Well 🤯, that's why they say bull markets go up the stairs and bear markets go out the window.
It is all good until it breaks, then it gets really ugly very fast.

I suspect it is already completely and totally broken, our engine has blown but we are still coasting down a hill.

Oct 20, 2022 10:57:34 GMT iNCY said:

Well 🤯, that's why they say bull markets go up the stairs and bear markets go out the window.
It is all good until it breaks, then it gets really ugly very fast.

I suspect it is already completely and totally broken, our engine has blown but we are still coasting down a hill.

But the average individual is still consuming wildly, and corporate greed seems at an all-time high. I'm just wondering, even if it has to be in the vacuum of a thought experiment, which side of the equation is supposed to yield first to influence the behavior of the other?

Oct 20, 2022 11:21:13 GMT 🤯 said:

Oct 20, 2022 10:57:34 GMT iNCY said:

Well 🤯, that's why they say bull markets go up the stairs and bear markets go out the window.
It is all good until it breaks, then it gets really ugly very fast.

I suspect it is already completely and totally broken, our engine has blown but we are still coasting down a hill.

But the average individual is still consuming wildly, and corporate greed seems at an all-time high. I'm just wondering, even if it has to be in the vacuum of a thought experiment, which side of the equation is supposed to yield first to influence the behavior of the other?

That's easy, it's whoever runs out of money first,that's normally the consumer.
There was a story recently that as many as 11% of companies in Germany are zombie companies, no profit and no path to profit and just grinding through the gears until there is no money left.

Oct 20, 2022 11:21:13 GMT 🤯 said:

Oct 20, 2022 10:57:34 GMT iNCY said:

Well 🤯 , that's why they say bull markets go up the stairs and bear markets go out the window.
It is all good until it breaks, then it gets really ugly very fast.

I suspect it is already completely and totally broken, our engine has blown but we are still coasting down a hill.

But the average individual is still consuming wildly, and corporate greed seems at an all-time high. I'm just wondering, even if it has to be in the vacuum of a thought experiment, which side of the equation is supposed to yield first to influence the behavior of the other?

Most believe it is the consumer that should yield but you can curb corporate greed with progressive tax rates.  However it is said corporations, and most people, are solely motivated by money and doing this would discourage people from making new corporations.  It is also said they would pass the costs to the consumer or employee, but you can also set up a tax code to punish that behavior, or reward them for not doing so.  

COVID vaccine next year hits the private market. It costs Pfizer 1.18 to make and they plan to charge 130 for it. Remember R&D was paid for by the US government, with an agreement for the government to purchase 500 million doses at $20 for the first 100 million, and $30 for the next 400 million. But now the only way for this to be profitable for them is to increase the markup from 25 times cost to 100 times cost. 400% inflation essentially in just a year. They claim because it is not emergency medication cost of production have skyrocketed. But nothing changed outside of a price agreement with the government.

Housing demand down by 42%, to a 25 year low, prices still rising. Cancellation rates at 24%. Demand driven economics work this way right? As demand decreases and supply increases prices rise, basic economic logic right? Or we no longer doing demand driven economic and claiming the entirely economic system of the US radically changed due to a .75 rate hike?

Oct 27, 2022 0:18:08 GMT c said:

Housing demand down by 42%, to a 25 year low, prices still rising. Cancellation rates at 24%. Demand driven economics work this way right? As demand decreases and supply increases prices rise, basic economic logic right? Or we no longer doing demand driven economic and claiming the entirely economic system of the US radically changed due to a .75 rate hike?

Love these subtle, not so subtle shots

If prices are driven by demand, as people now claim justify massive price hikes in the US. If prices rise independent of demand, then demand is not causal factor but at best a mediator. We get it rammed down our throats that corporations are simply rising prices to keep up with demand but this obviously is not true in the era of shareholder dividends and stock buybacks. Prices rise to pay investors increasingly higher amounts, so the main causal driver of inflation is nothing more than greed. Investors want higher percentage returns year after year, and it is not sustainable. Nor is increasing executive pay at 30% to 50% year after year.

