Down goes the Dow

what's it say?

“we find ourselves in the midst of the worst economic crisis in modern history, there are still more stocks that trade above 10-times revenues today (37) than there were in March of 2000 (30), the month the Nasdaq put in its infamous peak before falling 75% over the subsequent two years.“

thank you. If comparing the current economic crisis to the bursting of the tech bubble in 2000, I would ask how mitigating factors like the feds willingness to prop up the markets compares with any such support they did or didn't exercise in 2000.

Ghost of Igloi wrote:

“we find ourselves in the midst of the worst economic crisis in modern history, there are still more stocks that trade above 10-times revenues today (37) than there were in March of 2000 (30), the month the Nasdaq put in its infamous peak before falling 75% over the subsequent two years.“

The market is not the economy. How many times do I have to tell you that?

Behold my one share of Amazon. +73% since March.

03/18/2020 1.00000 $3,178.47 $1,829.77 $1,348.70 73.71% 113 days

agip wrote:

Behold my one share of Amazon. +73% since March.

03/18/2020 1.00000 $3,178.47 $1,829.77 $1,348.70 73.71% 113 days

Congrats! So will we be seeing you at the annual shareholders meeting?

seattle prattle wrote:

agip wrote:

Behold my one share of Amazon. +73% since March.

03/18/2020 1.00000 $3,178.47 $1,829.77 $1,348.70 73.71% 113 days

Congrats! So will we be seeing you at the annual shareholders meeting?

I'm in close consultation with Jeff and we agreed that it would be best to keep my ownership of the company secret for now.

agip wrote:

seattle prattle wrote:

Congrats! So will we be seeing you at the annual shareholders meeting?

I'm in close consultation with Jeff and we agreed that it would be best to keep my ownership of the company secret for now.

Understood. I'll try to mention that you say hello. We always have so much to catching up to do, it's hard to remember everything.

Biden: “Ending the era of ‘shareholder capitalism’ is overdue.”

Agreed. For too long companies have talked about providing shareholder value. That really meant buying back stock only to have the insiders sell to the market. And paying higher dividends to those same shareholders. All the while squeezing every drop of wages and benefits from the lowest paid workers. Funny that the most egregious are your tech darlings. Same folks lecturing every one else on morals.

Ghost of Igloi wrote:

Biden: “Ending the era of ‘shareholder capitalism’ is overdue.”

Agreed. For too long companies have talked about providing shareholder value. That really meant buying back stock only to have the insiders sell to the market. And paying higher dividends to those same shareholders. All the while squeezing every drop of wages and benefits from the lowest paid workers. Funny that the most egregious are your tech darlings. Same folks lecturing every one else on morals.

you'd have to prove that one to me.

tech companies are the most egregious?

low paid tech workers?

agip wrote:

Ghost of Igloi wrote:

Biden: “Ending the era of ‘shareholder capitalism’ is overdue.”

Agreed. For too long companies have talked about providing shareholder value. That really meant buying back stock only to have the insiders sell to the market. And paying higher dividends to those same shareholders. All the while squeezing every drop of wages and benefits from the lowest paid workers. Funny that the most egregious are your tech darlings. Same folks lecturing every one else on morals.

you'd have to prove that one to me.

tech companies are the most egregious?

low paid tech workers?

AMZN warehouse workers. The receptionist, and maintenance works at all of these firms (often minorities). All of Apple’s contract workers in China.

Ghost of Igloi wrote:

agip wrote:

you'd have to prove that one to me.

tech companies are the most egregious?

low paid tech workers?

AMZN warehouse workers. The receptionist, and maintenance works at all of these firms (often minorities). All of Apple’s contract workers in China.

Totally agree on this point. I don’t know what “shareholder capitalism” means though.

Ghost of Igloi wrote:

Biden: “Ending the era of ‘shareholder capitalism’ is overdue.”

Agreed. For too long companies have talked about providing shareholder value. That really meant buying back stock only to have the insiders sell to the market. And paying higher dividends to those same shareholders. All the while squeezing every drop of wages and benefits from the lowest paid workers. Funny that the most egregious are your tech darlings. Same folks lecturing every one else on morals.

That narrative went out of fashion a while ago, maybe sometime around Trump's election or even before it and it's starting to really swing into effect. A lot of CEOs at the Business Round-table last year at Doha recognized it and signed on to a more even approach. Stakeholder capitalism and a sort of neo-manageralism of the 50s/60s is starting to rise back into fashion. I support this and think it'll be good for the US.

For anyone interested, Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, has a really good book on his management style similar to this called Let My People Go Surfing. Highly recommend.

can I post with a different handle wrote:

Ghost of Igloi wrote:

AMZN warehouse workers. The receptionist, and maintenance works at all of these firms (often minorities). All of Apple’s contract workers in China.

Totally agree on this point. I don’t know what “shareholder capitalism” means though.

Shareholder capitalism started in the 70s with good ol' Milton Friedman, a man who can only be described as a literal plague upon the earth. The idea was that a company's only purpose was to generate value for the shareholder. Out of this was borne the hilarious idea that shareholders somehow own corporation and other things like the theory of agency and whatnot. This led to many things like compensating CEOs through stock plans only as a rise in the postmodern aesthetic of the time generated doubt and fear. Of course it didn't help when Nixon (the actual worst president ever in US history) destroyed public trust in every institution and each other through various actions like the Vietnam War, dissolution of Bretton-Woods which led to the oil and steel shock of the 70s, Watergate , and at least a dozen other things.

I've read a lot of books about it because the time basically solidified the postmodern aesthetic as mainstream and it's an interesting an enormous aesthetic in its own right.

Actually......

https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2016/08/bill-clinton-ceo-pay-reform-000195/

CEOs still mouth shareholder value, I have yet to hear any say stakeholder value. Clearly corporations have perverted capitalism for insider aggrandizement, while worker wages have declined the last two decades. The Republican corporate tax cuts just promoted more of the same wealth disparity. Fortunately Covid 19 has pointed out the unfairness, and the outrage is likely to get worse when it becomes abundantly clear there is no V—shaped recovery, and millions will remain unemployed until 2025 or beyond.

“Throughout this crisis, Donald Trump has been almost singularly focused on the stock market, the Dow and Nasdaq. Not you. Not your families,” Biden said. “If I am fortunate enough to be elected president, I’ll be laser-focused on working families, the middle-class families I came from here in Scranton. Not the wealthy investor class. They don’t need me.”

Among the policies Biden described Thursday is a tax hike for corporations. His plans call for a 28% corporate tax rate, well above the 21% set by Trump’s 2017 tax cuts but still below where the top rate was previously.

-CNBC

Ghost of Igloi wrote:

Biden: “Ending the era of ‘shareholder capitalism’ is overdue.”

Agreed. For too long companies have talked about providing shareholder value. That really meant buying back stock only to have the insiders sell to the market. And paying higher dividends to those same shareholders. All the while squeezing every drop of wages and benefits from the lowest paid workers. Funny that the most egregious are your tech darlings. Same folks lecturing every one else on morals.

We have seen the transition of Igy from a diehard Trumpkin to a socialist. Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?