From Marketplace:
Are we in a housing bubble?
Pending homes sales continued falling in December, the National Association of Realtors said Friday. Sales of existing homes that are under contract but haven’t closed dipped 0.3% from the previous month, the fourth monthly decline in a row.
When compared to the same month in the prior year, pending sales were still up more than 20% in December. But the month-to-month decline was a sign that high home prices — and tight supply — are starting to slow down sales.
According to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller national home price index released this week, home prices were up 9.5% in November, and even higher in cities like Phoenix, Seattle and San Diego.
Such increases are reminiscent of the housing bubble in the mid-2000s, when a combination of low interest rates and loose lending standards fueled double-digit price appreciation.
Economists say today’s market is very different.
“I wouldn’t use the word ‘bubble,’ “ said Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin. “Bubble implies that it’s speculation that’s driving home prices high, and it really is the fundamentals of the market.”
Demand is high, thanks partly to record-low interest rates, while the supply of homes for sale is at an all-time low.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell was asked about a housing bubble at a news conference Wednesday. He called the recent price jumps “a passing phenomenon.”
“There’s a one-time thing happening with people who are spending all of their time in their house, and they’re thinking, either ‘I need a bigger house, or I need another house and a different house, or a second house’ in some cases,” Powell said.
Locked and loaded on the 15y – 2.25, no points, think pretty good. Hopefully close later this week or next. I’ve seen some lower rates, but it’s always a crapshoot because the lowest rates you see generally always include points. Admittedly, if I applied and locked a week earlier, or two weeks later, it could have been 1/8, mayyyybe 1/4th lower, but who knows.
Doc requirements seemed far higher this time, than 10yr back (but wife did change employers, and I have business income that didn’t exist previously). That said, the process was still far easier with online portal submissions, etc etc. I didn’t need to talk to a single person over the phone, go to an office, etc etc.
Crushed really critical disclaimer up front, when I say my GME options are the largest position in my trading account (at around 15%) it’s important to note my trading account is itself about 20% of my brokerage cash and securities so I’m really just exposed in total at 3% of my total portfolio. Unless there is a total go-to-he11 scenario I have high probability of cutting losses at one half so I’m exposed in total around 1.5%…that represents real dollars, it would sting and I would prefer not to lose them, but it’s important to note it’s not a YOLO. I don’t do that, and good risk and exposure management is a prudent part of my overall portfolio.
Anyway, answering your question, there was very little fundamental view as the stock went pure price action/technical this week. I did take a quick look at the public docs of course…Cohen (Chewy) with three former colleagues in as Board members, company is what it is (Blockbuster for gamers) but it’s not facing an imminent financial issue, and there’s a shelf registration (and prospectus) filed for some additional shares prior to this craziness…Just checking off the boxes there though.
My trade entry was entirely off the surge. Pull up a 60 minute chart of GME, compare it to a 60 minute, two month chart of KODK centered on late July. Pull up same for TLRY, September 2018. Or any other event driven parabolic stock of your choice….
Chi mentioned two option greeks, there’s another important measure, IV (implied volatility, the individual stock equivalent of what the VIX is to the SPX). Volatility and option premium (prices) are directly correlated.
Basically, these event driven dislocations fit my trading model (leveraged asymmetric defined risk) because the explosion in volatility resulting from the moves sets up a scenario where I can take a position for an outsized return with very limited relative downside and a defined max loss….in this trade let’s oversimplify and say I see four broad buckets of return….a total loss (stock stays 325-500 for three months, 5% chance), a 50% loss if the stock implodes overnight to 30 at a 5% chance, a 100% return if the stock settles sometime in the next three months between 150 and 325 at say a 45% chance, or if the stock settles in the next three months between 40 and 150 for an as yet undefined return but in the range of 3-5x or better….
Pull up the GME 60 minute chart again with the other charts, draw the lines of where those stocks settled subsequent to their events, then draw the lines prospectively for GME and look where my returns land….it’s really that simple for me….I’ll take a trade with those small percentage probabilities of losses against the potential returns at those levels all day long…With certainty I will lose some but the returns on the winners will far outweigh the losses, even if I’m wrong better than half the time….
Importantly, this opportunity is only made possible because IV is so high on some of these options, over 500 and in some cases over 600. I’ve never seen vol so high…I used a similar trade on airlines, cas1nos, and QSR/fast casual stocks in March 2020 (other direction, long obviously). Caught them near but not at their lows, but was trading them at a then unheard vol of 450…..we’re 600 here…..Opportunity and return with these trades increase with vol.
So, I have no way of knowing what the catalyst will be or even directionally if my call will be right….I do know the market is screaming there will be continued large share price movement before settling down and I’m pretty comfortable assuming that will include moving down….Can Cohen insert his guys with a CHWY business model three weeks from now while they raise $800m for it overnight and the stock rip to a sustained over 400? Sure. Can we sketch a different scenario for the downside from fundamental, valuation, trading, or regulatory risks….absolutely. Fact is, no one knows. For my trade it doesn’t matter, it’s a pure risk adjusted probability play for me after a stock busts the 5th SD on a three day move…aided by the ‘right’ combination of the catalyst causing the event, fundamental backstop, timeline, and directional view.
As an lol this trade better work out, all the excitement made me miss my sure fire move on my cr1minals up in Rochester…on Wednesday they popped to the penny where I sell them (14.00) and have already backed down below ten…..Pretty pissed I missed that….
Nice storm rolling in….
grim, who’d you refi with?
“Hey stock jockeys keep bringing it” <———— tweet of the year
Stevie’s wealth down by at least a billion…
https://www.wsj.com/articles/melvin-capital-lost-53-in-january-hurt-by-gamestop-and-other-bets-11612103117?redirect=amp#click=https://t.co/wu7wPrwLPX
Makes sense. Thanks
AP says:
January 30, 2021 at 10:07 pm
I agree with everything you wrote. I was commenting on the definition of the word, only… not what effects we have seen, are seeing or may see in the future.
chicagofinance says:
January 30, 2021 at 9:22 pm
Cool, Joyce. ‘preciate it. Needless to say, my post doesn’t imply I’m bought into the case but just doing some remedial homework and thought that one was worth sharing.
Juice @10:10am
The art market (which has the dubious distinction of being the only market more manipulated than Wall Street) is worried about his well-being:
“Two of the biggest collectors in the world were forced to spend billions bailing out a hedge fund, saying ta-ta to moolah that very well could have been spent on nine-figure masterworks at Art Basel, Christie’s, or Sotheby’s.”
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/wet-paint-christian-rosa-raymond-pettibon-1940051
“The only bird that dares to peck an eagle is the crow. The crow sits on the eagles back and bites his neck. The eagle does not respond, nor fight with the crow; it does not spend time or energy on the crow instead he just opens its wings and begins to rise higher in the heavens. The higher the flight, the harder it is for the crow to breathe and eventually the crow falls off due to a lack of oxygen.
Learn from the eagle and don’t fight the crows, just keep ascending. They might be along for the ride but they’ll soon fall off. Do not allow yourself to succumb to the distractions….keep your focus on the things above and continue rising!!”
The lesson of the Eagle and the Crow
– Solara
In case anybody is interested in New Jersey real estate. County by county single family house prices are out from the NJ realtors. They are strong, even shockingly strong. Yes surprisingly getting little attention from the media or this blog. Here are figures for median single family house prices, 2020 versus 2019.
Atlantic +23.2%
Bergen +14.1%
Burlington +14.6%
Camden +17.4%
Cape May +21.8%
Cumberland +22.7%
Essex +16.1%
Gloucester +17.3%
Hudson +10.4%
Hunterdon +12.5%
Mercer +14.3%
Middlesex +9.9%
Monmouth +17.1%
Morris +10.6%
Ocean +15.9%
Passaic +12.4%
Salem +11.6%
Somerset +6.7%
Sussex +16.6%
Union +15.7%
Warren +25.6%
NJ median single family prices +15.2% on 89,613 closings, up 7.4% over 2019.
Damn I wish I was a realtor.
Yo: It won’t end well in my opinion.
Why?
Seems like current demand driven by fundamentals – strong demand for suburban homes and limited supply. Not dumb lending standards or buyer hysteria like last time.
From 1999 – 2001, I used to work on the 49th floor of 1 New York Plaza, NYC. The 49th floor was the International Equities sales and trading floor at GS. The atmosphere was electric.
However, the mania in the stock market today feels 2X greater than it ever did in 1999 and 2000, during the time of the first dotcom bubble burst.
I remember buying $3,000 worth of VCSY, a microcap Chinese internet stock in early 2000. I told my friends on the Latin America desk who then bought. They told their friends on the US equities desk upstairs and they bought.
Within a week, everybody I knew in my analyst class had bought VCSY. Then, they told their roommates and friends who worked at MS, ML, and Lehman as well.
As a result, VCSY promptly went up 55X within a few short months and then went right back down by the start of 2001. See the chart below.
Cash In Some Chips Please
You can never lose if you lock in a gain.
I’m confident within six months, most of these names like Gamestop and AMC Entertainment will drop back down to their pre-mania levels. None of these names are trading on fundamentals. Therefore, if you’ve been able to benefit from the insanity, I highly recommend you take some profits.
One of my biggest regrets in 2000 was only buying $3,000 worth of VCSY. My shares peaked at about $165,000 and I sold at about $150,000. If I had the means to buy $30,000 worth, I would have cleared almost $1,500,000 at 24 years old!
This is obviously greed and fantasy talking since I only had about $5,000 to my name back then. However, today, I have the means. Therefore, I ended up trying to day trade Bed, Bath, & Beyond (BBBY) stock to recreate the magic. I failed. You can read about my adventure here.
