For all of you doom and gloomers

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

the Dow, S&P 500, and the NASDAQ are all in record territory. Record high territory.

I want to once again remind you that the markets periodically set new highs, but for all practical purposes, they never set new lows.

I realize the trading day isn't over yet.

[watoos]

1. 25% of working class Americans are invested in the stock market.

[uponit7771]

2. How does this benefit working Americans? tia

[ck4829]

13. Well you gotta remember, the Dow's arbitrary numbers are important. Human needs of food and water?

Not so much.

[watoos]

3. Crude oil is $66.23,

when it hits $80 it will be like another tax on working Americans.

Gasoline here in central Pa. is $3 gallon and rising.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

4. If you have a 401k you probably have money in the market.

People here just love to declare that the market is going to crash, and they seem happy to think that those of us who saved and invested will be wiped out.

[Awsi Dooger]

6. I'm glad I never listen to the stock market gloom and doom crew here

When I joined this site in 2002 there were anti-Apple threads on a regular basis. In particular, one user with a frog-based name would bombard every one of those threads and insist that Apple and its stock were doomed. His reasoning: Apple desktops were retailing for several hundred dollars higher than comparable PC desktops. He would actually rattle off specs of model after model and insist there was no way Apple could overcome it.

I couldn't stop laughing. Talk about whiffing the big picture completely via obsession over day to day details. I kept telling him I had no idea what Steve Jobs had in mind, but it was going to be huge, and more than obliterate any cost variance between desktops.

I switched to this Apple avatar solely as daily reminder to that guy where I stood on the matter.

Within the past year there were assertions here that the market would be down to 8000 or thereabouts by now.

We need the economy to derail by mid 2020 to hurt Trump's chances. But I'm not going to fearfully bail out as if it is likely. If it happens my positions will take a big hit for a while.

Granted, I'm a gambler so this stuff doesn't bother me. Last week my biotech stocks lost more than 4% in one day. Wow. Meanwhile I've had sports betting days where I lost almost everything I wagered on.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

9. I know.

It's actually quite bizarre to me that so many here take great glee in every minor drop in the stock market, and piously point out that either they have never had any money at all in the market (clearly no savings of any kind) or that they wisely took everything out at some point.

Timing the market is a fool's game, and many here claim to be able to do so. Time in the market is what matters.

Okay, so you may not want to be 100% in stocks at any given time, but have they looked at what things like bonds are paying? It never even keeps up with inflation.

[Skittles]

14. we need the economy to derail?

um.....no - Trump is a colossal fuckup no matter how the economy is doing

[watoos]

5. Why wouldn't the market be up?

Trump gave corporations and the rich 1.5 trillion dollars we didn’t have and he cut their taxes forever, no expiration date.
The market is up because it was artificially stimulated.
Your 401k only matters when you get to take something out of it.

[Awsi Dooger]

7. AT&T just dropped NFL Network from Uverse despite $20 billion tax break from Trump

There are examples like this all over the place. Pure corporate greed.

https://www.cordcuttersnews.com/directv-now-u-verse-tv-are-dropping-the-nfl-network-on-all-new-grandfathered-package/

https://boingboing.net/2019/01/08/the-best-deals.html

"The same year that Trump's FCC Chairman Ajit Pai killed broadband privacy and cheated Network Neutrality to death, the Trump tax plan delivered a $20B windfall to AT&T -- both Trump and Pai claimed that the measures would stimulate the economy and trickle down to the rest of us.

Now, AT&T is saying thank you to America by prepping mass layoffs in ten of its operational hubs in New York, California, Texas, New Jersey, Washington State, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Missouri, and Washington, DC. They've also cut investment in broadband rollout.

Despite some saber-rattling, Trump also let AT&T merge with Time-Warner.

The billions Trump gave to AT&T are being used for stock-buybacks, executive compensation, and paying off debts from previous ill-advised mergers."

[sarcasmo]

19. New deal with Amazon and the NFL is the rumor.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

10. And if you invest steadily in your 401k

you will be surprised at how good it is when you do start taking money out.

The market is not being artificially stimulated. Earnings are up for many companies. Not just because of a tax break.

[LexVegas]

8. There is a certain amount of glee here when the market goes down. I have never understood it. nt

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

11. Yes. And a certain amount of pride in having

taken everything out of the market back when Trump was elected, or more recently, right before last year's drop. I remember lots of posts here where people were in a total panic, thinking that the market would crash down to some ridiculous place and never recover.

Meanwhile, I'm steadily taking out about 4% (just a little less) from my investments each month, and I have more money than ever before.

[panader0]

12. 90% of stocks are owned by the top 10%.

It's a rich man's game. Most rich people are R's.

[meadowlander]

15. Why get excited about yet another bubble market?

It's not like I have anything to invest since I'm still trying to recover financially from the 2008 crash.

And it's not like Congress has done anything to fix any of the issues that caused the last crash.

The only thing a roaring stock market does is solidify support for Trump since his clueless base think that's the only measurement of what a "wonderful" job he's doing. And it's all on the back of a deregulation spree which is harming the environment just as we approach the critical moment for climate change action and removing health and safety protections for average Americans.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

16. Given that the Dow is more than triple what it was

at the bottom of that crash, it's kind of hard to imagine why you're still trying to recover.

I realize that I don't know your personal situation, and perhaps you lost a business, lost a home, any one of a number of other things. But stocks? That's what I'm talking about in this thread. The basic rule about being diversified is incredibly important.

I was hurt financially in the dot com bubble because I foolishly was over invested in tech stocks. I learned my lesson then and while yes, the value of my portfolio dropped in '08, it wasn't a precipitous drop, and I've long since recovered financially.

Time in the market.

[meadowlander]

18. Again, if you don't have any capital to invest

then the Dow tripling is irrelevant.

I lost my job, couldn't get another one for four years, was never able to afford a home until last year and have never made enough income, after my massive student loan payments, to be able to invest anything in the market. And I'm hardly alone. 46% of Americans have no money to invest, 70% can't cover a $1000 emergency, 20% have no retirement savings.

Is it really that hard to understand that where you end up with respect to the market has a lot to do with where you're starting from (i.e. 0x3=0)?

I don't sit around gleefully waiting for news that the stock market is going down because then we'll score political points but I don't pretend that the stock market going up is a sign that the broader economy is doing well or that the majority of Americans are better off than they were five years ago.

And again, "unlimited growth" is a delusion in the context of finite natural resources which we are quickly burning through. Trump opened up the spigot a little wider by deregulating the extraction industries and taking money that we should have been spending on green infrastructure and giving a massive tax break to corporations that didn't need it. That's what's driving the current bubble. Hooray!

So feel free to gloat all you want about how successful your personal portfolio has been. I don't see any good news here.

[Joe941]

17. The stock market should be separated from politics...

Stocks go up under repukes and democratic presidents - they also go down. Trying to pin blame for down swings or take credit for upswings is a losing game because you can't blame downs without giving credit on upticks. BTW the stock market is for the rich and what we really need is socialism and stick it to the rich. There should be no such thing as millionaires in America.

[librechik]

20. Oh joy. The rich got a lot richer.

call me when they do something helpful with their money.

[former9thward]

21. Who do you think funds countless foundations?

A lot of which do good work.

[ck4829]

22. Sorry, gotta revisit this. Some good that record high territory is doing us now

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

23. I like to say that periodically

the Dow makes new highs.

It never makes new lows. Right now it is still higher than it was when Trump was elected. Yeah that could change, but I'm still fine with the long term.