Worst of all, these people know 30 million can buy a bailout by dropping cash onto half of the house and a supermajority of the senate for a single simple vote. Drop in the bucket for their profits. Executives will keep their bonuses, companies will have their debt paid by the US treasury and their losses will be moved to the individual taxpayer. No need to save money for a rainy day when you can afford to lobby.

Fucking c

Calling it like it is

I also like the subtle brilliant art of you autocorrecting Illuminati as Immuninati

In the other post

It might've been elsewhere

Oct 27, 2022 3:35:34 GMT 🤯 said:

Fucking c

Calling it like it is

I also like the subtle brilliant art of you autocorrecting Illuminati as Immuninati

In the other post

It might've been elsewhere

He's wrong though.
Inflation can be push or pull.
Increasing the supply of money in an economy drives prices just as much as scarcity.
C chooses to ignore this because he has an agenda against capitalism.

He's not wrong in capitalism having a far greater death toll than socialism.

iNCY is right though about the market being a zero sum game.

Which is maybe a nice-ish way of calling it a Ponzi scheme?

Leveraging everything against the future us so we can all live wastefully, recklessly in the now.

Oct 27, 2022 11:17:58 GMT 🤯 said:

He's not wrong in capitalism having a far greater death toll than socialism.

Wot?
Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro and Kim Jung Un would like a chat....

You can't blame every death in the West on capitalism, it's like saying water is poison because everyone who drinks it will eventually die.

Oct 27, 2022 13:24:05 GMT iNCY said:

Oct 27, 2022 11:17:58 GMT 🤯 said:

He's not wrong in capitalism having a far greater death toll than socialism.

Wot?
Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro and Kim Jung Un would like a chat....

You can't blame every death in the West on capitalism, it's like saying water is poison because everyone who drinks it will eventually die.

Yeah there’s a whole chunk of those you mention that rose to power thanks to capitalism though… or at least shitty capitalists.


European colonialism puts those guys to shame just with slavery and land seizure alone.

It’s sort of an apples and oranges argument though. Cause fact is no system on the long curve is innocent.

All34LOL, thanks for chiming in to help elaborate!

To be fair and clear, definitely not arguing innocence for anything. Anything involving humans is, was, and always will be pretty shitty on the whole. I was just wagering on an educated guess that all the combined dead bodies and pain and suffering amassed under and/or as a result of capitalism is an greater number than it is for socialism (even the adulterated socialism of Stalin, et al).

Oct 27, 2022 18:52:01 GMT 🤯 said:

All34LOL, thanks for chiming in to help elaborate!

To be fair and clear, definitely not arguing innocence for anything. Anything involving humans is, was, and always will be pretty shitty on the whole. I was just wagering on an educated guess that all the combined dead bodies and pain and suffering amassed under and/or as a result of capitalism is an greater number than it is for socialism (even the adulterated socialism of Stalin, et al).

It is.

The idea that just because you have an agenda means you can’t be trusted is laughable. Sure it can mean that… but it’s not zero sum. Like if your agenda is pro oil and all your money comes
From oil that’s suspect. But C has no real power, so his ideas may be part of an agenda but at least it’s based on ideals and not continued profit at the cost of the planet.


In short I have an agenda against pure capitalism too… but I don’t for one second think life would be perfect under socialism.

I find it so weird that people always go to right socialism from the past and NEVER modern socialism which exists without violence in the nordic countries, Canada, Europe and even Australia who elected socialist leaders in the last election. Nope these are never mentioned, only communists with authoritarian leaders, never democratic socialists. Like if more people like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were elected, suddenly the US would start mass genocide and armings gangs to trade in narcotics. That if we expect the wealthy to pay the taxes they should be paying we will suddenly transform into the USSR with lines for bread.

Perhaps I should start defining capitalism as countries using child soldiers and slaves, as after all, that is pure capitalism at its finest. Completely free market should allow you buy people. This is basically what is being done when socialism is talked about here, finding the extremes and claiming it is norm.

///

Also you have to be high to assume that more people died in small regional conflicts over a period of decades than died in the imperial wars that seen entire continents decimated under manifest destiny.  How many natives do you see in the average day in Canada or US on a daily basis?  Wars of conquest pretty much annihilated the local populations throughout the Americas.  As was the way with imperialists whenever they went somewhere new.