Worth Trying To Win
Despite the insanity, I still think it’s worth trying to take a punt with a minor portion of your portfolio (1% – 5%). Looking back, all my big wins (and losses) have come from investing in individual stock names.
The same thing goes for buying real estate. Buying a property is like going all-in on a single stock, usually with leverage (a mortgage). If you hit it right, over a 10-year period, you could become very wealthy. Today, I’ve decided to go all-in on big city real estate again.
I’m pretty certain the herd will flock back to big cities once there is herd immunity. I remember San Francisco feeling so desolate when I arrived in 2001. Then things started taking off in 2003. I remember things getting really dire in 2008 – 2010, then things took off again starting in 2011.
There are only 1-2-year windows of opportunity before prices starting running away from us. I will take advantage because my children can’t.
Thoughts On The Overall Stock Market
Melvin Capital, the hedge fund that was short Gamestop and other names supposedly lost 53% in January according to the Wall Street Journal. Not only is 53% a massive percentage loss, but it’s also a massive absolute dollar amount loss given Melvin Capital had over $10 billion in assets under management.
Melvin Capital has to rebound by 112.7% just to get back to even!
Therefore, the worry on the street is that Melvin Capital and a bunch of other similar hedge funds will have to liquidate positions in a fire sale and close up shop. As a result, there will be continued selling pressure in the broader markets until enough of these hedge funds close down.
This has happened in the past. In 1998, when Long Term Capital Management blew up due to too much leverage in wrong-way bets. However, 1999 and part of 2000 turned out to be great years for stocks.
We all knew going into this year that equity valuations are rich. Therefore, a sell-off, although disappointing, should not come as a surprise. I’ve also shared with you my 2021 stock market (and real estate market) prediction, which is decidedly tamer (4,088) than my old shop’s prediction of 4,300 on the S&P 500 by year-end.
However, I am a buyer into the sell-off because I still believe the S&P 500 will close up for the year. When there are 2%+ sell-offs, like we saw twice last week, I’m a buyer. If there are more 2%+ sell-offs in the coming weeks, I’m a buyer.
If you do the same, just make sure you review your overall net worth allocation and risk exposure. For me, equities account for ~30% of my net worth.
There is a lot of liquidity on the sidelines ready to buy. According to The WSJ, even new and existing clients have signed up to invest even more in Melvin Capital on February 1. After all, most people would be a buyer after a 53% loss rather than a seller.
Further, I’ve used this latest sell-off as an opportunity to fund my kids’ 529 plans for the year.
If you haven’t fully funded your kid’s 529 plans by the gift tax exemption amount ($15,000), contributed to your Roth IRA, traditional IRA, Solo 401k, SEP-IRA, or 401k, I’d contribute something too.
The Allure Of Private Investing
Stock market sell-offs remind me why I enjoy investing in private assets. Experiencing volatility is no fun. I like to invest in something, forget about it, and wake up years later to see a return.
According to new research from Citi Private Bank, Contemporary Art has returned 13.6% a year since 1995, compared to 8.9% for the S&P 500. Over the same period, Contemporary Art had a lower loss rate than gold and almost no correlation to the stock market (0.01).
But unless you have $10,000,000 to buy a Monet yourself, the barriers to this asset class have been too high. Until now, that is. Masterworks, a Financial Samurai sponsor, lets you invest in paintings by artists like Basquiat and Banksy at a fraction of the price.
If you haven’t had a chance to read my interview with Masterworks founder Scott Lynn, check it out. The company has grown significantly since I first published the interview three months ago, growing to over 120K investors. Recently, they sold their first Banksy masterpiece for a 32% return net of fees.
Bingo! Like I always said in my calls…
Yo! says:
January 31, 2021 at 2:05 pm
Why?
Seems like current demand driven by fundamentals – strong demand for suburban homes and limited supply. Not dumb lending standards or buyer hysteria like last time.
Lots of hedge fund guys would rather close/leave and restart after a drawdown because of “high water mark” mechanisms cutting profits and bonuses until they get back to prior levels. So I hear the best investors would jump ship so their next ideas get paid better.
Why?
Seems like current demand driven by fundamentals – strong demand for suburban homes and limited supply. Not dumb lending standards or buyer hysteria like last time.
Three opposing forces, New Yorkers getting their Snake Plisken on as fast as they can, people behind on their mortgage/rent, people in New Jersey getting the hell out. The first one was a tidal wave. Let’s see it continue to play out.
Yo: Demand being driven by fear of being shut out of the market due to increasing prices bought on by extremely low rates. It’s a mania, and it has happened before. Many of these folks are stretching incredibly to afford these houses. Talk to people who are actually doing the closings. 5 percent down is still quite common. And still sellers concessions in some instances as well. These sellers concessions are not reflected in the final closed price. As well look at the age of many of these first time home buyers. They ain’t no spring chickens. Eventually, the music stops; it always does. Oh and talk to people about their raises/bonuses this year. In a word skimpy.
Been following this guy since 2010. I would not bet against him. He understands how the game works. I wasn’t joking when I said I want to sell my investment property and leverage it into nyc or just take the capital and buy a REIT based on nyc real estate.
Wait till the next wave comes and sell into it.
“The same thing goes for buying real estate. Buying a property is like going all-in on a single stock, usually with leverage (a mortgage). If you hit it right, over a 10-year period, you could become very wealthy. Today, I’ve decided to go all-in on big city real estate again.
I’m pretty certain the herd will flock back to big cities once there is herd immunity. I remember San Francisco feeling so desolate when I arrived in 2001. Then things started taking off in 2003. I remember things getting really dire in 2008 – 2010, then things took off again starting in 2011.
There are only 1-2-year windows of opportunity before prices starting running away from us. I will take advantage because my children can’t.”
https://www.financialsamurai.com/its-time-to-focus-on-big-city-living-again/
Give it a read. Love this gem from it.
“Michael Lewis’ best-selling book, Liar’s Poker, highlights a running elitist joke that you never want to get stuck doing “equities in Dallas.” I’ve got nothing against Dallas as it’s one of my favorite heartland cities. Equities in Dallas is just a saying Lewis coined if you don’t land a role at a bank’s headquarters.”
We might be at the point where the rest of the world finally figures out how things work and the world just can’t take it and implodes. Call it the disillusionment tax.
You had something to hide
Should have hidden it should you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2VBmHOYpV8
Yo: Demand being driven by fear of being shut out of the market due to increasing prices bought on by extremely low rates. It’s a mania, and it has happened before. Many of these folks are stretching incredibly to afford these houses. Talk to people who are actually doing the closings. 5 percent down is still quite common. And still sellers concessions in some instances as well. These sellers concessions are not reflected in the final closed price. As well look at the age of many of these first time home buyers. They ain’t no spring chickens. Eventually, the music stops; it always does. Oh and talk to people about their raises/bonuses this year. In a word skimpy.
I know someone who is about to close. $700k in Madison, combined salary with his wife, $130k. He’s stretching himself incredibly thin. All it takes is a little inflation in food/gas to put them cash flow negative.
This is the exact same thing that many people fell for in 2005. They bought out of desperation. Many people I know had to move out and rent it out because they couldn’t sell it. Some went into foreclosure. Some had to take on roommates for 5 years.
The time to buy in NJ was 2010-2012. You would have got in a the bottom and poised to refi into 15 year now.
So why are schools closed and not have a remote day?
Everyone else has to work.
BRT,
Exactly. I never saw so many houses sold after maybe 3 to 5 years of ownership between 2008-2013. The truth is, if you don’t live in your place for a minimum of 7 years, you would have been better off renting.
We are going remote down here tomorrow and possibly Tuesday. School is open
We are closed in GR. Gator Jr.’s hockey team is now quarantined. Player on Summit had the Covid during the game on Wednesday. Luckily, we are spared as son has a healing broken collarbone. Now 39 kids at the high school quarantined.
Lib: Mc Mansion by me has sold every 2 years since it was built in 2014. Makes no sense.
We are remote, but it’s still a half day.
Every school day in our town is pretty much half a day.
I read enough on WSB to consider that enough of the swarm is going to buy into SLV. I’m in for Mar 12 call option at $35.
When does this quick money momentum trade movement end? Had a couple people text me asking about this. Must be spreading like wildfire.
BRT says:
January 31, 2021 at 9:10 pm
I read enough on WSB to consider that enough of the swarm is going to buy into SLV. I’m in for Mar 12 call option at $35.
When they cut off unemployment and stop depositing stimulus checks in people’s accounts.
You can get physical silver now, spot price is $28, round on sale for $35, $7 spread. Never have seen that before.
finally my $25->$40 on silver expectation will be done this month, I was hoping for a year it to happen.
a year?, haha, I’ve been holding for 16 years. I don’t even know if it’s going to happen but when everyone and their mother is lurking on the site and seeing the post, all you need is a small percentage of the public to dive in and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
This guy is so gloomy he would fit right in on this blog
https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/michael-osterholm-category-5-hurricane-coronavirus-082025380.html
Karen of the day.
https://news.yahoo.com/idaho-woman-said-she-had-204658739.html
Grim they had Elon interviewing Vlad from Robinhood on Clubhouse late last night 10 PM PST. Did you listen?
Pancake in a can taught me priceless lessons about the stock market. Not a simple lesson like “don’t play with penny stocks,” but a lesson on how the market works. I didn’t even know what a market maker was before that. Now I understand the psychology behind the market. Sometimes it’s driven by fundamentals, sometimes it’s driven by technical charts, sometimes it’s momentum in charge, and sometimes it’s straight up greed and raw emotion. Understand what is driving a market, and play off the characteristics of that type of market.
For example, a company can have a great story or maybe great growth revenue, but if the current market doesn’t care about your story or doesn’t care about growth at the moment, those factors are mush for the moment and should be ignored.
Right now, it seems to me that the market is being driven by a combination of stories and pure greed/raw emotion. It’s still hard to tell 100%, but it sure seems like that.
