Down goes the Dow

agip wrote:

Sally Vix wrote:

Flagpole is outright lying that his mid-caps did over 60% this year. Just an outright lie. I already showed how Vanguard (his fave) mid-caps came no where close to 60%. Like WAY lower that that. The onus is on him to show which of his mid-caps performed at about 100% Y-T-D to offset his on average 20% relatively lackluster Vanguard funds. Put up or shut up, Flagpole. Show us your mid-caps that returned about 100% this year.

I remember Flagpole showing some confusion and misunderstanding about how dividends work with mutual funds. I'm guessing that the 60% claim might be another expression of that kind of confusion. Just a guess though.

FP, check morningstar to see what the return is on specific funds. THey won't be +60% unless they are some kind of hyper-tech or bitcoiny job.

Agip - I thought Flagpole was a investing genius. He doesn't have to show specific funds returning 60% for the year. He is already is in the hole. He claimed an above 60% and his beloved Vanguard funds only returned about 20% at Best. So his other caps needed ytd returns about 120% to reach his purported gains. He was very talkative earlier but his lies were caught and he is in hiding. You are a fraud Flagpole. A FRAUD.

Swaglord_the_real_one_1_one_1_one wrote:

Was just at a mall in PA. Tons of people shopping (with masks) at Barnes and Noble.

Is the economy really gonna be hit hard? All tech is doing great. Amazon crushing etc.

Mostly just small businesses got rekt. Bars and crappy restaurants.

Highly doubt this ripples much.

rich people saved an enormous amount of money this year, and rich people are going to spend it next year. Bullish.

agip wrote:

Swaglord_the_real_one_1_one_1_one wrote:

Was just at a mall in PA. Tons of people shopping (with masks) at Barnes and Noble.

Is the economy really gonna be hit hard? All tech is doing great. Amazon crushing etc.

Mostly just small businesses got rekt. Bars and crappy restaurants.

Highly doubt this ripples much.

rich people saved an enormous amount of money this year, and rich people are going to spend it next year. Bullish.

It's not just rich people though. A lot of middle class people are benefiting from this as well since the government basically curbed their sh!tty spending habits for them. Bank deposits (or savings accounts or whatever) are at like an uber all time high

Swaglord_the_real_one_1_one_1_one wrote:

Was just at a mall in PA. Tons of people shopping (with masks) at Barnes and Noble.

First, no one cares anymore and haven't really for a while. I think we need to create a plan around that instead of raging at people who are daring to fly on the holidays. It's like trying abstinence only for sex-ed in high school. It's not gonna work.

Is the economy really gonna be hit hard? All tech is doing great. Amazon crushing etc.

Mostly just small businesses got rekt. Bars and crappy restaurants.

Highly doubt this ripples much.

Stocks are going up until interest rates go up. Take note of inflation report release dates and hedge bets the day before.

agip wrote:

rich people saved an enormous amount of money this year, and rich people are going to spend it next year. Bullish.

Yeah I feel pretty much exactly the same. Also the other comment about the pandemic fixing lower-middle and middle class spending habits... absolutely true.

Think about how many idiots were out spending on rounds of drinks, etc.

Next year I would say: big outdoors purchases, huge travel purchases (I bet airbnb prices inflate). The big tech purchases are right now, doubt it changes much next year. Airlines are gonna rebound big. Cruises too, middle class love a good basic azzz cruise in the Carib.

Losers: bars, crappy restaurants, clubs, corporate real estate (offices)

Swaglord_the_real_one_1_one_1_one wrote:

Was just at a mall in PA. Tons of people shopping (with masks) at Barnes and Noble.

Is the economy really gonna be hit hard? All tech is doing great. Amazon crushing etc.

Mostly just small businesses got rekt. Bars and crappy restaurants.

Highly doubt this ripples much.

Has nothing much to do with that observation. The economy has already been hit and the market went up anyway. It is clear that all the money printing has lowered economic growth. The current correlation with the markets is confidence that Fed policies insure rising stock prices. There is nothing fundamental to support that confidence. Clearly investors are speculating at extreme levels, and coming up with a host of theories to justify their purchases. Some of which are quite delusional, in my opinion.

Ghost of Igloi wrote:

Swaglord_the_real_one_1_one_1_one wrote:

Was just at a mall in PA. Tons of people shopping (with masks) at Barnes and Noble.

Is the economy really gonna be hit hard? All tech is doing great. Amazon crushing etc.

Mostly just small businesses got rekt. Bars and crappy restaurants.

Highly doubt this ripples much.

Has nothing much to do with that observation. The economy has already been hit and the market went up anyway. It is clear that all the money printing has lowered economic growth. The current correlation with the markets is confidence that Fed policies insure rising stock prices. There is nothing fundamental to support that confidence. Clearly investors are speculating at extreme levels, and coming up with a host of theories to justify their purchases. Some of which are quite delusional, in my opinion.

You have had the same opinion since you first joined us. During that time, the markets have skyrocketed.

Will the markets eventually go down. Of course. But unless you can tell us precisely when that will happen, your prognostications are worthless.

