In good times, companies lie about their stability, and analysts lie about markets. In a crisis, the press doesn't know what it's talking about. Where to find your own data
I've personally come to the conclusion that much of the market panic is by design. It's Wall Street throwing a tantrum and trying to show everybody that if they don't get government policies that suit them, they'll hold their breath 'till they turn blue. Honestly, they don't care that it's people's IRAs and 401Ks that are taking a big hit, as long as they get the point across that they can make or break the economy if they aren't bowed down to.
Hahahaha!! So true. Not sure how well they scored on the softer side either. It is danged hard to get actual analysis these days in legacy media. Thank goodness for Substack.
This is an important RACKET report because, for financial dummies like myself, and on the freeway two hours before dawn citizens fighting to survive, $$$$$, and understanding the "..don't worry your pretty little head about it.." manipulation of $$$$$ is/has always been, for both the free citizen, and his/her nation, a question of life or death. The top 1% of Americans own 50% (23 trillion dollars) of the stock market and the bottom 50% own 1% (480 billion dollars). What a gap!! The total: 62% (162 million) of Americans are invested in the stock market. Somewhere outside bubble land the rest of We the People, because avaricious greed decided so, exist in a world stripped of human dignity, surveilled and surrounded by a collapsing infrastructure, gutted industrial centers and ravaged public institutions. Consider: A 120 billion dollars on public education last year and your child can't read? My personal view, it's intentional. Is there any other way than personal to take it?
$$$$$ and the understanding of $$$$$ needs demystification and needs to be a part of a healthy national conversation and re-establishment of the healthy truth/fact based reality that will allow our Republic to thrive. I hope RACKET, BIG and other subscription journalists will continue to make $$$$$ a focus of their reporting.
What’s happening now in the market and what they’re saying about it is very similar to climate change. Someone will go on and on about climate change and how we must immediately change to electric cars. What they’re saying omits how much is from human activity, and how much from natural cycles.
As this article points out, the PE ratio for the market was high, along with other indicators it was overpriced. But all you hear about is Trump’s tariffs!
I've noticed this for years now, but I never thought of comparing it to a 14-year-old girl with PMS. Maybe that's because I'm a 56-year-old man who knows he needs to stay as far away as possible from 14-year-old girls...unlike the brother of an uncle of mine.
I always thought of the stock market as the financial embodiment of Woody Allen. Yeah, bad analogy because I've what I said before about young girls, but let's face it, people who play the market freak out over any little thing, no matter how insignificant it may turn out to be.
One thing I can tell you is that whenever something happens in the market, Quoth the Raven thinks like a little girl. Not even a teenage one, really.
Why are we listening to a dude who is famous as a Tesla bear during a time when the stock rose >10x? His first Tesla bear calls were when the stock was what, something like 320. "Something's fishy with Tesla" he'd say. "Tesla will blow up any old time!"
Now some people might look at Tesla stock in 320 in 2018 and then look at it today at 230 and say "What do you mean? He was right!" Those people are stupid, as Tesla stock has split a total of 15:1 since then and is up about 11x (Also known as 1000%) since QTR started flapping lips about it. And kept flapping lips about it all the time and was always wrong. Whenever he is right and Tesla ultimately drops seriously after finally reaching a true peak, he'll be as right as a broken clock sometimes is.
Maybe we could spend our time with a smart lady like Cathie Wood instead, Matt?
When Tim Walz--that dim-bulb running mate of the dimwit VP--was yucking it up about Tesla's falling price, I know several people who said, "WOW! Time to buy more shares!"
If I remember correctly, every automobile company that sells EVs and hybrids offers tax credits to customers. Likewise, utilities and insulation companies pass along tax credits for energy savings and solar panels. States also give companies special tax considerations when they build a factory and create jobs in their region. Semiconductor companies are the latest batch of companies receiving massive tax credits. For many decades, our politicians have determined winners and losers in our economy. Investors factor these government interventions into their analysis of investments.
There is no consciousness in "Wall Street". People buy/sell on news hoping to profit even from tiny movements in prices, and the buying and selling creates momentum. It's not some organized plan; it's just human behavior at scale, like the mobs that form when some new shooting gets politicized.
