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U.S. stocks are set to deliver their worst quarter in nearly four years

wsj.com

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Re: U.S. stocks are set to deliver their worst quarter in nearly four years

#131

Post by mindslight »

buellerbueller wrote: post #81

Worst President Ever.

Depending on how you measure, not as bad as the one we had a few terms ago. There was a pandemic, which should have been a unifying event the president just had to straightforwardly lead us through while letting the domain experts at agencies handle the details. But instead he must have thought he was still campaigning or something, and staked out some edgelord position that we should just ignore the public health emergency. Predictably, this caused a lot of societal chaos from people who weren't good at thinking for themselves following nonsensical direction from an authority figure. I'm sure glad that guy was only around for one term. I remember him being a pretty sore loser too.

Re: U.S. stocks are set to deliver their worst quarter in nearly four years

#132

Post by gadflyinyoureye »

roysting wrote: post #91
gadflyinyoureye wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even defenses. How is RTX down?

I suspect it’s the unwinding of the Yen carry trade and/or indirectly connected to running for shelter for several reasons including the massive bomb in private lending and subsequently private equity that is ticking down and doing so even faster now that Trump cut the wrong wire to distract from the Epstein files and him being a child rapist. This all seems structural, as indicates that in the middle of a war even m…

That could be at least part of it. My understanding as to why gold dropped is that many countries essentially got market called. The Oil countries don't have cash reserves without selling, but they do have gold. Taking in London is that the Saudi's have sold a good amount of gold. China stopped buying in Q4 2025. Others followed suit. Hell, Russia is blocking gold exports at the end of the month.

Re: U.S. stocks are set to deliver their worst quarter in nearly four years

#133

Post by WarmWash »

paxys wrote: post #111
spicyusername wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a common refrain you hear a lot. I get why people say it, because it feels good to say when you feel bad. But the decline of the Roman empire took nearly 500 years. Even the bronze age collapse, which you might say happened fast, took more than 100. A thought I have every time someone parrots this is, "what is reasonable to expect?". Would you have heard people saying the same thing during the civil war? Duri…

We live in the Information Age. Things happen quicker now. The Roman Empire took 500 years to decline. The Soviet Union took 2 years. The US broke centuries old alliances and upended the global order in a matter of months. If there is a collapse of the American empire it won’t happen over centuries but in the span of a few tweets.

The problem Europe has though is that it can't stand it's own. They have become so accustomed to leaning on the US, that they have grown into it.

People don't like hearing it, but Europe lives on American Tech, powered by American energy, and defended by American defense. There other lifelines being Russian energy and Chinese tech. It's a "pick your poison" situation.

Europe should be able to stand on it's own, but it's going to take much more than 4 years to do it, and Europe will be a different society than it is now after the shift.

Re: U.S. stocks are set to deliver their worst quarter in nearly four years

#134

Post by bnycum »

francisofascii wrote: post #77
zug_zug wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the thing is -- when you have rampant inflation, the cost of everything in USD goes up -- be it houses, eggs, or even stocks. So when you subtract out how much the value of the USD has gone down relative to other currencies it's basically another 10% drop.

Eggs are pretty cheap right now. Housing and healthcare are why Americans struggle with affordability. Food, gas, etc. are all just drops in the bucket.

Eggs may be cheaper than when they were during culling/avian flu, but food sure isn't. Where I am most grocery items are now 50-70% more expensive than last January. The milk I buy weekly at the grocery store has increased 67% since then. Beef is roughly 50% more, and I haven't even had steak since late 2024 at this point. That isn't sustainable.

Re: U.S. stocks are set to deliver their worst quarter in nearly four years

#135

Post by cj »

Tadpole9181 wrote: post #105
cj wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's that old saying? Be greedy when others are fearful, or something like that?

Never heard that one, but my off the cuff thought was "sounds like something a so-far-lucky gambling addict would say".

I have a feeling Warren Buffet would accept that label, with a chuckle and a smirk!

But I also think Buffet wouldn't characterize the current environment as particularly fearful. We haven't seen a whole lot of panic aside from a couple 1-2% daily swings, which is nothing.

