Considering most wealth is in old peoples hands, they are most affected by this virus.
They are most susceptible to fear-mongering too.
Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet
711–720 of 1001 posts
Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet
#712Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep, over half of GDP growth is tied to population growth. If 2% of humanity is about to die...
I'm wondering if what 2% dies matters. This disease is mostly going to kill people past their prime working years. There are going to be tons of sociological changes. Just speculating here: - Social security could have it's date of insolvency extended. It's currently predicted to be insolvent by 2037. Most pension programs in the world will be relieved of pressure if many of those over 60 years of age die. Many state…
> losing a lot of that voting block as older voters often serve as a check against naive ideas that younger voters have such as wanting to try socialist policies
That swings both ways; older voters also tend to stand in the way of necessary reforms, like ending the Drug War, or similar "law-and-order" policies that end up being counter-productive.
While I won't pretend there isn't a naive, full-blown socialist contingent amongst some young backers of Warren and Sanders, it's a little frustrating when the signature policy (single-payer healthcare) isn't some kooky "experiment", but a functioning norm in the rest of the industrialized world (usually with statistically better outcomes). Obviously that's not trivial to replicate, America is larger and less homogenous, there are good arguments against single-payer, yada yada yada. But it's a far cry from an "experiment", let alone from "seizing the means of production".
At any rate, I do favor implementing policies at state and local levels, whether socialized medicine, or actual experiments like UBI. But let's a keep a little perspective, and not succumb to naive categorization based on a locally-scoped Overton window.
Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet
#713Earlier quoted context omitted.
Than why do I keep getting richer on my puts? Maybe it's because there are actually ways to make money during a crisis...
If you're trading options, you are not an average retail investor. Discussing puts isn't relevant for GP's situation.
So? If you want to buy options, it's relatively easy to transform yourself into such an investor, so that should be fair game for evaluating HNers' potential search space.
Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet
#714I 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,…
Unless you use robinhood which has no transactions fees.
Not just Robinhood. Charles Schwab and some others have moved this direction too.
Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet
#715Earlier quoted context omitted.
The efficient market hypothesis would like a word with you.
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 dropped to 846 in March 2003, and was back up as the virus was shown to be under control. Obviously lots of factors in play, but we're very susceptible to hindsight bias as a species.
Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet
#716I 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,…
Unless you use robinhood which has no transactions fees.
> robinhood
It's easy to have no fees if your customers can't make transactions.
To be less snarky, I'd avoid them if you're trying to time the markets.
Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet
#717I 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,…
Unless you use robinhood which has no transactions fees.
There are still costs to your transactions, not least of which is the information gulf between you and an institutional investor with a Bloomberg terminal.
Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet
#718I 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,…
Unless you use robinhood which has no transactions fees.
Their fees come in the form of unexpected downtime at high volume.
A free system gets you only so far
Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet
#719Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I'm not clear why you mention insider trading here? Insiders have access to information that is not present public information, and so is not priced into the current value of the stock.
Re: Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet
#720Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
Gold is a single concentrated bet, not really comparable to a stock-market index, and the Nikkei shows why it's important to diversify outside of your home country. For almost everyone, "buy the global market portfolio and forget about it" is the right advice.
While I agree that this advice is better than picking stocks, something always rubs me the wrong way when it is repeated like it is an absolute fact. Like they say in the commercials, Past Performance Is No Guarantee of Future Results.
I can't say what form it will take, but I can definitely see a future where the pendulum swings back from ever more indexification.