And how many died in the wars between France and England over the centuries of conflict that spanned nearly the entire world?

Oct 28, 2022 1:32:03 GMT c said:

I find it so weird that people always go to right socialism from the past and NEVER modern socialism which exists without violence in the nordic countries, Canada, Europe and even Australia who elected socialist leaders in the last election. Nope these are never mentioned, only communists with authoritarian leaders, never democratic socialists. Like if more people like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were elected, suddenly the US would start mass genocide and armings gangs to trade in narcotics. That if we expect the wealthy to pay the taxes they should be paying we will suddenly transform into the USSR with lines for bread.

Perhaps I should start defining capitalism as countries using child soldiers and slaves, as after all, that is pure capitalism at its finest. Completely free market should allow you buy people. This is basically what is being done when socialism is talked about here, finding the extremes and claiming it is norm.

///

Also you have to be high to assume that more people died in small regional conflicts over a period of decades than died in the imperial wars that seen entire continents decimated under manifest destiny.  How many natives do you see in the average day in Canada or US on a daily basis?  Wars of conquest pretty much annihilated the local populations throughout the Americas.  As was the way with imperialists whenever they went somewhere new.

And how many died in the wars between France and England over the centuries of conflict that spanned nearly the entire world?

Preach brother

Bolded really resonates with me

Capitalism is just really good brand management,

Like trying to rebrand anti-abortion as pro-life,

It should just be called what it is

Pro-slavery

Oct 27, 2022 17:46:46 GMT All34LOL said:

Oct 27, 2022 13:24:05 GMT iNCY said:

Wot?
Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro and Kim Jung Un would like a chat....

You can't blame every death in the West on capitalism, it's like saying water is poison because everyone who drinks it will eventually die.

Yeah there’s a whole chunk of those you mention that rose to power thanks to capitalism though… or at least shitty capitalists.


European colonialism puts those guys to shame just with slavery and land seizure alone.

It’s sort of an apples and oranges argument though. Cause fact is no system on the long curve is innocent.

That's a terrible filter to view the world through.
If you look at the animal kingdom you will see survival of the fittest as a key plank of evolution. The strong take from the weak and flourish to pass on their genes.

Humans are unique in that we have advanced to a point where we are able to take care of a society rather than just ourselves. In many ways it is capitalism that makes this work because you can earn $100 laying carpet, then go to the grocery store. We don't have to grow all our own food or make our own clothes, capitalism does that. It also ensures that their is competition so that better products flourish and poor products fall away. Have you ever seen any of the tech out of soviet era Russia? It's a shambles.

People are essentially shitty, because selfishness to varying degrees is baked in to people. The people who advocate the loudest for socialism are always the ones contributing the least to current society, how is that not greed?

You know survival of the fittest is an abandoned evolutionary theory right, like natural selection, and has been abandoned since the genetic age. Examining the genetic code proved it was just never true.

California is the state producing the most GDP to the US. Seems socialism works for them. Meanwhile states like Mississippi and Alabama with pure capitalist frameworks produce almost nothing. So if socialism does not work, then why does it work for California and New York, while pure capitalism in the Southern US often fails.

In fact, they just found states with the most conservative policies in the US people have lower life expectancies than states with more progressive ones.

So if you live longer and make more money in socialist states, while prices are set nationally, how is that not evidence of socialism working? I mean Australia is a very socialist country, and it still is working.  

But you still are defining socialism only as communism I guess.

GDP grew last quarter. Cannot wait to see the people who SWORE two quarters in a row of negative growth is a recession now change definitions to keep claiming we are in a recession.  Grow enough to cancel the last two quarters of negative growth as well putting Biden firmly in the green overall.  Growth came as net exports grew as well, through Biden's policies.  

Oct 28, 2022 7:22:52 GMT c said:

GDP grew last quarter. Cannot wait to see the people who SWORE two quarters in a row of negative growth is a recession now change definitions to keep claiming we are in a recession.  Grow enough to cancel the last two quarters of negative growth as well putting Biden firmly in the green overall.  Growth came as net exports grew as well, through Biden's policies.  