"It also turned out that most of the statistics politicians used to represent the relative fitness or unfitness of the economy were and are weighted at best, and outright bull at worst, from the Consumer Price Index to the Unemployment Rate. Even LIBOR, the interbank lending rate that supposedly represented how finance companies thought about the economy, turned out to be a monstrous scam. The habit of tweaking stats became so ingrained, even Nobel laureates like Paul Krugman could unashamedly declare “the war on inflation is over” and “we won, at very little cost” using a graph that charted price growth excluding “food, energy, shelter, and used cars,” i.e. everything...."
Was it not taught from old that "figures don't lie, but liars can figure"?
The big problem with Mr. Krugman is that his political beliefs so overwhelm him that an objective person looking for accurate data cannot believe nor accept what he says.
I’m sure he is a brilliant man. But none of that matters if you cannot trust him to analyze data objectively.
I came here to say that "the habit of tweaking stats is so ingrained that EVEN "nobel laureate" Paul Krugman can lie" is like saying precipitation has become so common that rain is wet.
Krugman doesn't exist to find truths in data, he exists to support pre-conceived narratives with statistics.
However, there are some Nobel prize winning economists that don't do that. You just have to work to read them. Edmund Phelps. Amartya Sen.
Some are more forthright about their uncertainty. :-)
The annoying ones (e.g., Krugman) use psychological ploys: dismissive comments, etc.
In the math biz, there's the old line about "proof by intimidation" whereby an established, known mathematician can bluff a junior member.
There's another line that sticks with me: when an established scientist says something is false or impossible, they're almost always wrong. If they say something is likely true, they're almost always right.
True though I think most of the above were tongue-in-cheek and probably were meant more at the "macro" level where the interdependence and "coupling" of factors is both confounding and amazingly interesting.
"The Media" is falling all over itself to "short" Trump with Panic News, and by extension, the US. They simply don't care. It's all part of the "Hands Off" mentality pervasive in the legacy media.
Trump was right: "The media is the enemy of the people."
Not a matter of 'innocence' vs 'non-innocence'...we've been being lied to since Breton-Woods, at least.
As Steve Keen (among others) has pointed out on more than one occasion, Finance is supposed to function as the cost of doing Business..it was never supposed to be an industry unto itself.
In the mid90’s a friend returned home after receiving a law degree from Georgetown. He did his best to convince me that basically, those financing a venture deserved all the benefits of success. The engineer types that made discoveries and developed the processes generating profit needed to be happy to just have a job. Workers are workers. Financiers rule.
Chris Irons need a show. Maybe a weekly or even daily financial recap. The guy explains things so well in a hilarious "get the fuck outta here" Philly way.
For those who live next door to the printing press, it's true. TPTB are not stupid.
That's because for TPTB, there's an inverse to Hanlon's razor: They are quick to confess stupidity after-the-fact ("Who could've known?!"), but what has nearly always happened is stealth planned malice. But when exposed it's "Time to move on!"
Gee, whatever happened to the TBTF banks after the five-alarm crisis was over? Weren't we supposed to abolish TBTF??
Yup, just as communism and socialism promises "we all own it". That's their nonsense. Someone or small group is *always* in charge, and possibly the only remedy is to *always* hold them to account, to consequences.
I would not be surprised *at all* to find out Hanlon's razor was actually initiated by the CIA, just as they created the epithet "conspiracy theory".
The unemployment rate includes only people actively looking for a job. The opposite of what was written. It doesn’t include people who have given up looking for a job
I’m more interested in EMployment which for men 25-54 has been declining for decades
Wait until you look at the FRED data about how many adults work for government contractors and combine it with the number of adults that don't work (retired/disability/in college/etc).
Turns out we're a LOT more socialized of a country than we are led to believe.
Actually I do want to focus on men. Unemployed men are less likely to marry. It may be sexist to write, but frustrated men are a threat to societal stability far more than women
It’s not sexist. Sexist would be using someone’s sex to oppress, exploit, or otherwise discriminate. Your example is simply using the fact that someone is male in today’s environment is a risk. This has been happening for years in the Arab world, and no reason to think it can’t happen here.
Sorta like how they ignore the effect of 10's of millions of "new immigrants" on our already stressed housing market, where those at the lower end of the scale are being pushed out of affordable housing.