BRT says:
January 31, 2021 at 11:55 pm
a year?, haha, I’ve been holding for 16 years. I don’t even know if it’s going to happen but when everyone and their mother is lurking on the site and seeing the post, all you need is a small percentage of the public to dive in and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
Lib you were asking which way the wind was blowing.
Once we get past the pandemic bailout spending the next whopper will be the economic stimulus. You get bet all kinds of goodies to push NET ZERO starting with a Carbon Tax here, which was pushed hard but failed several times during the Obama days. It worked in the EU, “Cap and Trade”…. Wall St made bank on it.
Example of BlackRock’s warning to companies. Get with the program or else.
“This is why last year, we asked all companies to report in alignment with the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) and the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), which covers a broader set of material sustainability factors. We are greatly encouraged by the progress we have seen over the past year – a 363% increase in SASB disclosures and more than 1,700 organizations expressing support for the TCFD. (BlackRock issued our own inaugural TCFD and SASB reports last year.)
TCFD reports are the global standard for helping investors understand the most material climate-related risks that companies face, and how companies are managing them. Given how central the energy transition will be to every company’s growth prospects, we are asking companies to disclose a plan for how their business model will be compatible with a net zero economy – that is, one where global warming is limited to well below 2ºC, consistent with a global aspiration of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. We are asking you to disclose how this plan is incorporated into your long-term strategy and reviewed by your board of directors.
We appreciate that disclosure can be cumbersome and that the variety of reporting frameworks creates further complexity for companies. We strongly support moving to a single global standard, which will enable investors to make more informed decisions about how to achieve durable long-term returns. Because better sustainability disclosures are in companies’ as well as investors’ own interests, I urge companies to move quickly to issue them rather than waiting for regulators to impose them. (While the world moves towards a single standard, BlackRock continues to endorse TCFD- and SASB-aligned reporting.) In addition, I believe TCFD should not just be adopted by public companies. If we want these disclosures to be truly effective – if we want to see true societal change – they should be embraced by large private companies as well.
Further, it is not just companies that face climate-related risk. For example, we believe that issuers of public debt also should be disclosing how they are addressing climate-related risks.”
https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/investor-relations/larry-fink-ceo-letter
Pump. Some real advice for you.
Stop being so focused on the flavor of the month. You are a complete sucker for marketing.
Very few of us here are perma bears. We are just old enough to remember the 70s. Black Monday in 80s. The tech bubble crash of 2000. And finally, the housing bubble and financial crash of 2008. What differentiates the last from the others is that we never paid for 2008. We just borrowed and printed to cover it up. And every time we approach a top, everyone says “It’s different this time.” Every single time. As soon as you hear someone say something asinine like, “valuations don’t matter.” Or the experts start talking about how we are NOT in a bubble. This is when you must be the most careful. Every single correction is preceded by a period of market euphoria and a market index chart which goes straight up. The longer this phase goes on, the more likely the drop will be larger. This one is just might be the mother of all corrections since we:
1) still have to reconcile for 2008
2) are at massively record high federal deficits and debts
3) the interest rate can’t be lowered any further
4) the income gap (that K shaped thing) is greater than ever
5) the government has never been so owned, leading to what is essentially the end of anti-trust break ups making job creation a near impossibility
You like “the disruptors?”
Just wait and see how the next correction is going to disrupt your life.
BRT – re: Silver. 1-Sigma at best….All the greater fools, who stocked up with stacks and stacks of physical silver coins 10 years ago at $50 oz will be rushing to their closets and basements to dust it off and dump it. There won’t be any kind of shortage, they produce allot more than we use in manufacturing.
I don’t think we are going to see a massive move. It’s not attractive enough and the campaign online seems like bots to me, shows up all in my twitter feeds and I am not looking for it. The kids aren’t pumping it either otherwise I would have heard about it from my son via his friends on the PlayStation chat etc. It’s just not retarded enough for them.
Re: Silver: I bought a few rolls of Walkers, Franklins, ’64 Kennedy’s and about $25 face of 90% junk silver a few months ago. With all the shows shutdown for over a year, I was feeling antsy. If silver goes above $40/ounce (doubt it), I’ll dump it all. I simply like the way silver coins look and feel and see them as much as a collectible as an asset.
We’ll see. I don’t think many people bought at $50. Many people like me stacked form $5 to $20 this entire time. I don’t think it matters if it’s bots, you just gotta get enough dumb lurkers reading it and buying. It doesn’t has to be WSB doing the pumping, it just has to be a massive crowd. There’s a lot of disinformation flying around on WSB. Many of them are screaming buy only GME! Others are saying buy SLV. But point being, they I haven’t seen much AMC Nokia talk since the weekend. A lot of SLV, and the bullion dealers are cleaned out and charging way above spot. Again, I haven’t seen this before. $35 call is a modest bet. If I was truly a believer in a real short squeeze, I’d go way out of the money.
Again normally people retail, babysitters, kids grandma usually don’t pay attention to the pump and dump on the internet.
Attach the WSB lable to it? Maybe just maybe they will.
And this is why.
Thinly traded ASM Pumped up 150% premarket and immediacy dumped on open.
“The stock price of Avino Silver & Gold Mines Ltd (NYSEAMERICAN: ASM) has increased by over 150% pre-market today. One of the main triggers for the stock price increase has to do with the encouragement of buying up shares on social media.
“On Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, StockTwits, and Discord, a group of investors launched ASM buying campaigns in order to increase the price of shares along with call options”
Kiddies don’t have access to pre-market….
Nahh, Lib, you are the fool apparently. A very smart teacher told me the Fed has never had so much control over an economy. That is a positive thing for resident dummy. He is pumps for a reason. Keep pumping that cash. One day he may find himself turning tricks in bathrooms at truck rest stops..thus why I call him Blumpy.
Name a better era over the last 60 years, that was better than 2009-2021. We had the lowest unemployment rate in decades with almost zero inflation. We just got hit with the second black swan in 12 years, and life is still pretty damn good. If this happened 50 years ago, we would be f’ed, because the fed simply did not understand the economic system like they do now.
Bystander says:
February 1, 2021 at 9:46 am
Nahh, Lib, you are the fool apparently. A very smart teacher told me the Fed has never had so much control over an economy.
Juice. Yes. I agree. First the stimulus (which is half pork). Then the porkulus which is 100% grade A. The problem is, all of these green government investments are private. The money for these failures almost always go to friends and family of politicians or the largest campaign contributors (See Aerofarms in NJ for a state-level example).
“We had the lowest unemployment rate in decades with almost zero inflation”
The unemployment rate is complete bullsh1t now. All of the job creation was at the low end. This is why salaries have leveled off. We don’t measure inflation anymore either.
Believe what you want.
What you are witnessing pumps are “the crumbs.”
We don’t measure inflation anymore either.
You hardly hear it mentioned any longer so why is gold and silver at these prices? I mean, I think it’s manipulation and treated as a gambling tool like GME, etc. but wondering if there’s anything else driving it.
You are a smart guy. I just really do believe this time is different. If we didn’t have a major crash after the economy took the biggest hit in almost a 100 years, we probably not going to have a crisis like 1929 ever again. They didn’t have computers back then, and they didn’t have the economic system we have today. Fintech is changing everything.
The fed just has to electronically move money around so that the system doesn’t come to a halt. As long as the system doesn’t come to a grinding halt in any part of it, the system will keep going. That’s all we want, for the system to not grind to a halt and destroy everything.
Look at 1929. Why was it so bad? The system had a bank run. It came to a crashing halt. The gears stopped moving. They had to close down backs, because like a domino effect, the market psychology dictated that the system was broke and everyone acted on it.
So in 2019, the system could have crashed, but the fed quietly kept the repo game going instead of crashing the whole system. They system recovered due to the fed intervention, and the game went on. Same thing happened when they shut the economy down last year. Could have destroyed it all, but they understand the economy now, and injected a ton of cash to keep it going instead of letting it fall on its face, which would have been impossible to recover from.
They finally understand that in times like this, panic and austerity is not the answer. All you want to do, is address the problem, and make sure the entire economic system keeps growing. As long as it keeps growing, things will be okay. It’s when the economy stops growing for years with no intervention like during the “Great Depression” is when you should be AFRAID.
Check this..
“Between 1929 and 1932, worldwide gross domestic product (GDP) fell by an estimated 15%. By comparison, worldwide GDP fell by less than 1% from 2008 to 2009 during the Great Recession. Some economies started to recover by the mid-1930s. … Cities around the world were hit hard, especially those dependent on heavy industry.”
They f’ed up royally from 1929-1932. That’s why that era was so bad. They simply didn’t understand the economy and how it works. They resorted to austerity measures and punished themselves for more than a decade. Sickening. The world didn’t have to go through that pain, but the smartest people in the world didn’t understand the economy like they do now.
Libturd says:
February 1, 2021 at 9:33 am
Pump. Some real advice for you.
Silver is not stonks
Lib – Think of it this way companies that get with the program get the benefit of the stamp of approval from Wall St. They get the BUY recommendations, the financing needed and Government grants and tax rebates. Heck we could even see Pres Joe Biden visiting the factory for the new electric corvette crossover next year.
We should see the new and improved GM in the Superbowl ads next week. Again techtonic shift no gas powered vehicles in 14 years and BTW stock has done awesome since it bottomed in March over 300%. Almost as good as GME did in week.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/29/business/general-motors-electric-cars.html
Wow, we are getting slammed with snow.
Bitcoin isn’t stonks either. I’m one Elon Musk tweet away from being in the money!
Not true, we had real growth in wages second half of last decade. If people weren’t so obsessed with hating trump and the divide between the rich and poor, they could have realized how good the times really were.