Was speaking with some friends yesterday by Zoom. Friends we would normally be getting together with. :-( More than one remarked how much money they were able to put away lately, or credit card debt they'd managed to clean up. Our savings habits have also changed a lot; we used to travel a couple of times a month, one of us at our expense to accompany the other on their business. All that money has been tucked away instead, except for a little bit that's gone into shoes and other on-line shopping... :-)

Someone also made the comment that we are in a k-shaped recovery, rather than a V- or U- or L-shaped one, where some people's fortunes have gone straight up, and others have declined, dividing the world into those doing well and those being hammered. Thankfully (luckily) we're in the former group. My company was evidently antifragile to pandemics, and my spouse's is agnostic to pandemics, being needed under all circumstances in equal measure.

Our conventional investment accounts have done relatively poorly (up 5% on the year), but our other investments (RE, company shares) have done very well, so on the whole it's been a very good year, if only from a financial perspective. The rest of it, well, I'm ready for somebody to turn off the pandemic...

Ghost of Igloi wrote:The economy has already been hit and the market went up anyway.

Igy, December 31 is getting close. I’m getting prepared to accept your dignity. Remember, no excuses... ?

idiot from the ipad wrote:

Ghost of Igloi wrote:The economy has already been hit and the market went up anyway.

Igy, December 31 is getting close. I’m getting prepared to accept your dignity. Remember, no excuses... ?

You can accept my dignity, and I will toast to your health as the clock strikes midnight.

Johannes wrote:

Ghost of Igloi wrote:

Has nothing much to do with that observation. The economy has already been hit and the market went up anyway. It is clear that all the money printing has lowered economic growth. The current correlation with the markets is confidence that Fed policies insure rising stock prices. There is nothing fundamental to support that confidence. Clearly investors are speculating at extreme levels, and coming up with a host of theories to justify their purchases. Some of which are quite delusional, in my opinion.

You have had the same opinion since you first joined us. During that time, the markets have skyrocketed.

Will the markets eventually go down. Of course. But unless you can tell us precisely when that will happen, your prognostications are worthless.

Not correct at all. The markets have gone thru periods where more than a decade of returns were wiped out. This will be the same.

The US fight against the virus may have turned a corner finally...the 7 day averages of both new cases and deaths are the lowest since the first week of December and heading down sharply.

Could be a Xmas mirage though, of less testing and clerking... we'll see if Xmas travel cause an uptick in cases.

NYC is up to 0.6% of the population jabbed. This is going a lot slower than I thought it would.

Greetings all!

I think Dr. Racket hit it when he said that stocks will rise until the interest rate rises.

Amazing that stock markets are driven by policy more than by business—or is it? I have maintained this for years now.

I continued to slowly average into bitcoin through pypl, and am now up something like 20%. The dollar amount is almost 10k, maybe time to move it to an exchange. A minor pain. Waiting for it to crash?. IDK exactly why, but I hesitate to just dump in my full planned “investment “ all at once.

Also, just how many times can this simulus be priced-in? Maybe this will offset the sell-the-fact from last time.

Ghost of Igloi wrote:

Johannes wrote:

You have had the same opinion since you first joined us. During that time, the markets have skyrocketed.

Will the markets eventually go down. Of course. But unless you can tell us precisely when that will happen, your prognostications are worthless.

Not correct at all. The markets have gone thru periods where more than a decade of returns were wiped out. This will be the same.

Exactly which part was not correct?

“ There is nothing fundamental to support that confidence.”

I wish you would be more precise with language, maybe the discussion would evolve. The policy environment in which every business exists is most certainly a business fundament.

Maserati wrote:

Greetings all!

I think Dr. Racket hit it when he said that stocks will rise until the interest rate rises.

Amazing that stock markets are driven by policy more than by business—or is it? I have maintained this for years now.

I continued to slowly average into bitcoin through pypl, and am now up something like 20%. The dollar amount is almost 10k, maybe time to move it to an exchange. A minor pain. Waiting for it to crash?. IDK exactly why, but I hesitate to just dump in my full planned “investment “ all at once.

Also, just how many times can this simulus be priced-in? Maybe this will offset the sell-the-fact from last time.

yeah but historically stocks do better than average during times of rising rates. Esp. small caps. Because rates rise when the economy is doing well.

I think it's usually a mistake to think that the Fed has a lot of control over anything but the Fed funds rate.

So why is this time different? Why this time will rising rates hurt the stock market?

In the Fall of 2018 the Fed tried to raise the rate by .00001% and the NASDAQ straight up went into a mini bear market. With the amount of corporate debt floating around out there, I don't see how anyone can deny the influence of the Fed. Companies like Tesla have survived literally only because they could continue to service there debt basically for free. Pretty soon we're gonna start seeing the zombie companies just lingering around at this pace.

Maybe cause is getting confused with effect.

Historically, rates have been jacked ip in response to an overheating economy. This time around however, it is different because of the now-insoluble debt situation. Rates cannot rise regardless of what the economy is doing because social schemes would go bankrupt.

The gov has picked its horses in the race, and they are residential RE, and equities. Like Idiot, my RE did well this year—except for my condos in Mpls of course, which I don’t think is reflective of broader markets.

Well that's an N=1 data series you are offering, while the piece I cited has multiple examples.

And anyway, are real, after inflation, interest rates companies are paying much different than ever? If Tesla now pays 4% with 1% inflation, that's the same as a company in the 80s paying 8% with 5% inflation. But the 8% sounds much more sane for some reason.