Down goes the Dow

Opps, how could he betray DGTD posters?

In April 2025, the Social
Security Administration (SSA) implemented a series of changes that
primarily benefited retired public employees, particularly those who received a government pension and also qualified for Social Security based on other work. This was due to the repeal of the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and the Government Pension Offset (GPO), which previously reduced or eliminated benefits for these workers

Ricka de Chiraca esta Santelli

Bumping this, now that TACO has gone mainstream. You heard it here first.

Putin channels Jensen Huang.

zerohedge.com

Nvidia CEO Tells Bloomberg What He Really Thinks About Biden-Era Open Borders

Tyler Durden

"And there should be rules. And but nonetheless, for the ones that really can make a contribution..."

Open link

good lord the economy is ripping. I have probably never been so much on my back foot as right now. I'm thinking recession, business America is apparently thinking 'full steam ahead, damn the torpedoes.'

Or it's some weird data aberation because of the on/off tariffs.

The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the second quarter of 2025 is 4.6 percent on June 2, up from 3.8 percent on May 30.

Wait, what?!

You mean I didn''t need to horde all that stuff and bury those gold bars in the back yard?

Well, that's certainly some good news.

Will you stop trying to time the market? Or will you double down on the "tariff trade"?

I don’t know what I’ll do. I mean look, I’m still 43% in stocks and my bonds are paying 4-5%, so I’m hardly struggling. I’m making good money, just trailing my benchmark.

right now I’m just buying tech steadily but probably too slowly. As far as not keeping up with my benchmark, my biggest mistake has been owning too little Europe, not my bearish on the USA stance.

not going to double down on the bearish tariff trade though.

but bottom line I can’t help but think tariffs and chaos will hurt stock prices so much not enthusiastic about getting back to a benchmark 60% stocks level.

also, I am very anti-Trump so that is probably clouding my judgment and I have to take that into consideration.

Thinking this through, I've been hearing commentators saying that businesses are absorbing rising costs for the time being. Perhaps this is expected to continue for the most part through the 2nd quarter.

Businesses absorb rising costs, consumers still not cutting back, yields growth, and hence the strong projected GDP.

This can only be sustained for so long, and maybe the 3rd quarter will be when costs start to show up at the checkout counters, and economy slows (?).

to illustrate the problem of not enough international:

there are two 60% stock/40% mutual funds from Vanguard.

VBINX is a US-only 60/40 fund.

VSMGX is a global 60/40 fund.

You can see how the mistake most people have made is not having enough foreign stock in their portfolio. Myself included. I've been adding, but not enough:

Year to Date

VBINX US only: +2%

VSMGX Global: +5%

//

SP500 +1%

Europe +22%

I'm up 2% year to date. Matching the US-only fund but trailing the global fund that I use as a main benchmark. So I'm doing fine if we look at US assets only.

Lots of asset allocators are going to trail their benchmarks by a lot in 2025 because of that!

Every time I've made a move based on what I think the market is gonna do I've regretted it. I hope it works out better for you.

The understatement of the year:

“I am very anti-Trump.”

DJT is down recently, so you could make some money off it.

Not too shaby.
For us, as of today's close, we are YTD: -3.3%, and for work 403b's: +2%
I can live with that.

I have no exposure to international to speak of. Fully invested.

Seems I picked a good time to brush up on The French Revolution.

Holy crap, just heard that Tesla dropped 14% on the day!

And I missed that because I was busy watching Palantir (PLTR) tank about half that amount, due to related controversies and accusations by members of Congress that the data collection it enables by government officials is truly scary, in the wrong hands (and couldn't imagine who that might be....).

yahoo.com

‘Destroy the Ring’: Trump’s Palantir deal alarms Hill Republicans

@YahooNews

Data-privacy advocates in the president’s party are warning that his administration’s deal with the tech giant is ripe for abuse.

Open link

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/technology/trump-palantir-data-americans.html?searchResultPosition=1

What a fiasco.