Trading is halted.
Need a trump cliffhanger price is right board.
If every Republican governor cancels presidential vote and the legislatures assign electors (like Florida was on track to do before Scalia stepped in), that’s 285 votes. Still a clusterfuck for everything downballot so unlikely.
I’m shocked I tell you that this panicky fed move, (no doubt forced by Trump), didn’t calm the markets.
1 Like
This is it. If compounding the health care crisis with a financial crisis can be avoided with 2008 style monetary policy then they should do that. Certainly with everyone staying home that would imply downward pressure upon inflation, so I can see them justifying significant monetary stimulus.
Also, they have not really been punished for driving down interest rates and increasing the money supply. In 2008 lots of people said what they were doing was crazy, but it kind of worked. I think they’ll keep going back to that well until it doesn’t work.
Well the adults in the room were slowly adjusting the rates back up to give us some ammo to respond to the next downturn, until king dummy intervened. Now who knows who is actually calling these shots?
1 Like
My sense is that this is the “big one.”
The virus is going to cause, at minimum, a prolonged recession. The government is completely unprepared to deal with this, obviously. The Fed is already at zero. We are already running a trillion dollar deficit. Political leadership is, to put it mildly, ineffective. The social safety net has been hollowed out following a generation of bipartisan carpet bombing.
The lesson bankers seem to have learned from the last recession is to flood the system with liquidity in a crisis, going back to Bernanke’s famous depression research. But this is a completely different form of collapse. I hope I’m wrong but I see many years of severe pain, particularly since our politicians will almost certainly embrace idiotic austerity for individuals while showering corporations with money.
7 Likes
I could easily see depression levels of unemployment (30%) if this thing drags out for 2 years. We’ve never had a depression and a pandemic at the same time. No one can even go out to look for a job.
But as long as the vaccine looks promising (not that we have any idea who to believe on that) at least there’s an end in sight.
Or I guess eventually we finally get that herd immunity will end it too. Until the next one.
So how long is it going to be before we celebrate the DJIAs return to 10k?
It’s likely that immunity will decay over time. How long, we don’t know yet.
I feel like we are drawing live for (really shitty) m4a. I just don’t see how this is going to work any other way.
Yeah but then this just becomes another seasonal flu thing that kills 50k people or w/e every year. Might save money for the healthcare system in the long run (but we don’t like to talk about that).
It still blows my mind that the administration had to work to get free testing and free vaccines. Like how far has the overton window shifted that we accept every little public healthcare good must come out of our own pockets?
Nobody asked what a polio vaccine would cost. We just fucking did it. I doubt paying for it ever crossed anyone’s mind.
1 Like
All it would take would be a “temporary” extension of benefits or whatever. These programs don’t go away once they exist. I don’t have the brain power to game out how any of this might work but I got a feelin’
Every state should sure as hell be doing the medicaid expansion right now.
1 Like
The market is going to open at circuit breaker #1. Tomorrow is going to be possibly the craziest day in the market any of us will ever see.
It’s almost as if loading up on stocks Friday afternoon would’ve been a bad play? 
I’m glad you’re coming around on the idea that this is predictable though.
You’ve completely missed the point. I think it’s highly likely stocks go much lower in the short to medium term but nobody knows for sure, including you. With buy and hold, I know I’ll capture the upside and I save a lot of mental energy not having to time entry and exit (with associated tax consequences).
2 Likes
My friend who’s always working crappy retail jobs and at like tanning beds and stuff sent me this. Fucking heartbreaking. Her life savings basically.
I told her the standard advice - if she needs the money now she should probably take it out. If she can hold for 3 years or more she should probably do that. Don’t worry I don’t try to pollute anyone else with my black swan market timing. But what does it even matter - it’s not like it’s much she can retire on anyway and she knows that.
1 Like