You know why the poor were falling behind, not because they weren’t doing better, but because the top were knocking it out of the park. This economy rewards capital more than labor, and why shouldn’t you see an increasing divide between the rich and poor in this case? If the poor are still doing well, who cares. Why focus on the rich and compare yourself to them.
My only problem with some rich, they horde capital, which hurts the economy. Clearly, this problem is solving itself as the low interest environment forces them to put it to work in growing the economy.
Libturd says:
February 1, 2021 at 9:59 am
“We had the lowest unemployment rate in decades with almost zero inflation”
The unemployment rate is complete bullsh1t now. All of the job creation was at the low end. This is why salaries have leveled off. We don’t measure inflation anymore either.
The largest wage growth in the labor market was at the bottom. Look it up.
See?!
“Workers at the lower end of the pay scale finally are getting the most benefit from rising wages”
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/13/workers-at-lower-end-of-pay-scale-getting-most-benefit-from-rising-wages.html
“I read enough on WSB to consider that enough of the swarm is going to buy into SLV. I’m in for Mar 12 call option at $35.”
I’m going to introduce you to a simple option strategy or two tonight.
This trade may work out for you but you literally bought at most expensive time, ever. Google ‘implied volatility percentile’. It’s 98.8. It only goes to 100….
Google ‘debit spread’ as well……For the same price you paid at full retail plus a scarcity premium you could have put on a 28/36 March debit spread. Instead of your breakeven being 36.60, it would be 29.60. The tradeoff is you would ‘only’ make 6.40 on your 1.60 ‘investment’…..
GL
Low interest environment combined with higher than normal inflation should force a ton of money on the sidelines to act. Not saying this is going to happen, but if it does, more ammo to support “roaring 20’s 2.0.”
“My only problem with some rich, they horde capital, which hurts the economy. Clearly, this problem is solving itself as the low interest environment forces them to put it to work in growing the economy.”
I can hand pick a chart too.
https://www.epi.org/nominal-wage-tracker/
https://www.frbatlanta.org/chcs/wage-growth-tracker
“Feeling good Louis!”
Key to take away from those charts…it was finally recovering until they closed the economy down for the pandemic.
If roaring 20’s comes about, maybe labor is going to regress back to the mean. The economy has a way of working itself out over time. You just have to keep the gears going, and make sure you keep it growing.
Libturd says:
February 1, 2021 at 10:43 am
I can hand pick a chart too.
https://www.epi.org/nominal-wage-tracker/
“If this happened 50 years ago, we would be f’ed, because the fed simply did not understand the economic system like they do now.”
Another nugget of stupid..yep, Volcker was a moron. What did he not understand? How to do trillions of QE and bailout every industry without rule or order?
“I just really do believe this time is different.”
Mark this comment as sign that top of the market is here. The mental power/gymnastics to produce his logic appears as lightning to him but it could not power a potato clock. Just enjoy the ride Blumpy.
“it was finally recovering”
Pumps not really Trump ran the same huge deficits the previous administration did, with the same cheap money. Here we are again the Dems are in the driving seat. They don’t want to a take away the punch bowl they are refilling it again instead this time with 100 proof.
For example right now we are turning business and household debt into government debt, and again we want to extend the duration longer and increase the amount of the subsides, and broaden it to add in bonus bailouts for state and local governments current budget deficits in the hope demand to ride the train or drive on the toll roads or fly returns to the point they can again sustain their own debts.
Businesses and households depend on the prompt arrival of payments from other businesses and households to pay their debts or they fail. You being a landlord know this. A year of unpaid rent will make many landlords go bust. This is Main st for you today. We have built a “just-in-time” financial supply chain with little savings for the rainy days or months.
Adding in a seismic shift of the economy to transition it to good paying “green” jobs is not going to be quick, no matter how it is spun. Those jobs may not even land on our shores, except for a few assembly plants.
Another way that the government can shrink the mountain of debt weighing down the U.S. is targeted inflation. You can bet that is on the table too.
Sing it….. sorry LIP SYNC IT!
https://youtu.be/nNHFOjyzycA?t=51
Excuse me while I kiss the sky…….
The Great Pumpkin says:
February 1, 2021 at 9:01 am
Pancake in a can taught me priceless lessons about the stock market.
You are a smart guy. I just really do believe this time is different. If we didn’t have a major crash after the economy took the biggest hit in almost a 100 years, we probably not going to have a crisis like 1929 ever again. They didn’t have computers back then, and they didn’t have the economic system we have today. Fintech is changing everything.
Oh yeah those computers and the people programming them are so smart. They just got taken to the cleaners by a bunch of kids to the tune of billions.
Left, I bought Thu/Friday. Doesn’t matter, the call option to me was the tutoring money for the week. YOLO. I haven’t been to AC in 7 years. I have to let it ride sometime.
Then sell something against it….
No problem with those that YOLO, just do it smartly
Don’t split queens at the table when the dealer is showing a six…..
“just-in-time” = the living check-to-check economy
The potato clock comment made me laugh.
“Don’t split queens at the table when the dealer is showing a six…..”
Unless you are in a tournament and need to be able to get more money on the table to have a chance to surpass the leader.
I said this for how long on this blog when the experts were calling for the end of suburbia. They just waited longer than previous generations to buy their first one…
This is proof that the pandemic didn’t start this movement to the suburbs (that I always said would happen), it was only accelerated by it.
Demographics, people. They matter. I called all this almost 10 years out.
“In sharp contrast to the “slacker” stereotype that has defined their generation, millennials aren’t living in parents’ basements. They’re buying multimillion-dollar homes.
At 38%, millennials—adults born from 1981 to 1996—represent the largest share of home buyers in the U.S., according to a survey by the National Association of Realtors released last year. “They’re just as interested in owning a home. They just waited longer to buy their first one,” says Bradley Nelson, chief marketing officer of Sotheby’s International Realty.
Breaking from the notion of a “starter home” that older generations embraced, wealthy millennials, Nelson says, are going big.”
https://apple.news/A2sRm93VxSiezqIxYpFKZEg
Now that my son last 1/2 his $15 in Dogecoin. He has decided to put his remaining $40.31 into Apple. Hmmm. I wonder which wins? The disruptor or the stalwart?
Shame my 15-year old is about to outsmart a teacher.
I’m not playing blackjack, I’m playing roulette….russian roulette.
lol wait…which teacher?
lolololol.
Or you could have him take out a NINJA zero down and buy a multi-million dollar suburban house…[insert the little gun to the head emoji]
The video from njtown with the two derivatives traders (which was excellent and wide ranging) socialized the idea that stock prices are antiquated and limited, and the options markets with their flexibility, multi-factor modeling and dynamism are far superior mechanisms for price discovery. Theoretically, I understand their point, but that was a serious WTF? moment. Sometimes these guys bury themselves way too far into the weeds. They are called derivatives for a reason.
Libturd says:
February 1, 2021 at 9:33 am
As soon as you hear someone say something asinine like, “valuations don’t matter.”
I disagree
Libturd says:
February 1, 2021 at 9:33 am
3) the interest rate can’t be lowered any further
Time for more record earnings reports from Big Tech, led by Amazon’s first $100 billion quarter
https://apple.news/A8LmF1ICxRJaLo42QFBwxug
You are serious?
Why am I asking, but here it goes…. by what metric?
The Great Pumpkin says:
February 1, 2021 at 9:51 am
Name a better era over the last 60 years, that was better than 2009-2021.
Please keep sharp objects away from me…..
The Great Pumpkin says:
February 1, 2021 at 10:07 am
You are a smart guy. I just really do believe this time is different. If we didn’t have a major crash after the economy took the biggest hit in almost a 100 years, we probably not going to have a crisis like 1929 ever again.
Try this one…… recreate COVID-19, but have the lethality for those 12 and under instead of the elderly and co-morbid…… how about we do it on heels of the 2020 clusterfcuk?
chicagofinance says:
February 1, 2021 at 3:04 pm
Please keep sharp objects away from me…..
The Great Pumpkin says:
February 1, 2021 at 10:07 am
You are a smart guy. I just really do believe this time is different. If we didn’t have a major crash after the economy took the biggest hit in almost a 100 years, we probably not going to have a crisis like 1929 ever again.
ChiFi,
I don’t respond to pumpkin seed nor do I read his/her posts but if does beg the question(s): We seemingly print money at will, live by TBTF, no longer have a gold standard, inflation is hardly ever mentioned and technology moves everything at lightening speed so I am interested in hearing the other side of the scenario. I admit my ignorance and I’m a passive investor so I am very interested in your take or anyone else that wants to chime in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN42uzNFVmQ
The Great Pumpkin says:
February 1, 2021 at 10:27 am
The largest wage growth in the labor market was at the bottom. Look it up.
Okay, so I see one scenario as I was typing my last response.
Chi,
Movie plot. Two possibilities.
One – Covid vaccines turn everyone who has them into zombies and we eat the entire sub-18 set before they exact their revenge.
Two – Covid vaccines kill everyone who has taken them and the entire sub-18 set exacts their revenge for decades of unfair treatment. Minorities, the poor and quite frankly, those not connected, rebuild the world into a much better place. Dude with horns and fur coat leads the revolution from his mom’s basement.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have watched last train to Busan again last night. If you haven’t seen it, do it now. It’s spectacularly overdramatic, unbelievable, yet unforgettable. A nice parallel to Covid too.
Sorry Train to Busan 2. Big difference. I didn’t even realize I was watching the sequel. Shoot me for downloading foreign films off of torrents.
Since this film had nothing to do with trains, I probably should have figured it out. I thought the writer was just being intentionally sly.
Libturd
The only thing cooler than zombies are Korean zombies.
The lead from train to busan previously starred in The Suspect
https://asianwiki.com/The_Suspect_-_Korean_Movie
That is a great action movie.
