Dow futures collapsing

Democrats - shut down everything!

Also Democrats- why did you tank the stock market!


Funny enough, since Trump is responsible for the biggest 1 day drop of the Dow, he is also then responsible for the biggest 1 day gain which happened 8 days after the biggest 1 day drop.

 

There is a difference between wage growth and wages vs inflation.
Wage growth has surpassed inflation the last 14 month I believe at this point. But have wages caught up enough to make up for inflation we experienced 2020-2022?
Short answer is no.

 

Uhhh. No. I suggest you look up the definition of inflation!

Inflation literally is the growth rate of prices. So if you have 0% price increase then by definition not only is inflation not “still high”, it would be zero. If you want a retracement of prices that would be deflation.

I think it’s safe to say you will never see overall 2020 grocery prices again as that’s just not how our economy has worked, ever. Individual commodities might go up and down. Eggs for example had their own unique cause (avian flu outbreak), so they spiked up almost 100% and roundtripped back down. That is actually an example of transitory inflation, where the underlying cause of inflation was obvious and assumed temporary. Personally on fresh food I don’t think inflation was ever that bad, I’m no vegan but fresh produce hardly had any inflation. You see some on meat and dairy but not that much imo. Where it’s highly noticable is packaged goods, whether cans of coke or boxes of cheerios you can see that some items just about doubled, or restaurants that serve food. Some of this is of course higher cost of labor and packaging, but not all “big food” was feeling the sqeeze, some just used the chatter as an excuse to expand margins.

 

Actually we did with Biden and stayed on the sidelines the first two years after the Covid debacle. Now when Trump was in office we did really well.

 

If you are basing investment decisions on who's in office, historically you want to stick with the Dems. I didn't vote for Obama or Clinton but I made a crap ton of money in the markets when they were in office.

 

Financial system/banks, but they do look at the stock market. In this case, the Feds know they have a good plan in place for the US economy.

If you play pony’s, dogs, and stocks, let the buyer beware.

 

Fox pointing out the obvious.

“The Donald Trump thing in the market amazes me,” Cavuto said. “When they’re up, it’s all because of him and looking forward to him. When they’re down, it’s all because the Democrats and how horrific they are.”

https://thehill.com/business/4813153-fox-news-cavuto-trump-stock-market-wall-street/

 

Because of disinformation pushers or morons.

 

No, short answer is yes. Real wages Q1 2020: 367. Real wages Q2 2024: 368.

 

Dow currently back up 500. Am I supposed to be happy, sad, or not really care because I’m 30 years from retirement?

 

The link was "inflation adjusted wages" which is "real wages" which is up. Here is the disingenuous comparison you are using that you may are may not be aware of. Inflation happened after wage inflation. So righties pick the 2020 data that was impacted by covid which has a spike in wages due to unemployment of low wage workers as a compare point before prices shot up (green circle). The real comparison point for intelligent humans is the quarter before covid (red circle).

So to answer your question.. wages ARE higher than costs.

 

Sure tell that to 39% of the population:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/23/busi...arly four in ten (39,the Great Recession (37%).

Technically Real wages are now at 1.5% above inflation at this point since Jan 2020 so I'll give you that yes technically you are right. But a very large chunk of the population is not feeling it.


My best friend is a VP for a hotel company for all the hotels at Universal. He told me last week that their numbers are very bad. He has been in that industry for 14 years and has never seen it this bad.

 

Agree with your friend that spending has been cut back in the last 3-4 weeks pretty dramatically across industries. Very recent though. I think it is related to the school load programs they havent resolved.

 

Four years into this decade and here is what we have learned so far;

1) Never, ever, never, ever let the government run health policy. Let real doctors treating real patients in real clinics determine treatment protocol, and develop therapeutics. Not a 78 year old government beaurocrat who hasn’t seen a patient or worked in a hospital in 40 years make shit up interview to interview.

2) Never, ever, never, ever let a government set semi permanent policy based on very limited and unverified data and the assumption that we will not quickly learn and share what works and does not work in therapy for patients. Humans, without government interference or dictation, will always learn and learn quickly how to resolve problems.

3) Never, ever, never, ever let politicians shut down the economy to “flatten the curve” while they are simultaneously hogtying the medical professionals from finding out what really works as a therapeutic.

4) Don’t keep a doctor who is too afraid to actually see patients and do their jobs when necessary. I have a hard time considering many doctors as professionals based on their behavior during the pandemic. If you want to be treated and respected as a professional you need to damn sure act like one.

5) Massive government spending and liquidity insertion simultaneous with a government driven constriction of the supply chain WILL drive inflation.

6) Don’t allow politicians and partisans to deny item 5 or to claim that the effects are transitory.

7) COLA’s are always in arrears to actual inflation and rarely make things whole over time.

8) Pressure by Wall Street and loudmouth politicians should not be a determining factor in Fed decisions on rates. The pain we have experienced for two years now is a necessary remedy for the government spending and Fed rate cut foolishness of 2020, 2021, and most of 2022.

9) Settle in boys and girls, as told to you back in 2020 and 2021 by your’s truly, we are several more years away from undoing our own nonsense of this decade.

10) Given 1-9 above, a stock market with 2-3X norm PE multiplier and availability of relatively safe 4-6% return in CDs and bonds, no one should have the majority of their portfolios in the stock market. Too many other good options available that don’t involve risk to principal.

 

This “I know a guy” anecdote doesn’t seem to back up the broad data on travel and leisure.

Especially considering that industry just saw a record smashing year and looking towards modest growth this year. Maybe that modest growth ends up a decline, but we’ll see.

I think a lot of the “record smashing” from 2023 was pent up demand from the pandemic and people doing YOLO spending on trips. So not exactly “normal” comps. But honestly if anyone has bookings way down they probably just need to cut prices and do more promotions. That’s sort of how that works. I think this ties in to real estate, where it doesn’t seem sustainable, can almost call it a bubble. Maybe on travel, which is discretionary spend, people are a saying… enough!!! I do find it weird how anyone in that industry could say “never seen it this bad” when they were literally shut down 4 years ago. Like… what!?

 

Also FWIW Universal’s theme park revenue was down roughly 10% 2Q 2023 vs 2Q2024, and that was happening even when overall travel was still up.

https://www.cmcsa.com/static-files/68abe434-80f7-437e-8e7a-fa457e43e63b

So Universal may be particularly vulnerable. But sometimes stuff like this has to do with timing of new attractions and non-economic factors as well.

 

if a broker is using timing based on who’s in office and politics as a investment strategy to invest a portfolio they shouldn’t be hired. I remember specifically back in 08 posters here stating they were pulling their money out if Obama won. They were then on the sidelines during his tenure and the mkt up by roughly 150%.

 

I'm a passholder and fairly regular visitor to those hotels. The cause should be fairly obvious - the nightly rates are a good 50% higher now than they were pre-covid. Portofino Bay and Hard Rock are running about $600/nite...

 

Trump fans never talk about covid. They assume the economy stopped in 2019 and that everything in 2020 that Trump presided over and he saddled Biden’s administration with doesn’t count.

Regardless, when you adjust for covid Biden’s job growth exceeded Trumps. Trump’s economy wasn’t a disaster on every metric before covid but neither was it some nirvana. He drove deficits way up, never got a 3% growth which he promised 4-6%, never changed the employment trend, didn’t eliminate debt in 8 years, never addressed infrastructure or healthcare or the border.