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Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

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Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#671
post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but there's no blood from the pessimists since they don't really lose what they have. They just miss out.

There used to be a saying, something like if you missed the best 20 days of the market in the last century, you would just about break even. Missing out is very, very expensive.

If you miss the best 10 days in the last 20 years of the US market, you lose 2/3 of the gains. If you miss the best 20 days, you are slightly underwater. https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/04/11/what-happens-when-...

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#672
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,…

"There's nothing to do here."

Maybe. I imagine it's a trigger for some people to review their investment mix. Not saying panic sell at this particularly bad moment, but downturns are an obvious heads up for people that assumed everything would constantly rise. Changing your mix for future deposits might not be a bad idea if your current mix is higher risk than it should be for your age.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#673
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,…

> As a retail investor (i.e. not extremely rich), you can't gain any advantage over the market that overcomes your transaction costs. Sure you can. You develop a system, learn how to find information, and make good predictions of future human behavior. You should learn the ins and outs of the product you're trading.

The efficient market hypothesis would like a word with you.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#674

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.

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.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#675
post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

US fertility rate is approx. 1.8, well below population sustainability. If it weren't for immigration (a political policy question), the US would have negative population growth too.

It's crazy to me that so many generally pro-business folks have suddenly turned against immigration in the US. It's pretty much the US's best bet at continued above-OECD-average economic growth (until the rest of the world becomes middle class). And the US is, culturally (well, mythologically) pretty pro-immigration and generally good at integration. sigh

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#676

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.

South Korea's fatality rate will be somewhere between "deaths / confirmed cases" (currently around 0.7%) and "deaths / (deaths + recoveries)" (currently around 28.5%) - those numbers will eventually converge.

What really matters though is to keep the raw number of confirmed cases low enough so that hospitals don't get overwhelmed. If hospitals get overwhelmed, fatality rates go up. So containment is key.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Note that nobody has any idea where equity prices will be in one day, never mind one year or ten years' time. > So relax... keep buying lol

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).

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#678
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,…

Than why do I keep getting richer on my puts? Maybe it's because there are actually ways to make money during a crisis...

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%....

For reference, there have been 3,000 deaths out of 11,000,000 people in Wuhan. That's 0.03% of the population dead and the number of new deaths per day is declining. If the rest of the world comes even close to being as good at quarantine as Wuhan, we'll be way under 2%. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_ou...

Based on the US and Iranian responses, it seems a substantial portion of the world will not come remotely close to being as effective at quarantining as Wuhan. Wuhan appears to be the maximum effectiveness, not the average.

Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet

#680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a retail investor (i.e. not extremely rich), you can't gain any advantage over the market that overcomes your transaction costs. Sure you can. You develop a system, learn how to find information, and make good predictions of future human behavior. You should learn the ins and outs of the product you're trading.

The efficient market hypothesis would like a word with you.

The efficient market hypothesis is that markets are efficient to present public information.

If markets were efficient to the present value of the future price at all times, then there would be no such thing as insider trading and hedge funds would all lose money.

You can make money by making inferences about present facts, or taking views on future occurrences.

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