Just measured 17 inches here and still coming down….
Three – hasn’t received a lot of press but…
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/health/covid-vaccine-death.html
16 days is a long time.
Why should anyone take some of these so called SMEs seriously. Look at the golden words… LOL.. How did this paragraph not age well at all
Bystander says:
March 13, 2020 at 11:09 pm
Hey all..wow, glad to see site is back. Even a clot appearance which was long overdue but understandable as place deteriorated into a mental patient’s gibberish. Hope everyone is keeping safe. Grim, one request while we have time – please place “Another good year for RE?” as main article each day and allow comments? It might trick a certain somebody from thinking site is back. Cheers.
Another gem from the expert… Meanwhile the suburbia prices are up close to 15%.. LOL. Hehehe..
Bystander says:
May 10, 2019 at 9:52 am
“buy the over 800 k market”
Yet, Mr. “Retire at 40” could even come close to this purchase price. Own it that you fell in love with a house, not all your genius analysis pointed to Wayne. Keep dreaming that people coming up will be running to 800k and above. Not happening in suburbia. The Honeywells move out, replaced by ping pong facilities. Globalization will see that economic gains are not shared with Americans therefore previous economic models need not apply
Keeps getting better. Solid prediction from the genius… LOL
Bystander says:
November 27, 2018 at 1:01 pm
Funny, last month it was low inventory that was driving prices higher. Now, we have affordability crisis. Real estate pigs can’t keep story straight, similar to Blumpkin and his idiotic ramblings. “Why are rich folks causing a recession?” “Ok a recession is good now” Carnac the moronic.
Yes, from 2009 to 2020 was the longest economic growth cycle since they started keeping track since 1854. There was no recession. That tells me, the fed has control of the economy better than most think. Actions speak louder than words, and if not for corvid, this expansion would have kept going.
chicagofinance says:
February 1, 2021 at 3:02 pm
You are serious?
Why am I asking, but here it goes…. by what metric?
I really have to start proof reading before I post.
New today was the short interest on GME dropped like a rock, several different data firms confirmed it. NYSE monthly report will be out on Feb 9th.
DFV is still holding. He took another hit today in the wild swing of a $100 down and now another $44 a share in after hours. That is almost a 50% haircut today already.
Not sure why this guy thinks is going to happen now with the short interest off and more importantly his 15 minutes of fame has passed with the MSM and social media moving on. The mob will turn when this dives further. He should have taken his chips off the table when the stock hit $483 a share or right before his identity was outed.
I was reading elsewhere that FINRA could go after him, licenses etc for pumping online. Then there is his e-trade account he has been posting screen shots of. That is a no-no when you are responsible for other people’s money, they watch you to make sure you are not trading on the restricted list. Trades need to be approved by the firm as well. Then there is the tax man, who loves to rake all of us over the coals.
This kind of thinking is why trump won in 2016.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/did-bernie-sanders-inauguration-outfit-epitomize-white-privilege-a-san-francisco-teacher-thinks-so-204425621.html
How about bernie dressed like that because he’s old and cold or has an undisclosed health condition that makes him feel the cold more or his cardiologist told him too? Nope. Apparently wearing mittens and a parka to sit outside in January is white privilege.
Blumpy jr/Not,
You are becoming a bigger idiot than your other personality. How are Manhattan prices? Down 15%? Almost like there was correlation between major pandemic/free money/zero rates and suburban housing..but, hey, the end justifies the means in world of prophetic morons. Blumpy called for the ragin’ 2os and rage they will..lots of rage.
Chi,
Awesome clip. Classic. This should be Not and Blump’s theme song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-BYzaDwNoE
Lol
“Rumors of hedge funds hiring bros to go on Reddit and pump stocks the hedge fund has positions in. This game is so good, much more interesting than 4-bet ranges in poker or mini correlations in DFS.”
https://twitter.com/adamlevitan/status/1356274464481292290?s=21
Anyone want to donate $200 million to St. Jude to get a ride on one of Elon’s ships, lemme know.
Lol..Elon musk
grim says:
February 1, 2021 at 8:15 pm
Anyone want to donate $200 million to St. Jude to get a ride on one of Elon’s ships, lemme know.
I don’t know who this “notapump” is, but he/she is very good at doing what I’m not. Making you eat your calls. I’m just not that type of person. I do enjoy the fact that he/she gives me some much deserved credit on this blog. Thank you, seriously. Appreciate that you don’t pile on me and acknowledge my contribution to this blog. People would be in very good shape if they acted on my calls over the years except nhmd.
But you can’t make win them all.
My body is hurting. Mercy. Snow not stopping.
Went a month straight with working out thanks to apple’s new fitness app. My body is hurting!! Love it!!
In the face or on the belly?
leftwing says:
February 1, 2021 at 4:52 pm
Just measured 17 inches here and still coming down….
He’s really quite the asshole.
https://observer.com/2021/01/billionaires-philanthropy-record-low-2020-bezos-elon-musk/
The ISS weeklong commercial trip via Space x planned in 2022 looks much neater cost is $50 million each.
He might be cheaper than you.
Libturd says:
February 1, 2021 at 9:26 pm
He’s really quite the asshole.
https://observer.com/2021/01/billionaires-philanthropy-record-low-2020-bezos-elon-musk/
LOL chi, I don’t think even JJ witnessed anything like that….
JB, you likely know better than I do but suspect the shorts turned over and reloaded midweek. May even be the same guys….some statements were fairly specific, “we are out of our position…”. Which is obviously different than ‘we are no longer short’ or ‘we have no positions’.
This guy DFV is fcuked….the second he pulls out he’s going to have lifelong opprobrium from the WSB crowd for the disrespect and (very real) losses that will cause as the entire group runs for the exit….Interesting social experiment…What is the marginal value of the dollars over his current cash to avoid being blamed? Has he hit his FU amount? Will he ride into the ground for mass social approval?
https://youtu.be/mJ4ffTLdSZU
aHwsoEmeFpXyqW
Pumps doesn’t see it. The rates and the current situation are leading to all kinds of inefficiently allocated capital. There will be consequences. The unemployment rate is high, small businesses are surfing months with low/no revenue, this will be felt through the economy. Even those of us well employed are getting shafted by their employers, record profits but comp is down for a good many people. For the record the emperor has no clothes, the fed has totally lost control.
People are dumping money into real estate now for a few reasons. First there is the run from the city, city folks are desperate many people we know have decamped, some to suburbs and some to other places all together(places pumps says not people move to…I agree with him it is a mistake but we will see I could be wrong). Low rates coupled with literally nothing else to spend money on has people willing to pay to get a home.
Add to all of this an administration hostile to business, pro-tax, pro-regulation, etc and we are primed for a day of reckoning. The question is how the euphoria lasts, is the crash in 2 months, 6 months, 2 years, etc. That is the impossible question to answer.
rSDtfyheRkCovGjm
Ahem..cough. F-in dolt
deadconomy says:
April 10, 2020 at 8:34 am
It’s obvious that anyone looking to buy in this economy right now has a good chance to be a bottom feeder. Just common sense, imo. If you are serious about selling, don’t waste your time right now. You will waste your time to feel butt hurt about the price being offered to you on your home.
Hey Jcer, what do we know? Just people that work in technology for major banking institutions that see innerw0rkings and flippant decisions everyday. He thinks everyone is killing it. In his small mind, everyone is getting stock rich, debt does not matter and housing will always go up therefore justifying (bailing out) the price you paid. The game is changing under our feet and thinking same applies going forward is a fool’s belief.
Jcer,
I see it, but I don’t have a problem with it. We just shut down the economy for a year, things could be a lot worse. We are in good shape thanks to the FED.
People are flush with savings, and the economy is going to come back strong. Things are going to be okay.
JCer says:
February 1, 2021 at 11:40 pm
Pumps doesn’t see it. The rates and the current situation are leading to all kinds of inefficiently allocated capital. There will be consequences. The unemployment rate is high, small businesses are surfing months with low/no revenue, this will be felt through the economy. Even those of us well employed are getting shafted by their employers, record profits but comp is down for a good many people. For the record the emperor has no clothes, the fed has totally lost control.
If you own in the city, suck it up, and hold. Don’t chase the herd, you will be better off in nyc in the long run. What people don’t get, so many of those NYers that were scared away, will be back. Some will enjoy those fly over locations, but most will not.
Moving to a nyc metro suburb is much different than moving to a fly over location. Much different. Not many people can handle it after living in NYC metro. It’s that different.
“People are dumping money into real estate now for a few reasons. First there is the run from the city, city folks are desperate many people we know have decamped, some to suburbs and some to other places all together(places pumps says not people move to…I agree with him it is a mistake but we will see I could be wrong). Low rates coupled with literally nothing else to spend money on has people willing to pay to get a home.”
At that place and time, it was good advice. The sky was falling. If you held, you would get significantly more money after the panic fled and people realized the stock market wasn’t going to crash.
Bystander says:
February 2, 2021 at 6:28 am
Ahem..cough. F-in dolt
deadconomy says:
April 10, 2020 at 8:34 am
It’s obvious that anyone looking to buy in this economy right now has a good chance to be a bottom feeder. Just common sense, imo. If you are serious about selling, don’t waste your time right now. You will waste your time to feel butt hurt about the price being offered to you on your home.
The Congressional Budget Office, an institution created by Congress in 1974 to enable higher spending, is not exactly a bastion of free-market economics. But there’s no denying the strength in the private economy. And so CBO has now raised its expectations. The Journal’s Kate Davidson notes:
Gross domestic product is expected to grow 3.7% in the fourth quarter of 2021 compared with a year earlier and to expand 2.4% in 2022. Growth will average 2.6% a year through 2025, the CBO said.