This was a great one Matt. It showed several things. One was that no matter how a company puts out information it’s all designed to put you to sleep. A10k holds all the info on a company but you have to look at 10 different places to find out what you’re looking for. This market needed a correction which generally is 10% which is where we landed at on Friday. The Fed being non political is laughable. Most people who invest don’t listen to anyone on TV. In fact that jackass Jim Cramer who tells people to buy has a fund that does the exact opposite of what he predicts and historically has done better than his predictions. Trying to figure out the market and timing it is a fools errand. Buffett being in cash should’ve been the biggest warning sign. I’d be willing to bet he’s not holding all that cash right now.
I have been a trader for years and have tried to make sense of the BS. I have been my best when I just stop listening to the media and the politicians. I’m using the reverse Cramer now. I’m also testing the reverse Krugman. They are constantly wrong so It often works.
The financial media is much like the rest of the media. An arm of the Democratic Party and the Republican establishment.
Maybe the youngest ones, now older and only living in mom's basement part time, are being paid by one or more of the 192 sponsors of the 'Hands Off' protest.
I'm sure there will be other protests with catchy names all directed at Trump.
No, I don't think many of the Occupy Wall Street group were disaffected young right-leading city dwellers or college students.
Antifa, DSA, Portland and SF polycules, and to "gender reassignment" clinics all across the country. They are still "The 1%" but the cause is no longer tearing down the banking system but tearing down the mammalian sex binary.
Chris Irons, ole! My friends are wigging out over their stock portfolios, blaming it all on Trump's tariffs. For months I've been telling them to look at soaring market PE ratios; that stocks were sorely overvalued. Reading Mr. Irons confirm my thoughts gives me a warm glow, whatever my current investment balance.
This is great, thanks. ("...find each bank’s site here..." link doesn't work).
I'm somewhat glad, but more enraged and disgusted, that all the shit is coming out about all of the fuckups in the Biden administration. And there are some very good, correct, and thoughtful pieces out there. There is some decent journalism going on. And i wan to say, so exactly where the fuck were you all the past four years? You mean you've just figured out that illegal immigration lowers wages for American workers? You're brazen enough to admit that you purposely gaslit the public on the economy and Biden's health and his not being son's sleazy business dealings? etc. And now they're trying to figure out how to get the working class back? And they have no idea, it's like when Robin D'Angelo was trying to figure out how to interact with Black people.
I scanned through the info here and had to laugh at what seems like your attempt to encourage a Warren Buffet style of stock research for us common folks. Good info but implementation of this strategy requires an enormous amount of time and sophistication, and even if somebody wants to do that, what you are left with is still hostage to indecipherable whims from our government and others that can re-roll the dice on a daily basis. Buffet himself has said, most can't do it, and recommends to his children to buy some balanced etf's and stay mostly invested, decreasingly so as one approaches retirement.
I did notice a month or so ago that Atlanta Fed switched its forecast for GNP from a 3/4% growth to 3/4% drop based on Trump's wacky policies. There are dozens of serious professionals to rely on, with teams of bean counters distilling the info you rightly identify, but the semi-honest ones tell you that you can't time the market, and time in the market is more important than timing it.
Sheesh Matt. All this gives me a headache. (Math phobia at its worst.)
The ONE thing I learned, 40 years ago working at a Boston money manager, is that the stock market is like a 14-year-old girl with PMS:
"OH MY GOD, THERE'S A DROP OF SPAGHETTI SAUCE ON MY BLOUSE! MY LIFE IS OVER!"
"I HAVE A ZIT ON MY NOSE! I CAN NEVER LEAVE THE HOUSE AGAIN!"
"THE HEM CAME UNSTITCHED! EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT ME."
Translation: Whenever Something Happens--good, bad, different, unusual--the stock market loses its collective mind.
I've personally come to the conclusion that much of the market panic is by design. It's Wall Street throwing a tantrum and trying to show everybody that if they don't get government policies that suit them, they'll hold their breath 'till they turn blue. Honestly, they don't care that it's people's IRAs and 401Ks that are taking a big hit, as long as they get the point across that they can make or break the economy if they aren't bowed down to.
It’s an opportunity by Wall Street to shake down investors and get some cheap stocks. The Media is their accomplice.
Never forget: The media became the media because they can't do math.
Newsrooms are filled with people who scored 420 on their math SATs.
Hahahaha!! So true. Not sure how well they scored on the softer side either. It is danged hard to get actual analysis these days in legacy media. Thank goodness for Substack.
