheless comment on the headline. You can't sensibly talk about the economy and the stock market at a time like this without also talking about current and expected future policy.

add a dot after washingtonpost.com

https://www.washingtonpost.com./opinions/the-stock-market-an...

Re: The stock market and economy have parted ways

#237
post #9
post #6

The amount of friends I have that are out of work and posting screenshots of robinhood on ig and snap right now is wild. This feels like crypto 2017 all over again. I suppose the difference is there is a real market under it all and retail traders aren't entirely driving this, but they're the ones left holding the bag when the curtain drops.

That's where the FOMO comes in. I, and many, many of my friends, missed out on Bitcoin in college. Many of my friends are posting the same things you state on their social media, and are making it clear they won't be left behind this time. Not sure what all that means, but it's fascinating.

>Many of my friends are posting the same things you state on their social media, and are making it clear they won't be left behind this time.

The problem is that these people are just gambling. Do you really think they have some insight into the market that thousands of Quants and Traders on Wall St. don't have? Go to Vegas, you will see plenty of people flashing cash around when they win on the Roulette table or hit a streak in Blackjack. Are these guys genius players or are they the inevitably of table odds?

Re: The stock market and economy have parted ways

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

might be a smart move. I'm not going all in, but I am dollar cost averaging my buys and accumulating bitcoin.

Why is it smart to do this? Bitcoin took a dive earlier in the pandemic. Why would it be counter "the world is crashing" now? The us is still the world's reserve currency. If the us keeps circling the drain economically and financially and especially politically, we have so much power and raw capability to come back. The big problem is covid-19, where the world can leave us behind as we slowly kill ourselves off. Hmm…

>Hmm, I'm almost convincing myself that even us $ could eventually not last. So, I'll just take one of those job offers on hacker news that says we'll get you a visa to come to Amsterdam?

You realize that the world economy is inexorably linked to the US right? If there was such a devastating crash what makes you think the Eurozone would be stable? The UK left the EU and France nearly did, a massive wave of unrest could easily break the union up and the euro would be worse off than the dollar.

Re: The stock market and economy have parted ways

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They made it easy for the uneducated investor to invest in companies that see the spotlight on the news. You can invest in minutes and for free now, right from your phone. These people don't do any research on the company. They see news stories on the company all the time, and news stories that the stock went up XX% So when you have people casually buying stocks I feel like they get inflated past the point that makes…

Is there recent data on how much investment originates from retail investors? Are there really enough retail investors on Robinhood and elsewhere to push valuations up this high?

I don't have the link but I think people linked Hertz' valuation pop after it's bankruptcy almost exclusively on Robinhood type traders.

Re: The stock market and economy have parted ways

#240
post #165

There is nothing strange about the current valuations of the stock markets. Yields of just about every fixed-income security not exposed to stock-like risk is zero. Global stock market indexes are at a P/E of ~20 - that means a yield/direct return on equity of 5%. This doesn't seem so unreasonable when there are no returns to be found anywhere else. The global economy is still making money, just not hand over fist. A…

>complaining that the millennials pulled up the ladder

The millennials that currently invest a pittance compared to Boomers or even Gen-Xers?

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