With a good policy mix the economy could advance even faster, but there’s now a clear consensus among economists that the U.S. is in growth mode. CBO opines:
Over the course of the coming year, vaccination is expected to greatly reduce the number of new cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. As a result, the extent of social distancing is expected to decline. In its new economic forecast, which covers the period from 2021 to 2031, the Congressional Budget Office therefore projects that the economic expansion that began in mid-2020 will continue. Specifically, real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) is projected to return to its prepandemic level in mid-2021…
Covid hospitalizations peaked two weeks before Inauguration Day and vaccine distribution continues, despite the ministrations of some incompetent governors. If even the Beltway crowd is now officially expecting solid economic growth this year, where’s the case for a big federal intervention?
You are disingenuous and you are stupid. At that point, with virus raging, and rates set to zero, it was the best time to sell. I thought your magic 8 bill told you that fundamentals would always drive prices up yet you did not believe it?. There are no fundamentals. It is fear and panic..still is and nothing good comes from fear and panic buying.
Look closer, however, and problems appear. One proposal would upend decades-old global rules that tax a company where it is headquartered rather than where it does business. The OECD and some governments want to base taxation on where revenue is earned. The OECD also wants a global minimum tax. Each country would commit to taxing at least 12.5% of the profits of companies headquartered there—primarily to make sure the company isn’t paying “too little” via legal planning.
Look closer, however, and problems appear. One proposal would upend decades-old global rules that tax a company where it is headquartered rather than where it does business. The OECD and some governments want to base taxation on where revenue is earned. The OECD also wants a global minimum tax. Each country would commit to taxing at least 12.5% of the profits of companies headquartered there—primarily to make sure the company isn’t paying “too little” via legal planning.
The OECD’s big idea for overhauling tax-jurisdiction rules faces a steeper climb. The only hope of passing such a tax revamp would be to broaden the scope of the rules to encompass all global companies.
But some European governments, notably France, are reluctant because their own champions, such as French luxury firm LVMH or Germany car makers, might be subject to the new rules too. They prefer tax changes that hit only American tech giants. That highlights the protectionist game at play and makes it hard for any U.S. Treasury Secretary to sign up.
The bigger question is what’s the point? The OECD says its proposals could generate $100 billion more revenue each year, split to varying degrees among 140 countries. That’s a pittance compared to the trillions of dollars the world’s governments have unleashed for Covid-19 relief, so this tax grab isn’t really about revenue. It’s about whacking the easy political target of foreign businesses.
Economic growth is a smarter priority. Mr. Biden wants to increase America’s domestic taxation, though the U.S. can ill afford a squeeze on investment and job creation. Rather than trying to rope Mr. Biden into a new global tax grab, other governments would be better off reforming their own tax laws to woo investment from Americans put off by anti-growth policies.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-and-the-global-tax-fight-11612222503?st=wgk157psnqgbmjz&reflink=article_copyURL_share
A margin call is not a Wall Street plot to fleece Reddit traders.
So much for the “rigged” market, the supposed conspiracy to fleece Reddit traders, and other nonsense spouted about last week’s stock market ructions involving GameStop and other companies. It turns out the controversy was essentially about a larger than normal clearinghouse call for capital.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-robinhood-non-conspiracy-11612222878?st=7uwa75i0k7nyzns&reflink=article_copyURL_share
U.S. stock futures rose Tuesday, signaling that major indexes may extend this week’s gains ahead of earnings from technology giants Amazon and Google-parent Alphabet.
Futures tied to the S&P 500 rose 0.8%, a day after the broad stocks gauge posted its biggest one-day advance since November. Contracts for the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.7% and futures for the technology-heavy Nasdaq-100 climbed 0.8%.
Stock markets have steadied globally this week after a choppy January, when extreme moves in some individual stocks, signs of a slowdown in the U.S. economy, and concerns about the pace of the vaccine rollout and new coronavirus variants weighed on share prices. Investor sentiment has been lifted by robust earnings reports from large-cap companies, as well as a decline in coronavirus cases in the U.S. and several other major economies.
Investors will parse quarterly earnings from Amazon.com and Alphabet after markets close. Shares of giant tech companies have continued to power the broader market in 2021, pushing the Nasdaq Composite up 4% so far this year.
“The bar for tech was actually quite high” coming into earnings season, said Hani Redha, a multiasset portfolio manager at PineBridge Investments. “Overall, for the sector, we are still seeing very strong earnings delivered.”
Earnings for the last quarter of 2020 have been better than analysts had anticipated. Of the 189 companies on the S&P 500 index that had reported results by late Monday, 81% have beaten expectations, according to FactSet.
Economy Grows, but Labor Market Lags
The U.S. economy is expected to expand more rapidly in 2021 than officials projected in July, but it will take several years for output to reach its full potential and for the number of employed workers to return to its pre-pandemic peak. The Congressional Budget Office said it expects gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic output, to return to its pre-pandemic level by the middle of this year, thanks in part to a surge of relief spending Congress authorized in 2020, including aid for households and businesses, Kate Davidson reports.
The CBO also estimated the jobless rate will fall to 5.3% by the end of this year from 6.8% at the end of 2020. The number of people who are employed, however, won’t return to the level seen before the pandemic until 2024, the agency said. The latest projections will be closely watched by lawmakers weighing how much additional government support the U.S. economy might need as it recovers from the coronavirus pandemic and its economic impact.
Good morning. Why has the U.S. economy fared so much better under Democratic presidents than Republicans?
Blue at the top, red at the bottom
Has the economy fared better under Democratic presidents or Republican presidents over the past century? The sensible answer might seem to be: It’s probably been similar.
Presidents, after all, have only limited control over the economy. They don’t have much influence over the millions of decisions every day, made by consumers and business executives, that shape economic growth, jobs, incomes and stock prices. Over the course of a century, it seems logical that the economy would have performed similarly under Democrats and Republicans.
But it hasn’t.
The economy has fared far better under Democrats. The gap, as one academic paper puts it, is “startlingly large.” Here are the headline numbers:
The gap exists not only for G.D.P. and jobs but also for incomes, productivity and stock prices. The gap also exists if you assume that a president’s policies affect the economy with a lag and don’t start his economic clock until months after he takes office. Virtually any reasonable look at the data shows a big Democratic advantage.
My colleague Yaryna Serkez and I have just published a piece documenting the pattern and the potential reasons. A few possibilities are easy to reject. It’s not about congressional control, nor is it about Democrats running up larger budget deficits. (Republican presidents have run up larger deficits in recent decades.)
Coincidence surely plays some role — but it’s highly unlikely to account for the entire gap, given its size, breadth and duration. Yaryna’s and my piece explores some of the most plausible explanations:
Republican presidents have been slow to respond to recessions and other crises — Donald Trump and both George Bushes being examples. (Herbert Hoover was too, and the partisan gap would be even bigger if the data went back far enough to include him.)
Recent Democratic presidents have been more pragmatic, willing to listen to the evidence about when the economy would benefit from deficit reduction and when it needs government support for education, infrastructure, scientific research and more.
Republican presidents over the past 40 years have pursued one economic policy above all other — tax cuts, skewed heavily toward the affluent — and there is little evidence that they do much for economic growth.
Our piece has more details and charts, as well as comments from both conservative and liberal economists. Find it all here.
U.S. manufacturing continued to recover in January, a bright spot for the U.S. economy as services companies continue to struggle with the coronavirus pandemic.
Two purchasing managers surveys on manufacturing activity released Monday pointed to continued growth, adding to evidence a pickup in demand for goods is helping U.S. factories. U.S. industrial production also increased solidly in December, the Federal Reserve reported last month, citing manufacturing as a driving factor.
“Manufacturing sector prospects for 2021 are upbeat, with solid consumer goods demand, inventory restocking, gradual business reopenings, and additional federal pandemic relief all set to keep activity on a firm footing,” said Oren Klachkin, an economist at Oxford Economics, in a note to clients.
The U.S. economy is expected to expand more rapidly in 2021 than officials projected in July, but it will take several years for output to reach its full potential and for the number of employed workers to return to its pre-pandemic peak, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
So please explain to me how the FED didn’t do a good job after reading all these stories I posted from today. Economy is in good shape to grow for the longterm.
If we only focused on debt, and turned to austerity, only then would we be fish in a bucket being shot at.
Everyone and their mother crying about FED money printing, but they clearly don’t understand. The FED certainly does, and it shows.
They just handled two massive crisis like a BOSS that would have taken out the economy if they used 1900’s fed strategies for a crisis. Imagine they did what we did in 1929. We would be swimming with the fish.
Leftwing at 8:45 on GME bear case . . .
Great write-up and I respect the trade.
I found it interesting how agnostic you were toward the idea that “this time may be different” and that the masses of retail traders might be sending a message to high elites by keeping the price of GME high. As of today, you are being shown to be correct that GME seems to simply be an “event-driven parabolic stock” rather than a new kind of political/economic/social protest. It’s trading pre-market at $137, so if it keeps trending this way, your trade will be hugely profitable.
I couldn’t get a read on what was going to happen to GME, so I’ve been curious how others have played it, as I stood on the sidelines.
Pumps, technically, the US Government must pay the Fed back one day.
Explain how that happens and it what time frame? Where does the US government get the money besides taxation?
Also do you believe US dollars should come from work, savings and investment instead of thin air?
What do you think the rest of the world thinks of this?
When does this ride to infinity stop?
Fed Holdings of US Government backed debt, as of Jan 27 2021
Security Type Dollars
US Treasury Bills (T-Bills) 326,044,000.0
US Treasury Notes and Bonds (Notes/Bonds) 4,064,298,357.8
US Treasury Floating Rate Notes (FRNs) 17,269,242.7
US Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS)* 315,619,401.0
Federal Agency Securities** 2,347,000.0
Agency Mortgage-Backed Securities*** 2,059,890,462.9
Agency Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities*** 9,878,399.4
Total SOMA Holdings 6,795,346,863.9
To Infinity and Beyond!
https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttrends.htm
We are also in clown world. Any good things we have going for us like a vibrant oil/gas industry that we FINALLY achieved energy independence with…we now want to tear it all down? Seriously?
