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Wall Street sell-off turns 'ugly' as US recession fears grow

independent.co.uk

141–150 of 185 posts

Re: Wall Street sell-off turns 'ugly' as US recession fears grow

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These aren’t red flags for stock market crashes just red flags for humanity. The status quo can have all these flags raised and still have rising stock prices rise.

Oh. The stock market and humanity are entirely separate? Cool. Let's end the stock market then. Humanity clearly doesn't need it, and it operates in conflict with it.

When did I say they are separate? I think you’re confused.

Re: Wall Street sell-off turns 'ugly' as US recession fears grow

#142
post #49
post #2

Hopefully this isn't a biased take: I think this is a unique situation because the recent moves (in my opinion) are largely a result of everyone's uncertainty around America's policies. In other words, the recent stock moves aren't because we're seeing a bunch of companies fail to miss quarterly targets. There are no major economic indicators flashing red. If stocks can drop that fast in a couple weeks, they can also…

Have you seen what was going on when Trump win was confirmed? Stocks that day shot up. Now it is correction time both on going back to indicators instead of hype and correction based on newly elected administration actions instead of people hopes.

My impression, as someone who bought USA index funds after the Trump election, and then sold them (at a loss) a few days ago, was that the Trump administration would do everything it can to funnel money from average people to investors. My impression now is that the Trump regime is too incompetent to achieve that, and might even just throw away the USA's exorbitant privilege of being the global reserve currency.

Note that being the global reserve currency is the same thing as having a colossal trade deficit, and that a colossal trade deficit is the same thing as a colossal surplus of goods and services. I wonder if Trump thinks it's bad just because of the word "deficit".

[e^iπ]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorbitant_privilege

Re: Wall Street sell-off turns 'ugly' as US recession fears grow

#143
post #87

Back paddling on the tariffs without any concessions is more damaging the tariffs themselves. It shows the leadership is uninformed and the economy is very weak. Way to flash your weak hand in the first round.

He's a pretty objectively terrible businessman. Like, that's the part that annoys me about him more than anything else, how he's convinced a lot of people that he's "good at business". He's not; if he had just dumped the money his father left him into basically any index fund between the 1970's until 2016, he would have made more money than he had in 2016. Any idiot can basically match the S&P500, just buy VOO or SPY…

>> if he had just dumped the money his father left him into basically any index fund between the 1970's until 2016, he would have made more money than he had in 2016

Some investors actually spend money in addition to investing it.

If you earn a high return on your investments every year and then go out and spend the returns on things like a $100 million private jet and a $25 million helicopter instead of reinvesting them, you don't beat the S&P. Does that mean you are a "bad" businessman? To me, to determine if someone is a good businessman, you need to look at what they took out and spent along with what they ended up with.

Not every rich investor is someone like Charlie Munger, who weeks before his death at the age of 99 was upset that if he had worked harder, he "might have had multiple trillions instead of multiple billions". Some people make money to spend money.

Re: Wall Street sell-off turns 'ugly' as US recession fears grow

#144
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> producing more cars than Toyota at higher margins Interesting that Tesla surpassed Toyota in net income in 2023 already: 15B vs 14B.

2023 was Tesla's peak, since than it is going down. Toyota grows year by year.

One year is not indicative. Point of interest will be around 2030-2035, when multiple countries are having aggressive deadlines for EV adaptation. So, the question is will toyota be able adapt to new reality? So far they couldn't, EV attempts failed and they just are milking decade old tech/infra/supply chains. They will need to rebuild manufacturing and support significantly, while tesla has everything in place already.

Re: Wall Street sell-off turns 'ugly' as US recession fears grow

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been repeatedly debunked. Yes, there was a small amount of money pumped into the consumer economy ($2000/household). Yes, there were some supply shocks during the height of the lockdowns. No, those do not explain the persistent high prices. Unprecedented consolidation across all sectors made it easy for a much smaller group of people at the top to respond to a zeitgeist that expected inflation by keeping pri…

> Yes, there was a small amount of money pumped into the consumer economy ($2000/household). Covid caused us to print $13 - $16 trillion dollars. That's more money than every war the US has ever participated in combined.

Yep. Mostly straight to business owners. But that wasn't sold as "stimulus", it was sold as "a loan" which was then forgiven without repayment. When people talk about "stimulus" they usually mean the cheques to individuals.

Re: Wall Street sell-off turns 'ugly' as US recession fears grow

#146
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [...] buying low now would be nice. Just to be clear, the point of the linked article is that you cannot know that now is the LOW and not the new high.

That's why the phrase "don't try and catch a falling knife" exists. We have no idea if prices will rebound shortly, or continue to take a nose-dive. Trying to time the market is a gambling strategy, not an investment strategy.

Buying the market at all is a gambling strategy. You cannot be in the market without timing it.

For example, just last week, I realized I had a bunch of money sitting in my crypto exchange that I thought was in Bitcoin, so I traded it for Bitcoin. Now it's worth 80% as much.

Re: Wall Street sell-off turns 'ugly' as US recession fears grow

#148
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stocks in the modern context are little more than speculative instruments - the equivalent of buying a blind bag of chips from a casino and betting they'll increase in value by the time you attempt to redeem them. They rarely correlate to long-term company health anymore, and often correlate to little more than the psychological state of the market at the moment of any given transaction. Remember that prices are a pr…

I don't think this is completely true. Other than some small portion of companies with weird ownership structure (which the market should have punished but doesn't always) stock ownership is ownership of the business. There's probably a broader participation in the market (re: few people) than most of history, both direct and indirect. That can be good and bad. There's definitely a speculative component but it's noth…

For the volumes your retail investor deals in, the equity rights that come with common stock are negligible to nonexistent.

Maybe you get dividends, but you’d get more value from the comped room and buffet at the casino.

Re: Wall Street sell-off turns 'ugly' as US recession fears grow

#149
post #35
post #2

Hopefully this isn't a biased take: I think this is a unique situation because the recent moves (in my opinion) are largely a result of everyone's uncertainty around America's policies. In other words, the recent stock moves aren't because we're seeing a bunch of companies fail to miss quarterly targets. There are no major economic indicators flashing red. If stocks can drop that fast in a couple weeks, they can also…

I am not sure I agree that we lack major economic indicators flashing red. For instance, GDPNow from the Atlanta Fed looks quite bad at the moment: https://www.atlantafed.org/cqer/research/gdpnow I also have been looking at deliquency rates on industrial equipment leases lately, and they seem to be trending sharply upward: https://www.fitchratings.com/structured-finance/abs/equipmen... Major retailers are also managi…

see same from 3 months ago :) shit did not fall off the cliff in a few months

Re: Wall Street sell-off turns 'ugly' as US recession fears grow

#150
post #131
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He inherited billions and still manages to go bankrupt 6 times. The Apprentice was the OG reality distortion field and it's crazy people have trouble seeing through it all.

Did he personally go bankrupt 6 times or did smaller LLCs that own buildings or groups of real estate go bankrupt? Because I think the latter is par for the course if you do enough real estate. EDIT: Just fact checking this, it's the latter, 6 entities went bankrupt. It looks like the trump organization has 500 entities, so 1.2% bankruptcy rate.

As far as I understand, he did not personally go bankrupt 6 times, but it is his pet projects that go bankrupt [1]. The accountants and money managers deal with any actual profitable businesses.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_and_business_legal_af...

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