Re: U.S. stocks are set to deliver their worst quarter in nearly four years

#136

Post by irishcoffee »

reedf1 wrote: post #110
mrits wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a huge amount of people that spend their entire life on reddit worrying about politics

Believe it or not; it is an enormous luxury to be able to ignore politics.

How do you figure? Ignoring it or obsessing over it, the outcomes don't change. Just emotional energy expended.

Re: U.S. stocks are set to deliver their worst quarter in nearly four years

#137

Post by WarmWash »

vrganj wrote: post #56
small_model wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paper Tiger? they just obliterated Iran and have most of the nukes, advanced military tech and AI tech. So no.

And yet, what have they achieved? Iran's power structure is unchanged. Oil is more expensive than in a long time. American alliances are fraying. Iran now exerts control over the Strait of Hormuz. All this has done is to expose the limits of hard power, America's biggest asset.

No one really knows what Irans power structure looks like right now. The supreme leader is in hiding and apparently is only communicating in person, but other leaders are doing the same, and all are scared of getting together.

So it seems more like there is a splintered regime of autonomous cells all kinda doing what they think they should be doing. Whatever general controls the revolutionary guard around the strait could defect tomorrow and sell out to the US, becoming president of his own little carved out country without anyone to really stop him. We known Trump would be falling over himself to make that deal right now.

Re: U.S. stocks are set to deliver their worst quarter in nearly four years

#138

Post by ericmay »

bilekas wrote: post #113
ericmay wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, in part you are asking about the world economy . Most of the world doesn’t have 401k retirement vehicles, good access to financial markets, or the spare funds to save at all, whether it’s in stocks, bonds, or other investment vehicles. So the reason you haven’t gotten an answer is because your question doesn’t make much sense.

A 401K is just an investment in indexes linked to your pension, there's nothing stopping everyone putting their own money into an index themselves. The question makes sense, how many people could the market support if everyone was investing and not spending.

> A 401K is just an investment in indexes linked to your pension, there's nothing stopping everyone putting their own money into an index themselves

This is mostly incorrect.

A 401k in the United States is a tax-advantaged investment account. You can buy shares of individual companies, you can purchase index funds, you can leave it there as cash, buy gold, or just about anything you want or you'd expect to be able to purchase using a brokerage account. Depending on the route you take (Roth or Traditional) you can realize tax savings now or at a later point. 401k Accounts are programs offered by your employer as well [1].

One of the many reasons the OP's question doesn't make sense is because not every country in the world has a 401k program.

[1] There are other programs for individual owners or for those who have an employer that does not offer a 401k.

Re: U.S. stocks are set to deliver their worst quarter in nearly four years

#139

Post by atmavatar »

bnycum wrote: post #134
francisofascii wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eggs are pretty cheap right now. Housing and healthcare are why Americans struggle with affordability. Food, gas, etc. are all just drops in the bucket.

Eggs may be cheaper than when they were during culling/avian flu, but food sure isn't. Where I am most grocery items are now 50-70% more expensive than last January. The milk I buy weekly at the grocery store has increased 67% since then. Beef is roughly 50% more, and I haven't even had steak since late 2024 at this point. That isn't sustainable.

> Beef is roughly 50% more, and I haven't even had steak since late 2024 at this point.

Sadly, the nebraska wildfires guarantee that situation isn't getting better anytime soon (and may actually get worse).

Re: U.S. stocks are set to deliver their worst quarter in nearly four years

#140

Post by manoDev »

kingstoned wrote: post #35
mikewarot wrote: post #13

In less than a decade, the Dow will likely go over 1,000,000. (Because the Dollar is about to tank) I used to believe the unwinding of the Petrodollar would take a generation, it's now likely to happen this year . Trump's wild late night rants threatening civilian infrastructure gave all the cover Iran needed to take out the infrastructure of any of our allies that have US connections or bases. The effects of those a…

USD is actually stronger these days... I know since I receive USD as payment and convert them to EUR

The Gulf countries are dumping their gold reserves and buying dollars, that put a momentary halt on what was a steady declining trajectory for the USD. But since this blip isn't caused by structural reasons (nothing changed in the US economy), it will only last as long as these countries have gold to sell.
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