Admittedly, I'm far from a math genius, but I sure can smell BS as good as anybody.
Exactly. If commentators like Jim Crammer were any more full of crap, I couldn't tell a difference between them and a RV "black water" tank.
You've heard of that "Pelosi Stock Tracker," right? I think there's an "Inverse Cramer Tracker."
This is an important RACKET report because, for financial dummies like myself, and on the freeway two hours before dawn citizens fighting to survive, $$$$$, and understanding the "..don't worry your pretty little head about it.." manipulation of $$$$$ is/has always been, for both the free citizen, and his/her nation, a question of life or death. The top 1% of Americans own 50% (23 trillion dollars) of the stock market and the bottom 50% own 1% (480 billion dollars). What a gap!! The total: 62% (162 million) of Americans are invested in the stock market. Somewhere outside bubble land the rest of We the People, because avaricious greed decided so, exist in a world stripped of human dignity, surveilled and surrounded by a collapsing infrastructure, gutted industrial centers and ravaged public institutions. Consider: A 120 billion dollars on public education last year and your child can't read? My personal view, it's intentional. Is there any other way than personal to take it?
$$$$$ and the understanding of $$$$$ needs demystification and needs to be a part of a healthy national conversation and re-establishment of the healthy truth/fact based reality that will allow our Republic to thrive. I hope RACKET, BIG and other subscription journalists will continue to make $$$$$ a focus of their reporting.
Can confirm there is. And mine is still up a bit while everything else is down 😂
Haha!
Exactly...
Violet Elizabeth Bott in Just William books "I'll squeam and I'll squeam and squeam until I'm sick" https://youtu.be/HXiZHXkG-ac?si=lZ3Lo3GoWi1pbxmG
That's hilarious. Reminds me of "the resistance" back in Trump's first term. Every fart, every sneeze was daily drama talking points hysteria.
That’s also what climate hysteria is like. My dog just died—climate change!
What’s happening now in the market and what they’re saying about it is very similar to climate change. Someone will go on and on about climate change and how we must immediately change to electric cars. What they’re saying omits how much is from human activity, and how much from natural cycles.
As this article points out, the PE ratio for the market was high, along with other indicators it was overpriced. But all you hear about is Trump’s tariffs!
It’s a shell game. The media certainly doesn’t want us to look at the behavior of Dem voters.
Nor what the Republicans have done.
I've noticed this for years now, but I never thought of comparing it to a 14-year-old girl with PMS. Maybe that's because I'm a 56-year-old man who knows he needs to stay as far away as possible from 14-year-old girls...unlike the brother of an uncle of mine.
I always thought of the stock market as the financial embodiment of Woody Allen. Yeah, bad analogy because I've what I said before about young girls, but let's face it, people who play the market freak out over any little thing, no matter how insignificant it may turn out to be.
It's all about flow for money managers. That's where they get to skim some off the top. It's not about price. Panic=flow =$.
One thing I can tell you is that whenever something happens in the market, Quoth the Raven thinks like a little girl. Not even a teenage one, really.
Why are we listening to a dude who is famous as a Tesla bear during a time when the stock rose >10x? His first Tesla bear calls were when the stock was what, something like 320. "Something's fishy with Tesla" he'd say. "Tesla will blow up any old time!"
Now some people might look at Tesla stock in 320 in 2018 and then look at it today at 230 and say "What do you mean? He was right!" Those people are stupid, as Tesla stock has split a total of 15:1 since then and is up about 11x (Also known as 1000%) since QTR started flapping lips about it. And kept flapping lips about it all the time and was always wrong. Whenever he is right and Tesla ultimately drops seriously after finally reaching a true peak, he'll be as right as a broken clock sometimes is.
Maybe we could spend our time with a smart lady like Cathie Wood instead, Matt?
When Tim Walz--that dim-bulb running mate of the dimwit VP--was yucking it up about Tesla's falling price, I know several people who said, "WOW! Time to buy more shares!"
BTW Tim Walz makes me think of Elmer Fudd.
...and he apparently was unaware some MN pension funds have loads of Tesla shares.
How Walz got re-elected is a mystery.
The guy is 60-something and owns nothing. HOWEVER, it looks like he's recently become the beneficiary of a whole lot o' campaign money.