Juice,
Is the economy functioning as we speak? Is it growing? They know what they are doing, otherwise the economy wouldn’t be growing or even functioning.
Crushed,
It was all driven by greed and quick money. A few made off with a lot of money while the masses got killed. It was a pump and dump on a massive scale.
This is awesome vid..hah. Blumpy Orc somewhere in there. Look for one with smallest head like end of Beetlejuice.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1355916402239148035
Marc Cuban is posting on WSB:
Supply and Demand, but in this case it literally could be because the source of demand has been crippled . When RH shut it down, then cut it back, lets put aside why, they cut of the greatest source of demand. They created a RobinHood Dive. No RH buyers, means sellers lower their price to find buyers. And they keep on lowering it till they find buyers. Keep the most natural buyers out of the market and the price keeps on FALLING.
Then that drop accelerates because the more the stock falls the more owners who bought on margin get margin calls. When that margin call happens, its brutal. They just take your stock, send you a FU note and sell your stock at the market price, no matter how low. They just want to get your cash to pay back the loan.
That then accelerates the selling.
Which then leads to what we are seeing in the market right now with GME in particular
So what to do ?
If you can afford to hold the stock, you hold. I dont own it, but thats what i would do.
Why ? because when RH and the other online brokers open it back up to buyers, then we will see what WSB is really made of. That is when you get to make it all work.
I have no doubt that there are funds and big players that have shorted this stock again thinking they are smarter than everyone on WSB.
I know you are going to hate to hear this, but the lower it goes, the more powerful WSB can be stepping up to buy the stock again. The only question is what broker do you use . Do you stay with RH , who is going to have the same liquidity problems over and over again, or do you as a group find a broker with a far, far, far better balance sheet that wont cut you off and then go ham on Wall Street.
Musk dumps Twitter. Lots of people dumping FB..$hit is going underground. To make market work for all, things need to stay nimble. Oppressors all around. Market up big bc GME and Silver squashed. Trying to believe game is back under control.
Pumps we need to tread carefully. So much of our high standard of living is driven by imports and the relative strength of US dollar most because we are the worlds reserve currency. What would happen if USD loses 30% of it’s value against other currencies? Look at your own personal expenses, now your salary stays the same or maybe even goes down but commodities all go up by 30%, your food is 30% more, your gas is 30% more every consumer good you buy costs 30% more. That would be pretty significant for the majority of Americans. It happened in Argentina, the difference is they are not the US with a big military and status as the worlds reserve currency.
We have had a good thing going largely because the euro zone is a powder keg…no is betting the farm on that, Japan is a zombie, the emerging economies are a mess too unstable, and everyone is afraid of the Chinese and their currency debasement, we remained the safe haven even with all of our issues. If we keep printing like drunken sailors we could see our currency slip significantly, it is already sliding against the Euro. We need to quit all of this stimulus nonsense(vote buying, bread and circuses) and get the economy re-opened and people back to work.
Comp in – my report (h1B year 4) who absolutely owns all system knowledge on global broker reg app, got 5% bonus. He works 13 hours a day/weekends and has to guide every break and fix across the globe. He is amazing but treading water with life balance. This is acceptable in Blumpy’s stable economy. I now know I will get f-ed too.
“Good morning. Why has the U.S. economy fared so much better under Democratic presidents than Republicans?”
Why is it every charlatan and fool insists on dressing a political polemic in an economic argument by picking random dates encompassing precisely a 1,460 day period with respect to only the Executive party of our multi-branch government and without regard to world events?
JCer.
Exactly. It is nothing more than bread and circuses. If these stimulus checks were actually directed at those with the need, I bet it wouldn’t even cost 100 billion, let alone the 1.6 trillion they want to spend.
When, in America, did it become policy that EVERYONE must be made whole after acts of nature? This does not mean we should feed the starving and shelter the new homeless. But 95% of the people I know keep getting checks and 0% of them need them. This is pure lunacy.
Leftwing,
Sometime, when you flip a coin, it goes heads 5 times in a row and tails once. Other times it goes back and forth between the two. The likelihood of the team the president is on having much sway over the economy is not terribly great. This is why I don’t bother with these arguments. Likewise, claiming Trump didn’t start any wars is all good and fine until some random country drops a bomb on us. Do you think they care which party is in the White House? So many stupid partisan arguments.
It’s funny. Trump in White House, Dems argue stimulus checks are too big. Trump out, Biden in. Dems now want larger stimulus than Trump wanted. Republicans want smaller checks. THEY ARE ALL THE SAME! Different social positions. Big whoop. Same means to the same end. Enriching themselves.
TY on the compliment Crushed. Still a long way to go, the stock needs to settle down and find its range. And the company exec officers and Board should be locked up if before the next earnings release they don’t raise funds and announce an enhanced business strategy leveraging Cohen, which would give the stock a boost. CHWY was one of the greatest feats of BS financial engineering around but, hey, if it works run with it.
“As of today, you are being shown to be correct that GME seems to simply be an “event-driven parabolic stock” rather than a new kind of political/economic/social protest.”
I think it’s both. In other contexts here I’ve mentioned the rampant populism of Americans, here is yet another data point with wallets. Unabashedly reams of posters literally said they don’t care what they lose to be part of this obscure ‘movement’. If that isn’t a powerful statement I don’t know what is.
The political realm is finally recognizing it, after being hit over the head with a mallet (Sanders/Trump). How else can you find AOC, a Trump, and Cruz all on the same page. G0d bless us all, let’s hope whatever character taps into that power is better than the first…history shows generally the party who really harnesses this power is not.
Cool design.
“Amazon.com Inc.’s plans for its new northern Virginia headquarters feature an outdoor theme, the latest sign that big tech companies are getting more creative with office space rather than abandoning it.
Phase two of the company’s develop-ment in Arlington, Va., calls for three 22-story office buildings and smaller retail buildings surrounded by woodlands, an outdoor amphitheater, a dog run and parking for around 950 bicycles.
The centerpiece will be the site’s fourth and tallest tower, a 350-foot structure dubbed the Helix because it will feature two spiraling outdoor walkways with trees and plants from Virginia that twist to the building’s top.
Amazon, which is unveiling the designs on Tuesday, said the cluster of new office and retail buildings will accommodate around 13,000 employees, with room for more. The project is part of Amazon’s more than $2.5 billion, 25,000-employee office campus, which the Seattle-based company calls its second headquarters.
While numerous tech firms have pledged to allow employees to work from home even after the coronavirus pandemic is contained, Amazon, Facebook Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s Google and others have continued to expand their urban office footprints. By investing heavily in big city real estate, they are betting that office space will be an important part of their corporate culture after the pandemic is over.
“We have to think about this as a long-term investment,” said John Schoettler, Amazon’s vice president of global real estate and facilities. “These buildings will begin to deliver in 2025. And so we believe that the world will be a much improved place than it is currently.”
Still, the growing popularity of remote work has influenced the buildings’ plans, Mr. Schoettler said. The company expects some employees will go to the office only occasionally. The designs call for more collaborative spaces where these people can meet peers. They won’t look much like traditional offices.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-unveils-outdoorsy-new-hq2-renewing-its-commitment-to-offices-11612267200?st=c5rxpi0eje11gw2&reflink=article_copyURL_share
Davey day trader exits down $700k
“They [the Fed] just handled two massive crisis like a BOSS…”
JFC, please stop puking all over this board and take your meds….
Handled? Like a boss?
The Fed had a strung out, addicted, over extended ill child who they just handed a shiny new Amex card and told him to take a vacation. The kid just landed in the sunny Caribbean and is on his way to an all-inclusive resort. You’re looking at that car passing by thinking his life is great.
Seriously, it doesn’t pain you personally or embarrass you to post such garbage?
“The likelihood of the team the president is on having much sway over the economy is not terribly great. This is why I don’t bother with these arguments.”
Few things irritate me as much as intellectual dishonesty, especially from ‘trusted’ sources…and especially when it purports to be impartial but blatantly is not.
I wasn’t going to waste my time going to the source but from the quotes it’s a ‘paper’.
The whole concept of isolating one variable – and not the most influential one at that – and proclaiming a conclusion over the entire set is ridiculous. A first year college student would flunk a basic logic class with that reasoning. The list of issues with this analysis is nearly endless….
Yet fools and charlatans continue to make these arguments, and bigger fools quote them.
Leftwing,
There are two incredibly important courses that are missing from the liberal arts requirement. Finance and marketing. A basic understanding of these two disciplines, if taken seriously, will probably have a larger impact on your total wealth than how well you do in your major. I really believe this. Additionally, developing a healthy self-confidence (not to be confused with ego) and honed interviewing skills, helps tremendously as well. The other 95% will do little more than let you compete with your partner when watching Jeopardy.
Fed pump priming is the primary driver of the economy now. When the fed used to try to actually manage inflation, we would see real highs and lows. ZIRP for what, 13 years now? “No recession in the entire decade”. It’s all smoke and mirrors. There were a lot of people that were in an outright economic depression from 2008 to 2014. And it’s happened again because we turned the off switch on the economy. Although, some people are living sky high on this, collecting extended unemployment and working multiple jobs under the table.
As far as presidents go, they hardly have much of an effect unless they try to overregulate things. I see us trying to move this way with respect to energy. Natural gas and Nuclear could make us work wonders as we try to NATURALLY transition to a green energy grid. The idea that you can force it with primitive technologies is just stupid. Advances in solar and battery have been accelerating for 15 years. It would have been silly to put forth trillions towards a green economy back then as we would already be left with obsolete tech.
