Well we are killing 1000 people a day in the US with little hope of near-term decline (much more likely to hit 2000 soon). We have little hope of herd immunity with current tech. We now may have seeded an immune evading variant at least partially through unfettered international travel. Poorer countries without vax access are set up for absolute slaughter. Still TBD on what long-term effects COVID might have. Hospitals are back to delaying elective surgeries and healthcare is seeing massive workforce attrition. So yeah I’m not sure I’d agree we are managing delta as much as just normalizing mass death so people can pretend things are ok.
The real doomfesters think we will eventually get to a true unvaccinable virus and or a SARS 1 like IFR variant and get life expectancy down to early 1900s levels. I’m not that level of doom but, frankly, I have to admit that crowd has gotten more correct about post vax life than I have so I am listening to what they have to say.
Most of those 1000 are people who wouldn’t get vaxxed. It sucks for front-line healthcare workers. But otherwise - why exactly am I supposed to be curled up in a ball about a bunch of unvaxxed morons dying? We lose 2000-3000/week some years in flu season and that never ground society to a halt.
Nobody ever talks about herd immunity anymore. I think we all accept that this will be something like the flu going forward, except with less mutation. Maybe eventually it fades away.
Halting most international travel might slow down a new variant and buy time. But I don’t see how it’s going to prevent a new variant.
It sucks for poorer countries. But a lot of those countries have either been hit or seem to be largely immune to massive waves - like Africa. Also most poorer countries are now quickly catching up to US-level vaxx status. Some even held out because they didn’t have many cases or wanted a better vaxx. I don’t think there are many cases left of a poor country clamoring for the vaxx who can’t get it.
Long term covid is scary. But as a double-vaxxed, boosted person who’s likely to get a mild case of covid if I catch it, I’m not going to alter my life in fear of long term symptoms. At some point we all have to weigh a small amount of risk against being miserable.
A few hospitals have delayed elective surgeries. It’s winter. Delta hasn’t cleaned out every nook yet.
I agree that the biggest concern is this mutates into something more deadly and infectious. To me that’s the only catastrophic risk right now. But I don’t see how hardcore lockdowns are going to make a difference unless the whole world does it at the same time, which will never happen. So I just put that in the category of things we can’t do anything about, therefore I’m not going to kill myself worrying about it.
Again, post-covid life for most Americans w/o little kids is barely different than pre-covid life at this point. I feel like you’re applying your gloomy outlook, cancelling plans, wearing N-95 outdoors - and assuming everyone else is living the same way. They’re not. Some because they’re stupid and always thought the virus was a hoax or their immune systems can handle it. Others because they’ve done the best they can, and made the assessment that whatever risk is left is not worth being miserable over.
I was gonna write a long post, but there’s just too many falsehoods about me embedded in your post to really have a constructive discussion, so I’ll just say we see the current world in very different ways and leave it at that.
I’ve been pretty bearish since summer and I’ve been completely wrong. I had optimism before that.
I’m the most bearish i’ve ever been times a googolplex since nov 24. It would be quite the circus if we just rebound to ATH’s and chug further when there is literally nothing bullish on the horizon other than
the assumption of a long-term untapped discovery in technology - but it could be a circus, i guess.
I think even inflation is mostly topped out and was part and parcel for some of the gains in the market. I just don’t see another catalyst that can really weaken the dollar that much from here.
I’d imagine being in cash would be perfect right now but I get that many folks disagree with that. Leveraged companies have been getting hammered lately and those with serious cash reserves have been less affected.
Not trying to persuade anyone, just thinking out loud.
Yeah whatever they measure inflation by - big screen TVs and milk or whatever - might be topped out. But education, healthcare, energy, wages, rent, housing prices, gas, cars - you know all that trivial stuff that doesn’t get factored into inflation - doesn’t seem to be topping out to me.
My window for needing most of my money is 10+ years. Putting it in cash now and hoping to time the top, while possibly missing a runup I’ll never get back, is more terrifying to me than just leaving it in index funds and riding the roller coaster. But it’s all terrifying.
FWIW I finally cracked vs. delta and sold a bunch. I learned my elite bottom timing skillz work both ways - when I buy and when I sell. I bought back in almost immediately when it bounced, but missed out on 20-30k that I’ll never get back. That’s what worries me about going into cash.
I would say the one thing you want to look out for is the fees being charged to your retirement accounts. It’s usually a good behavioral idea to not pay attention to the daily volatility of markets. It’s usually a bad idea to be SO agnostic about your retirement accounts that you don’t know what account fees are being charged or what products are being used. You don’t want to put your faith in a benevolent current or former employer of a trustworthy financial advisor. Make sure that someone isn’t taking 2% out of your account every year for no value added.
My current feeling is that as wealth inequality has increased so too has the amount of the stock market that is owned by the percentage where the most influence is accumulated.
In the US we’ve been shown on a micro scale that some companies won’t be allowed to fail and will instead get handouts. We’ve been shown on a macro scale that the money machine will go brr with great gusto to avoid systemic collapse.
Despite any small aberrations along the way it feels like the people with the most to lose from a stock market collapse have the most power to pull whatever levers they need to in order to avoid that happening.
I know its a very simplistic take. It just makes me feel that so long as I am indexing, the number won’t be allowed to decrease for very long. In a perverse way I feel more comfortable putting money in stonks than I did before the pandemic.
Anyway, throwing this out there so people who actually studied economics can tell me why I am a sweet summer child…
This is a very interesting question to explore in detail. Some interesting counterpoints to this are:
In the last several decades the percentage of US stocks owned by foreign investors has gone way up. In mid 20th century <5% of all stocks were owned by people/entities outside America. I’m sure those are “powerful” investors but probably relatively limited in their ability to influence US policy.
There has been a similarly huge accumulation of US stocks in pension and retirement accounts. That wasn’t really a thing before the 1960s, but now something like 1/4 or 1/3 of stocks are owned by US retirement accounts. Those are relatively powerful institutional investors, but not powerful in the sense of being able to influence policy to save the stock market.
So to some extent I think you are correct that people close to power own a lot of stock so they will game the system to boost stock. I share that belief. I think the one weakness in that argument is that as wealth inequality increases and becomes increasingly generational we are seeing that rich people are becoming less intentional about preserving “the system” and are starting to loot the country instead. There is a point where all these stupid kids of rich people behave like 19th century European royals. Their firm belief of The Divine Rights Of American Billionaires is likely to be their downfall, and they could take stuff like the stock market down with them. They are too delusional to do anything else.
I don’t think its a good idea to view the economy as a zero sum game. It is self evidently untrue, and tends to create bad conclusions. The real questions are where does aggregate wealth come from and how do government policies influence the creation and distribution of wealth.
According to Nassim Nicholas Taleb, these constant interventions to prevent the market from correcting itself will inevitably result in a far worse meltdown, on a scale that nobody will be able to contain.
The stock market is great because it’s a game where you can just make a long-term bet on the house. Like, if you think JP Morgan is manipulating the markets through “money printer go BRRR” skullduggery, you can just buy stock in JP Morgan.