I would 100% say it means you are no longer in a technical recession, though it's funny that the first to say a technical recession isn't a recession are the first to wave the numbers around.

I will say that modest GDP growth with high inflation doesn't make for much real growth.
This also means interest rates aren't coming down any time soon.

Tech stocks getting wrecked this week: Microsoft and Amazon getting slapped around, but Meta got smashed in the carnal sense. Autistic obsession works until your obsessions don't match the market I guess.

Gas companies celebrating record profits as they keep the gas price high despite the cost of oil dropping to pre-Ukraine invasion levels.

///

And Meta deserved to be crushed. No one wants to work in a virtual reality office that involves a massive setup cost in hardware and tech support. Facebook is hemorrhaging users too as Gen Z sees it as a boomer app.

Most tech stock were inflated with COVID cash which people are now pulling out for living expenses.

Dow up 14% for the month, the largest increase in 45 years. Is this what the global crash looks like?

Not shockingly oil and healthcare stocks are soaring to new highs lifting up the entire failing tech and retail stocks as these companies report record profits through increasing their prices and blaming inflation. Grocery companies are also seeing sharp increases in profits after jacking up prices due to inflationary issues. Seems like a trend here but just cannot put my finger on it.

Some saying the bulls are about to come back to play.

Interest rate increased against by .75 to 3.75 - 4.

Corporate groups claim that inflation is not as bad as it was at the peak and rates should be dropped. Meanwhile inflation still climbs.

Feds still maintain every quarter until inflation drops below 2 rates will increase. Likely 6 more years of Biden, so gonna be painful to corporate and investment groups who want to see rates drop again since inflation is part of corporate pricing strategy.

So the market is stull bullish and looking to run even though underlying inflation is uglier than the numbers suggest...

But here are some scary things not getting the airtime they should:

www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-xi-tells-gulf-nations-use-shanghai-exchange-yuan-energy-deals-2022-12-09/

China is moving away from the US Dollar, looking to make all energy futures take place on the Shanghai exchange in Yuan.
Here is the other point with rising interest rates.
Borrow in a low interest market and you are a genius, but it is like playing musical chairs not know when the music is going to stop.
Now rates are rising rapidly, this is what it is doing to the government balance sheet:



The interest payments are rising rapidly, this is a forecast of what that looks like peering forwards:



This isn't repaying debt... Just serving the interest.
Again, it is why China is trying to move away from the US Dollar, it is in a precarious position.
The fact that so many security and bond markets run through US exchanges keep demand for the dollar high.
But if the world shifts to a new reserve currency whether in whole or part, the demand for the USD collapses and the US government has some ugly questions to ask itself.

Even now, inflation comes in at 7.1 instead of 7.3 and the market launches... This is still really ugly.
The market is banking on rates coming down so they can start the next cheap money bull run, but the US can afford neither inflation to increase nor rates to rise... So they are really stuck.

Someone is going to have to make some really ugly decisions.
It will have to come from the White House too as there is no point in the Fed pumping the brakes while policy is hitting the accelerator.
It is going to have to get ugly for a while to fix this.
The GFC and Covid the can god kicked down the street, now it is 10 times bigger and heavier and the next person who tries to kick it is going to break their foot.

Not sure if anyone followed the stratospheric rise of Cathie Wood at AARK Investments, Probably KING KID does (Not that he's talking about stocks lately)

It's not quite ETF trading cards, but it is pretty close.
This is the woman who was going to redefine trading:




As I have been saying for 3 years and completely missing the chance to get rich... You can't beat P/E

To be fair iNCY I got in and got out. I did pretty well.

Powell fubared the rate rise, employment numbers came in this morning hotter than the devil's butt crack.
Inflation isn't cooling... It was plateauing.

Economic models showing that further rate hikes may not do anything for inflation. Majority of inflation right now is from price hikes to increase profit margins and not linked to costs. Rising rates it is assumed will just cause companies to push the cost back to consumers with more hikes.

Windfall taxes or banning stock buybacks are needed, but both take acts of congress.

Reducing inflation from here will basically require greatly reducing consumer spending to then hit the bottom line for corporations if taxes and buybacks are off the table, which they are.

Until then, record inflation means record profits and corporations want inflation high.