Stocks dropped as the selling pressures that dragged Wall Street last week persisted, while investors braced for a slew of economic data reports this week.
it's so much more than stocks. stocks are mostly vibes and short term get rich schemes for already wealthy people. they're Pokemon cards for the finance class, creating almost nothing tangibly beneficial to society. hype and FUD in an endless cycle.
you can't eat stocks. you can't warm your house with stocks. you can't manufacture solar panels with stocks.
real wealth, the serious fuck you Big Money, depends on the ownership and distribution of real resources: real estate, agricultural land, factories, pipelines, commerical buildings, capital infrastructure. these are what the ultra wealthy buy up during recessions and then charge rents and leases for everyone else to pay, forever. forget about owning land or a home, your kids can't compete with someone paying cash on a 600k house or snatching up entire portfolios of hundreds of rentals in a single purchase.
bailouts and blank checks given out as PPP loans to "business owners" during Covid redistributed wealth from the taxpayers (government) into the hands of the wealthiest people in the world. they can then convert their Pokemon collections into real wealth generating resources. government bailouts to corporations become an engine for not just making the rich richer but the types of assets they then acquire using that money cements them at the top of the wealth generation food chain forever.
Trump 2.0 is engineering another massive redistribution, even bigger and more focused on real estate than before. he made his fake reputation on real estate. loyalist oligarchs who bank rolled dark maga will be handsomely rewarded with the newly emptied government office buildings and public lands.
yup, I'd buy apple or microsoft or nvidia because they are going down now but will go up certainly in 1 or 2 days or even weeks/months. Except tesla, this one will go down and down and down for days/weeks/months, tesla stock is super toxic, dump all of it.
One of the things almost no one talks about is how the prices of luxuries has totally outstripped inflation.
In 1960, minimum wage was $1.00/hour, the average US home was $11,000.00 and a big night on the town was $20.00 for dinner and a show for two people, with drinks and car fare thrown in. Pizza and beer at home was $1.00. A ticket to the first Super Bowl was under $20.00.
Everyone here mentioning billionaires and missing the point that the Russian agent in charge is just doing his best to deliver any and all assets to Russia. Sanctions getting lifted just as the fire sale on American assets begins right before the civil unrest. If you’re a Russian dictator you could not have planned it better. Republicans are seriously the dumbest mother/sister fuckers on the planet. I can’t even believe how fucking stupid you’d have to be to hold “conservative views”. Like it does not compute how you can be that dumb
Notable differences from the last Great Depression:
Many countries have many nuclear weapons.
Something like 6 billion more people exist.
Climate change is accelerating, and this will make food more expensive everywhere, as opposed to a regionalized Dust Bowl, as well as causing more frequent and more severe natural disasters basically everywhere.... and the more time passes, the more expensive it will be to mitigate this.
Perhaps also worth noting:
Japan argued the US's oil embargo on it as functionally a declaration of economic war.
History is replete with examples of embargoes and massive tariffs being considered a justification for escalating a trade war... to an actual war.
Welcome to inelastic demand. They take a percentage of what they charge, and they have to charge more because of the tariffs, so they basically get to take more for free because you have to pay more for it, and you have no choice in the matter.
That's why I said "for now". I was mulling buying in after the election when corporate interests were riding high on a "pro business" President. But I didn't. Now I have that cash free to buy in when we hit the bottom of the slump, if there is a bottom...
My employee stock purchase plan went through recently. I missed selling before the dip caused by all the other employees selling. Normally I will ride it out for a bit and the stock jumps back up but this time I had a sense it was going to just keep dropping. I waited a couple hours for it to partially rebound and managed to time it perfectly, it's only been downhill since I sold lol
I just do automatic investments in a diversified portfolio every month and forget about it. I’m young and in it for the long haul. If shit really hits the fan, none of it will matter anyway.
Recent recessions have shown that the top 1% get richer after the recession. It makes sense when you think about the super rich having the cash to invest is now much cheaper stocks and property while everyone else is struggling to make ends meet.