How does that work?
I don't know about that. At least Elmer was being foiled by a wascaly wabbit. Walz couldn't even figure out how to load his gun.
He needs one of those earflap hats.
Doesn't he have one? I thought he was wearing it when he demonstrated that he can't load a hunting rifle.
Probably borrowed that one!
Timmy boy is a direct descendant of Elmer Fudd.
It's always a bit risky in the long run, to get on a company which relies heavily on governmental subsidies, don't you think?
If I remember correctly, every automobile company that sells EVs and hybrids offers tax credits to customers. Likewise, utilities and insulation companies pass along tax credits for energy savings and solar panels. States also give companies special tax considerations when they build a factory and create jobs in their region. Semiconductor companies are the latest batch of companies receiving massive tax credits. For many decades, our politicians have determined winners and losers in our economy. Investors factor these government interventions into their analysis of investments.
It's risky to buy any stock. It's riskier to buy none.
In the case of Tesla, yes it was risky but the stock has gone up incredibly so the answer is clearly not to avoid such companies totally.
Outstanding comment.
There is no consciousness in "Wall Street". People buy/sell on news hoping to profit even from tiny movements in prices, and the buying and selling creates momentum. It's not some organized plan; it's just human behavior at scale, like the mobs that form when some new shooting gets politicized.
"It also turned out that most of the statistics politicians used to represent the relative fitness or unfitness of the economy were and are weighted at best, and outright bull at worst, from the Consumer Price Index to the Unemployment Rate. Even LIBOR, the interbank lending rate that supposedly represented how finance companies thought about the economy, turned out to be a monstrous scam. The habit of tweaking stats became so ingrained, even Nobel laureates like Paul Krugman could unashamedly declare “the war on inflation is over” and “we won, at very little cost” using a graph that charted price growth excluding “food, energy, shelter, and used cars,” i.e. everything...."
Was it not taught from old that "figures don't lie, but liars can figure"?
The big problem with Mr. Krugman is that his political beliefs so overwhelm him that an objective person looking for accurate data cannot believe nor accept what he says.
I’m sure he is a brilliant man. But none of that matters if you cannot trust him to analyze data objectively.
This is the case for ALL economists. 100% of them.
Read Thomas Sowell.
I came here to say that "the habit of tweaking stats is so ingrained that EVEN "nobel laureate" Paul Krugman can lie" is like saying precipitation has become so common that rain is wet.
Krugman doesn't exist to find truths in data, he exists to support pre-conceived narratives with statistics.
However, there are some Nobel prize winning economists that don't do that. You just have to work to read them. Edmund Phelps. Amartya Sen.
Some are more forthright about their uncertainty. :-)
The annoying ones (e.g., Krugman) use psychological ploys: dismissive comments, etc.
In the math biz, there's the old line about "proof by intimidation" whereby an established, known mathematician can bluff a junior member.
There's another line that sticks with me: when an established scientist says something is false or impossible, they're almost always wrong. If they say something is likely true, they're almost always right.
Disagree. Many of us are good economists. But that means we don’t give interviews that make headlines.
You know the old joke, that if they laid every economist in the world end to end, they wouldn't reach a consensus.
That’s flat out untrue. Every economist worthy of the title agrees that demand curves slope downward. For example.
True though I think most of the above were tongue-in-cheek and probably were meant more at the "macro" level where the interdependence and "coupling" of factors is both confounding and amazingly interesting.
I'm not an economist (math background though).
And the underlying confounding fact is that all social science is phenomenological: there is no way to perform in vitro experiments.
So, as a result, everything is an in vivo experiment.
Unfalsifiable, is another way to put it.
Ha. Yes.
Brilliance comes in two flavors, good and evil.
"Lies, damned lies, and statistics"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics
Of course, there's also the book, "How to Lie with Statistics":
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/415346-how-to-lie-with-statistics
"A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic."
-- Joseph Stalin
...just learned this one!
"Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital."
- Aaron Levenstein
Statistics
Statistics are like alienists—they will testify for either side.
Fiorello H. La Guardia
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Benjamin Disraeli (there is some doubt about whether Disraeli actually said this, but it’s generally attributed to him)
If there's one project worth taking on here on Substack, it would be crowdsourcing the creation of better economic metrics.
