The State of the Economy Thread - “Falling inflation, rising growth give U.S. the world’s best recovery”

[Die Hard]

20 hours ago, Sacks 'n' Stuff said:

I’m starting to think that what we are seeing here is a money grab and upward transfer of wealth for the top 10% that is going to make the tax cuts pale in comparison.

Just starting?!? 😎 That was very first thought the minute I learned of shut downs.

 

Im just curious to see how much pain people are willing to tolerate. 

[China]

What Is the Stock Market Even for Anymore?

 

With the economy in free fall, the resilience of share prices defies the misfortunes of most Americans.

 

In early March, as it became clear that the coronavirus pandemic really wasn’t a hoax but was about to upend American life, I started texting my friend Paul, an investment adviser, about the stock market. Although I worked briefly on Wall Street before succumbing to the wealth and prestige of a career in journalism, I couldn’t claim any particular financial expertise. But that didn’t stop me from burdening Paul with my predictions. On Sunday, March 8, I texted him that I thought the market was going to drop 25 to 30 percent over the next three to four months. When the S&P 500 plunged more than 7 percent the next morning, triggering an automatic halt in trading, I told Paul that I was revising my time frame to three to four hours and added, ‘‘Good luck trying to catch this falling knife.’’ The Dow Jones industrial average sank 2,000 points that Monday, the biggest one-day loss since October 2008.

 

Then the market began to rise. I was dismissive. ‘‘How are you enjoying the sucker’s rally?’’ I asked Paul.  I texted Paul on April 8. The next morning, the Labor Department announced that 6.6 million new claims had been filed. The Dow gained another 779 points. Paul was as puzzled as I was. ‘‘Ridiculous!!’’ he texted.

 

By then, the market’s rebound had become a source of morbid fascination for many. How could it be that stocks were heading higher — after a steep sell-off, of course — in the face of a global pandemic and what’s shaping up to be the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression? Wall Streeters were quick with answers: The Federal Reserve was pumping more than $1 trillion into the markets to stave off a financial meltdown, and besides, with bond yields at record lows, investors didn’t really have any palatable alternatives to stocks as places to put their money. Still, it was jarring, even macabre, to watch the market soar while tens of thousands of Americans were dying of Covid-19 and millions were losing their jobs as a consequence of the nation’s economic shutdown.

 

But even with most of the country shut down, almost 100,000 Americans were now dead, and some 38 million were out of work. So why was the stock market going up? Ackman said that the market was heavily weighted to a small number of companies — Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook — that were positioned to become even more dominant than they were before the crisis and whose stock prices were rising in anticipation of that. Weak public companies were being culled — ‘‘the virus kills older people, people with comorbidities, people with other health issues, and the same thing is true in business; the virus kills off companies that were structurally impaired already’’ — while strong ones were poised not just to survive but to prosper. 

 

But Jeremy Siegel had no doubts or qualms about the market’s behavior. Siegel, who is 74 and teaches finance at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, is a prominent scholar of the markets, a fixture on CNBC who is often referred to as ‘‘the wizard of Wharton.’’ He is famed for his bullishness: His 1994 book, ‘‘Stocks for the Long Run,’’ which argued that stocks were the best option for buy-and-hold investors, presaged — and some say helped spark — the 1995-2000 bull market during which the S&P 500 more than tripled in value. He and I spoke the morning after the Labor Department reported that the United States lost 20.5 million jobs in April and that the jobless rate had spiked to 14.7 percent. The Dow, true to recent form, jumped 455 points that day.

 

For Siegel, there was nothing strange about the market’s rising despite the gruesome unemployment figures: Investors already knew they would be ugly. ‘‘It’s Principle 1 of Finance 101: Anything that is expected doesn’t move the market,’’ he told me. People who were dismayed by its upswing since mid-March didn’t understand how the market works. ‘‘Over 90 percent of the value of stocks is dependent on earnings more than a year in the future,’’ he said. 

 

It could be that the market is simply telling us something we intuitively know: that the strong will emerge from the current crisis even stronger and the rich will grow even richer. Amazon’s share price is up 45 percent since the market bottomed out on March 18 and just reached an all-time high. According to a new study, Jeff Bezos has added another $34.6 billion to his net worth.