It’s no surprise that all of our growing industries over the past 20 years have been brand new and ones they haven’t figured out how to regulate.
Did we have a crash? Did Clot’s wet dream come true? They handled a crisis most saw no way out of (including myself, I thought it was all over) extremely well. That’s all I know. We had a Great Recession instead of a Great Depression.
leftwing says:
February 2, 2021 at 11:27 am
“They [the Fed] just handled two massive crisis like a BOSS…”
JFC, please stop puking all over this board and take your meds….
Handled? Like a boss?
Real estate was supposed to be finished, correct? Fed said no. It’s too important as it is one of the main gears of the economy. Keep the gears moving…say it with me.
3b is asking for hell on earth when he advocates for a housing crash. He takes the same position with NYC and offices. Go ahead, get rid of them, but I just hope you like a hell on earth environment.
Let’s get rid of the northeast, and move the majority of the businesses and workers to other locations in the United States. Well, that makes a lot of sense. God knows how much it would cost to move entire economies into new locations. It isn’t cheap, that’s why SF and NYC will never die. It’s such a highly developed economy in both locations that you can’t simply pick up and start this somewhere new. You can take pieces of it and move it around in search of value, but you can’t get move the majority of it without hurting our economy as it becomes economically inefficient to move economies of scale to new locations.
Also, for the Cathy fans, her transaction drop last night showed more buys of BEAM. Third day in a row IIRC (too distracted with this other stuff to keep track lol).
I’d love to piggyback on this position for a longer term hold, but the stock is fighting the chart….even with her coming in and all the follow-on it can’t seem to hold momentum it feels it should…..each night when she drops – right before AH trading closes – the stock will pop a couple bucks (or so) and then be back where it started in the morning….I’d like to see the follow through…
Anyway, and I can’t believe I’m considering this as a cardinal rule for me is to not get involved in illiquid options, but the calls have a ton of premium built in….looking a bit further out one could do a buy-write and cost into the stock around $70…Cathy’s first buy in this stock may -may – have been in high 70s/low 80s but otherwise she’s legging in to her position in the 90s….So you’re getting in her trade 25 bucks cheaper….
A basic buy-write needs to overcome the huge bid-ask spread and given the entire lack of OI needs to be entered with the assumption you’ll hold to expiry but you’ll basically piggyback on her at 25 bucks cheaper….and if the stock stays flat or moves up you’ll book about 30 bucks of gains.
That’s a 30% return, equivalent of buying the stock outright (without the downside protection) and having it go to $130 or so from its current 98…..
NOT investment advice, all disclaimers apply, plus I haven’t even pulled up the company filings so I literally have no knowledge of any issues that may exist at the company but the setup – other than the option illiquidity – is from a trading perspective not unattractive.
BRT,
Pretty soon a whole generation will have lost the concept of interest income.
If people could earn a positive real return on their savings, it might actually encourage savings over gambling. But Keynesians in the Fed and other branches of government have declared savings an enemy of the economy.
Big Apple Bonanza
Venture-capital firms last year pumped $5.8 billion into New York City enterprise-technology startups, up more than 75% from 2019, with the lion’s share going into artificial-intelligence and machine-learning firms, the Journal’s John McCormick reports.
Highflying unicorns. New York is home to 17 tech startups valued at $1 billion or more, known as unicorns, part of a citywide ecosystem that saw 189 funding deals in 2020, up from 114 in 2019.
Earning its stripes. Dataiku Inc., a New York-based enterprise AI developer, raised $100 million in August in a Series D round led by investment firm Stripes.
$10.2 billion
Estimated value of UiPath, a robotic-process-automation software startup based in New York.
Yea, nyc is dying…
Lefty,
You seem to have skill when it comes to trading. You really aren’t wrong much on any of your trade calls posted here.
Pretty soon a whole generation will have lost the concept of interest income.
If people could earn a positive real return on their savings, it might actually encourage savings over gambling. But Keynesians in the Fed and other branches of government have declared savings an enemy of the economy.
It’s already happened. I held CDs until 2004 and realized they were going to 0% when I started looking at metals. I realized pretty quickly it was speculate or get wiped out via inflation. Fortunately, one of the things I realized was, when I was at such a low income $30k a year with all my jobs, it made more sense to just buy things on sale at Kohls/Victoria’s Secret and other stores and flip them. We were doubling our money on every purchase. I probably should have just stuck with it, as my friend kept doing it with video games and he’s already set to retire a millionaire.
Pumps: Please don’t reference me in your posts as I asked. I have not responded or referenced you in any posts for over a month. And I could have; there is so much coming on the WFH front. But in the spirit of not antagonizing you I have not posted any of it. You will see it all soon enough. So I ask you again please do not reference me in your posts.
“Finance and marketing. A basic understanding of these two disciplines, if taken seriously, will probably have a larger impact on your total wealth than how well you do in your major. I really believe this.”
Totally agree Lib. And personal finance. My oldest had a course at university restricted to seniors only in personal finance, basically by the syllabus how to negotiate life while passing larger sums of money…investment, taxes, NPV/DCF, practical matters like leases, home buying and mortgages, lease v buy on car, etc….He was happy but also ripshi1t…was totally perplexed why they couldn’t have offered it earlier given the benefits he derived. Zero of this education from his blue ribbon HS…
“The other 95% [of instruction] will do little more than let you compete with your partner when watching Jeopardy.”
Funniest and most accurate post in this thread lol.
I agree lib we have gotten past helping those who are suffering. Enhanced unemployment is one thing, aid to small businesses is one thing, random stimulus checks, seems ridiculous especially considering we have a vaccine and very effective treatments. We should be focusing on inoculations and reopening.
“The other 95% [of instruction] will do little more than let you compete with your partner when watching Jeopardy.”
With all due respect, if that’s all that one is getting out of a liberal arts undergrad degree, then that’s probably a pretty poor school.
In fact one could argue the opposite, too many engineering and business students with little or no notion of “why” and even “how” to use technical knowledge. No knowledge or curiosity outside their fields, etc.
The point stands though, that all liberal arts with no notion of technical topics, or even basic life/survival skills is not helpful either.
There are two incredibly important courses that are missing from the liberal arts requirement. Finance and marketing. A basic understanding of these two disciplines, if taken seriously, will probably have a larger impact on your total wealth than how well you do in your major.
A prerequisite to this should be home economics.
“Zero of this education from his blue ribbon HS…”
No financial or civic eduation
It was Carlin’s dying message:
he politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, and city halls. They got the judges in their back pocket. And they own all the big media companies so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear . . .
“But I’ll tell you what they don’t want. They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests. It’s a big club and you ain’t in it. By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head all day long.”
With all due respect, if that’s all that one is getting out of a liberal arts undergrad degree, then that’s probably a pretty poor school.
In fact one could argue the opposite, too many engineering and business students with little or no notion of “why” and even “how” to use technical knowledge. No knowledge or curiosity outside their fields, etc.
The point stands though, that all liberal arts with no notion of technical topics, or even basic life/survival skills is not helpful either.
I’ve worked with and am friends with a lot of engineers and people in science…obviously. Many of them are completely oblivious to things in their own field yet feel that their degree awards them the benefit of the doubt on any issue within the field.
Recruiters today for anyone interested:
“Hi, this contract position is 100% remote but would you be willing to relocate to Bismarck, ND?”
Me: “Umm, no?”
What other answer is there? For a contract position, is the recruiting agency going to spring for relocation costs and mortgage payments while I move. Of course not. It is pure lunacy with these people.
Bystander,
Sounds like the real-estate vultures who call me daily. 95% of the time, they are Latino or Asian, which just strengthens my opinion on how much harder working minorities tend to be. Though, like your headhunters, they want the house for free. I always say the same thing. I’ll give it to you for 50K less than the Zestimate, private sale. I never get a call back.
I swear, my eventual move is going to be to find a contractor who will convert the home into a single family at cost for 1/4 the selling price. Figure as a single family, it will go for a million easily. He sinks in 125K and gets 250K at sale. I do nothing and pray for $750.
Bystander,
I’m grateful to be in a full time role for many years now. I dread the thought of having to deal with recruiters/contract roles again. It’s a soul-draining process. Then again, I’m closer to retirement age than most of you here but not quite there yet. If I had to “retire” tomorrow, I wouldn’t be able to live in this house and area. I’d have to sell and move to PA to a much scaled down abode and would still need to do something for a living.
Bezos 2024?
Stepping down as CEO AMZN….
Bezos to the moon in 2024. Might not happen now, apparently Biden is tapping on the breaks.
Bezos would love the moon’s favorable tax climate.
If you ever visit Canaveral you will see the massive facilities the two billionaires have built in hopes of going to a place we will never live. Both are obsessed with space.
Not to say it’s true but I would not be surprised if Musk is off twitter because the moon landing plans are now a priority, the government bid has been put on “hold” for Sleepy Joe. For both billionaires nobody else other than China has now plans. We are talking 2024 or even earlier.
Space race 2.0
Why go back to the Moon? Who cares….
“The likelihood of the team the president is on having much sway over the economy is not terribly great.”
I have to disagree with that. How many jobs are we complaining about being lost with Keystone XL cancelation. What industries will get boosted from the Green New Deal.
Even Donnie was trying to juice the economy for Re-election.
Bigger questions should be around the deficit. Clinton left a 400B surplus. W instead of paying down the debt, pushed through the tax cuts that added another 1.5T to the deficit. Donnie added 2T for his tax cuts. The numbers coming out on that are 83% to the top 1%.
This is funny. Its the future of Right wing media.
https://twitter.com/JasonSCampbell/status/1356719881564086272
There was no surplus. Each and every year the total public debt increased.
4:05 oh boy! Another charismatic hopeful.