"The Media" is falling all over itself to "short" Trump with Panic News, and by extension, the US. They simply don't care. It's all part of the "Hands Off" mentality pervasive in the legacy media.
Trump was right: "The media is the enemy of the people."
Trump is not innocent in this. He is great at creative data interpretation. We are all victims and he can save us from the infamous “them”.
Matt is correct, read a lot of data and make up your own mind. Don't listen to most pundits, they have a dog in the fight.
Not a matter of 'innocence' vs 'non-innocence'...we've been being lied to since Breton-Woods, at least.
As Steve Keen (among others) has pointed out on more than one occasion, Finance is supposed to function as the cost of doing Business..it was never supposed to be an industry unto itself.
In the mid90’s a friend returned home after receiving a law degree from Georgetown. He did his best to convince me that basically, those financing a venture deserved all the benefits of success. The engineer types that made discoveries and developed the processes generating profit needed to be happy to just have a job. Workers are workers. Financiers rule.
In other words, the market is overdue for a correction.
No doubt about it, months ago.
Months? Years, more like it.
Chris Irons need a show. Maybe a weekly or even daily financial recap. The guy explains things so well in a hilarious "get the fuck outta here" Philly way.
What? And not let AOC tell me what to think? Please.
I worked in investment banking and trading at the beginning of my career. It wasn't a Phd
in economics but it felt damn close.
I'm amazed when I debate leftists how little they know about economic markets. I'd get a better answer asking a kindergartener about brain surgery.
If they can't answer a question with racism, sexism, or homophobia that have no idea what to say.
That said, our moto should always be, as Reagan said, "trust but verify".
Matt I love your work, but even with you my friend, I still verify.
Rock on!
Reagan’s speechwriters got that from an old Russian saying, as Russians were part of his targeted audience at the time. It’s a good one!
Krugman showed we can print our way out of inflation.
Lol
For those who live next door to the printing press, it's true. TPTB are not stupid.
That's because for TPTB, there's an inverse to Hanlon's razor: They are quick to confess stupidity after-the-fact ("Who could've known?!"), but what has nearly always happened is stealth planned malice. But when exposed it's "Time to move on!"
Gee, whatever happened to the TBTF banks after the five-alarm crisis was over? Weren't we supposed to abolish TBTF??
And instead the 8 or 10 TBTF banks the banks consolidated so now we have what 4? 5? Even More TBTF BS.
Just a way to suck up more loose change from. Our pockets.
They really bought it to the whole WEF Mantra "you will own nothing and you will be happy" . Of course, THEY will own everything and be ecstatic!
"THEY will own everything and be ecstatic!"
Yup, just as communism and socialism promises "we all own it". That's their nonsense. Someone or small group is *always* in charge, and possibly the only remedy is to *always* hold them to account, to consequences.
I would not be surprised *at all* to find out Hanlon's razor was actually initiated by the CIA, just as they created the epithet "conspiracy theory".
The unemployment rate includes only people actively looking for a job. The opposite of what was written. It doesn’t include people who have given up looking for a job
I’m more interested in EMployment which for men 25-54 has been declining for decades
Wait until you look at the FRED data about how many adults work for government contractors and combine it with the number of adults that don't work (retired/disability/in college/etc).
Turns out we're a LOT more socialized of a country than we are led to believe.
And the associated productivity...ain't that great.
Between the NGOs and the "free jobs", the DOGE work has got some people antsy (I really am resisting calling them "freeloaders").
That is where Democrats get votes. Anyone who works for a private company even partially funded by government.
Pharma, hospitals, ride services, Nurses, some Doctors, teachers, Military contractors like ship builders. Media via Pharma "advertising".
50% or more of us.
The labor/workforce participation rate may be the operative stat you want:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART
https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm
Actually I do want to focus on men. Unemployed men are less likely to marry. It may be sexist to write, but frustrated men are a threat to societal stability far more than women
It’s not sexist. Sexist would be using someone’s sex to oppress, exploit, or otherwise discriminate. Your example is simply using the fact that someone is male in today’s environment is a risk. This has been happening for years in the Arab world, and no reason to think it can’t happen here.
Neither employment or unemployment data take into account a sea of illegal laborers toiling in the shadows.
Yes!
Sorta like how they ignore the effect of 10's of millions of "new immigrants" on our already stressed housing market, where those at the lower end of the scale are being pushed out of affordable housing.