 

Perhaps one lesson this crisis can reinforce is that we should stop thinking of the stock market as a barometer of national prosperity. Maybe it served that function in the past, but it doesn’t now. Instead, the market has become an emblem and engine of American inequality. In that sense, its performance in recent months reflects our reality all too well.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Cooked Crack]

 

 

 

 

Edited June 5, 2020 by Cooked Crack

[Cooked Crack]

 

So dumb. 🤦🏾‍♂️

[Renegade7]

Note folks not looking for work, unemployment dropping doesn't make sense

 

 

[skinfan2k]

those local government jobs are coming back once another bill is coming for the states

[88Comrade2000]

1 minute ago, skinfan2k said:

those local government jobs are coming back once another bill is coming for the states

There will be no more bills, the GOP won’t pass anything else.

[skinfan2k]

Just now, Rdskns2000 said:

There will be no more bills, the GOP won’t pass anything else.

oh it's coming in some form. I will bet the house on that. 

[88Comrade2000]

24 minutes ago, skinfan2k said:

oh it's coming in some form. I will bet the house on that. 

Not to the people who need it. GOP will pass tax cuts or more bailouts to big business.

[Kosher Ham]

On 5/28/2020 at 1:54 PM, Sacks 'n' Stuff said:

I’m starting to think that what we are seeing here is a money grab and upward transfer of wealth for the top 10% that is going to make the tax cuts pale in comparison.

 

Like that movie with Justin Timberlake? Minus the aging thing. 

[Cooked Crack]

 

[visionary]

 

 

 

[TradeTheBeal!]

The stock market is having a day.

[PleaseBlitz]

And not a good one.  

[Renegade7]

Setting up for possibly biggest dead cat bounce in history.

 

So much denial and reaching for good news, might as well call this a correction.

 

So is unemployment actually about 13% or 16%? I feel no sympathy for anyone that dived into the numbers showing unemployment actually went down instead of up.

[Larry]

17 minutes ago, Renegade7 said:

So is unemployment actually about 13% or 16%?

 

I'm sure Fox will begin showing us the "Real Unemployment Rate" any day now.  

[PleaseBlitz]

8 minutes ago, Larry said:

 

I'm sure Fox will begin showing us the "Real Unemployment Rate" any day now.  

 

So the rate for just white people?

[techboy]

1 hour ago, TryTheBeal! said:

The stock market is having a day.

 

1 hour ago, PleaseBlitz said:

And not a good one.  

 

Maybe TINA got over her FOMO.

[Larry]

1 minute ago, PleaseBlitz said:

 

So the rate for just white people?

 

Nah, the one they showed all the way through the Obama administration, to convince their audience that the unemployment levels everybody else was showing were fake, and the "Real Unemployment Rate" was actually like 6% higher.  (And which they instantly stopped using, the day Trump took office.)  

[skinfan2k]

1 hour ago, TryTheBeal! said:

The stock market is having a day.

No more fed pump, more concerns for wave 2, hedge funds back to even from previous lows.  It was bound to do a W recovery. I am glad I got in really easy and made profit in the last 2 months.  Hope I can time it again to make bank one more time. 

[Barry.Randolphe]

The market is being manipulated....it should have never been as high as it was recently. It feels like I'm watching bitcoin whales right now pump and dump

[Cooked Crack]

 

 

[hail2skins]

9 hours ago, Renegade7 said:

So is unemployment actually about 13% or 16%? I feel no sympathy for anyone that dived into the numbers showing unemployment actually went down instead of up.

I thought I heard that if they calculated using the proper methodology in both April and May, the unemployment rate would've still gone down, but from 19 percent to 16 percent (instead of from 14 percent to 13 percent as originally reported). 

[Renegade7]

37 minutes ago, hail2skins said:

I thought I heard that if they calculated using the proper methodology in both April and May, the unemployment rate would've still gone down, but from 19 percent to 16 percent (instead of from 14 percent to 13 percent as originally reported). 

 

Again, unless someone can explain to me why folks that give up looking for work isn't factored into that number, I really don't care what it is, by itself it isn't the full or big picture.  It's always weaponized or delegitimized based on who's making what point while people are still suffering.

[spjunkies]

Isn't that Mr. "human capital stock" running his mouth again? The words coming out of that guys mouth SHOULD be enough for everyone to protest about, but instead they'll stay silent like always.