So I wonder how much the Nazi and the monkey want to avoid a recession. The monkey does not have to worry about reelection and the Nazi is a psychopath.
It only happens because WE bail them out. The biggest lesson I got from 2008 was that we should have let most of those big companies fail. Instead, they got to walk away with a fat check from us, and we got fuck all for it. Now they're trying to cut the regulations that stop them from doing the exact same thing again.
“We see some irony in the recent outperformance by foreign markets over the U.S. markets. In our view, foreign companies in Europe, Asia, and Latin America are likely to suffer even more from deployment of tariffs than companies in the U.S.”
I think they are overestimating the amount of trade flowing into the US. Tariffs will directly impacg US companies and customers, but they'll also decrease the demand for foreign products. That will cause a challenge, if not outright recession worldwide, but I still think that foreign companies would be able to mitigate the drop in demand from the US better than US companies coping with supply shortages and higher prices.
The TCJA passed in Trump's first term. It cut the mortgage interest deduction.
Mortgage interest deduction for newly purchased homes (and second homes) was lowered from total loan balances of $1 million under current law to $750,000. Interest from home equity loans (aka second mortgages) is no longer deductible, unless the money is used for home improvements.
The mortgage interest deduction is a tax break for homeowners, and Trump Term 1 saw that get cut. One would expect that cut to generally apply downwards pressure on house prices, since it makes it more-expensive to borrow money to buy a house.
If one assumes that one could use that as a guidepost as to policy during a second term, maybe that'll continue.
To that end, GOP lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives have compiled a 50-page document that identifies potential avenues they may take, as well as how much these tax and other fiscal changes would cost or save.
To help generate savings, the GOP document proposes making changes to various tax breaks, such as:
The mortgage interest deduction. Suggestions include eliminating the deduction or lowering the current $750,000 limit to $500,000.
Sounds like it. So that could push prices of houses downwards.
I haven't been following the situation there, so this is just a quick skim, mind.
EDIT: I'd also add that some of Trump's policies may have dramatic increases on house prices, depending on what he actually does at any given point in time; he's not really one for providing clear guidance, and even when he does, one can't very well take his statements at face value. Two potentially relevant factors include:
Trade disputes with Canada. The US gets a lot of its lumber from Canada, and North American homes are typically wood-framed. If lumber becomes more expensive, that will drive up the materials cost of construction of new homes.
Illegal immigration. If Trump actually has a significant impact on the illegal immigrant population, it will increase labor costs in construction, as construction makes use of a lot of illegal immigrant labor. That will drive up the labor cost of construction of new homes. My personal take is that most of Trump on immigration is political theater for domestic politics, but it's worth keeping in mind.
So it's hard to judge what factors might dominate.
The biggest influence on housing prices, by far, is the zoning code. Prices are never going to stabilize long term as long as cities keep legally prohibiting supply from meeting demand.
Which honestly could be the point of all this, crash the economy so the fed is forced to cut rates to near zero and all his billionaire buddies can enjoy the fire sale of the republic on the cheap.
My GIC came due and I was considering mutual funds, the bank employee (in those services not like a random one) even said now may not be the best time to do that due to the way markets are in flux. Like they make money if I put it into mutual funds. Unless she just didn't want to help me shrug that's sort of a possibility since they didn't call for our previous appointment when my last one was due. Least it's making more than my bank account I guess but this seems a bit more down than usual too, mean that's usually a good time to buy but who knows when they manipulate it up? Not us regular folk, who have more to lose when they absolutely tank it before it makes gains and a pittance because I chose the wrong one.
Also I'm sure I made the incorrect choice, you're welcome to tell me how badly I've chosen. I used to play RPG games, in D&D I rolled a 1 for attack and 20 for ability check twice in 4 rolls, I always have the worst luck. Go to slots and see my buddy with a bucket of coins when mine ran out in as many tries as my coinage allowed. So if I chose to buy the markets would suck longer lol.