Excellent point!
Ask a dozen economists a question and you get 15 different answers.
I think it was Harry Truman who lamented conflicting reports from his economists, who kept telling him "on the one hand..." and "on the other hand..."
Harry was said to have replied that he needed a one-handed economist.
That's funny
Truman had a personal interest in the buck.
If there wasn't a Nobel Prize, practitioners of the pseudoscience of Economics would be in the same bin as fortune tellers and water dousers.
This was a great one Matt. It showed several things. One was that no matter how a company puts out information it’s all designed to put you to sleep. A10k holds all the info on a company but you have to look at 10 different places to find out what you’re looking for. This market needed a correction which generally is 10% which is where we landed at on Friday. The Fed being non political is laughable. Most people who invest don’t listen to anyone on TV. In fact that jackass Jim Cramer who tells people to buy has a fund that does the exact opposite of what he predicts and historically has done better than his predictions. Trying to figure out the market and timing it is a fools errand. Buffett being in cash should’ve been the biggest warning sign. I’d be willing to bet he’s not holding all that cash right now.
Great job Matt
I have been a trader for years and have tried to make sense of the BS. I have been my best when I just stop listening to the media and the politicians. I’m using the reverse Cramer now. I’m also testing the reverse Krugman. They are constantly wrong so It often works.
The financial media is much like the rest of the media. An arm of the Democratic Party and the Republican establishment.
Propaganda arm of both.
Thanks. Very helpful. Market has been obviously over valued. Over due for significant correction, and here it is.
I'm just trying to find where are the hipsters who were Occupying Wall Street. Where did they all go???
MAGA
Bravo! Well said!
They and many others didn't realize how closely aligned they were with the Tea Party.
I never understood what was so bad about the Tea Party.
They’re “racist” “deplorables”, and “uneducated”
They're "smelly Walmart shoppers."
Maybe the youngest ones, now older and only living in mom's basement part time, are being paid by one or more of the 192 sponsors of the 'Hands Off' protest.
I'm sure there will be other protests with catchy names all directed at Trump.
No, I don't think many of the Occupy Wall Street group were disaffected young right-leading city dwellers or college students.
Antifa, DSA, Portland and SF polycules, and to "gender reassignment" clinics all across the country. They are still "The 1%" but the cause is no longer tearing down the banking system but tearing down the mammalian sex binary.
Causes change, people never.
Chris Irons, ole! My friends are wigging out over their stock portfolios, blaming it all on Trump's tariffs. For months I've been telling them to look at soaring market PE ratios; that stocks were sorely overvalued. Reading Mr. Irons confirm my thoughts gives me a warm glow, whatever my current investment balance.
You’re right; they’re not.
Yes, the mindless instability of tariffs based not on tariffs overseas but on trade imbalance is merely coincidental.
This is great, thanks. ("...find each bank’s site here..." link doesn't work).
I'm somewhat glad, but more enraged and disgusted, that all the shit is coming out about all of the fuckups in the Biden administration. And there are some very good, correct, and thoughtful pieces out there. There is some decent journalism going on. And i wan to say, so exactly where the fuck were you all the past four years? You mean you've just figured out that illegal immigration lowers wages for American workers? You're brazen enough to admit that you purposely gaslit the public on the economy and Biden's health and his not being son's sleazy business dealings? etc. And now they're trying to figure out how to get the working class back? And they have no idea, it's like when Robin D'Angelo was trying to figure out how to interact with Black people.
Thanks again guys, keep it all coming.
Matt,
I scanned through the info here and had to laugh at what seems like your attempt to encourage a Warren Buffet style of stock research for us common folks. Good info but implementation of this strategy requires an enormous amount of time and sophistication, and even if somebody wants to do that, what you are left with is still hostage to indecipherable whims from our government and others that can re-roll the dice on a daily basis. Buffet himself has said, most can't do it, and recommends to his children to buy some balanced etf's and stay mostly invested, decreasingly so as one approaches retirement.
I did notice a month or so ago that Atlanta Fed switched its forecast for GNP from a 3/4% growth to 3/4% drop based on Trump's wacky policies. There are dozens of serious professionals to rely on, with teams of bean counters distilling the info you rightly identify, but the semi-honest ones tell you that you can't time the market, and time in the market is more important than timing it.