Markets stage one of worst Christmas Eves ever, closing down more than 600 points

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Washington Post

The Dow Jones industrial average followed its worst week in a decade with a 650- point drop Monday, and President Trump once again took to Twitter to interject himself into financial markets.

As blue chips sank even deeper into the red after weeks of chaos, Trump tried to assign sole blame for the sell-off to the Federal Reserve, likening the central bank to a golfer who “can’t putt.” “The only problem our economy has is the Fed,” the president said in a tweet. “They don’t have a feel for the Market, they don’t understand necessary Trade Wars or Strong Dollars or even Democrat Shutdowns over Borders. The Fed is like a powerful golfer who can’t score because he has no touch — he can’t putt!

Monday’s decline comes amid a federal government shutdown and repeated attempts by Trump and members of his administration to steady nervous markets, including weekend phone calls to major U.S. banks from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

The three major indexes are down for the fourth consecutive session, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite that was key to the current bull market resides in bear territory. A bear market is 20 percent off recent highs. The Nasdaq was down 1.9 percent in late trading. The S&P was in a bear market, down 20 percent, and the S&P 500 closed at 2,351. All 11 sectors of the S&P were down.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/us-markets-continue-sharp-sell-off-ignoring-efforts-by-the-trump-administration-to-stabilize-stock-prices/2018/12/24/59d4eae8-078e-11e9-85b6-41c0fe0c5b8f_story.html

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Full headline: Markets stage one of worst Christmas Eves ever, closing down more than 600 points as Trump blames Fed for stock losses in a tweet

[Achilleaze]

1. republicans have made a big stinking mess of things

as honest people everywhere recognize

[Ccarmona]

2. Deflection and Projection

It’s Individual-1’s fault. No one needs to look any further. But, he can never accept blame for ANYTHING because he’s an ignorant narcissistic asshole, so today the Fed.

[workinclasszero]

3. Just keep spewing idiocy on Twitter, Shitler

That's really going to turn around Wall Street you ****ing moron!

[SWBTATTReg]

4. I hope that this drags down real estate prices (commercial) so rump is squarely hit bigly! nt

[BumRushDaShow]

9. Well one thing - gasoline prices are down

Was out earlier today and a station that I usually go to was down to $2.59/gal which ain't bad for the immediate Philly metro area (where PA has the highest gas tax of any state in the country).

[sinkingfeeling]

10. Ours is $1.80.

[SWBTATTReg]

11. Yes, at least we're getting a break here on gas prices...ours has been running in $1.8x price per...

gal. Amazing and thought I would never see these kind of prices again.

[BumRushDaShow]

16. Ha! I wish.

I haven't seen below $2 around here in what has to be well over 10 years. I remember back in the '90s whining when I was paying $1.69 for high test where other places it was $1.30.

[womanofthehills]

58. I'm in a rural town in NM and our gas prices are usually 20 cents a gal higher than Albuquerque

Yesterday it was $1.88 in the middle of nowhere NM.

[Hekate]

17. I wish you non-californians would stop bragging. Ours is still around $3.50.

Of course we voted for Jerry Brown for a reason, but still no reason to rub our noses in it.
grumblemumble

[BumRushDaShow]

19. PA has the highest gasoline tax in the country

More than California!



https://taxfoundation.org/state-gas-tax-rates-july-2018/

[Hekate]

28. Well, that is some comfort. Where the H these DUers live who are getting gas practically free?

I jest, I jest.

[BumRushDaShow]

31. Jersey used to be way cheaper than PA

so people figured they could roll over there from PA to buy gas... except mysteriously ( ), the tolls on the main bridges came out to be almost the difference in gas price once you got there. Now Jersey just upped their gasoline tax big time so it's moot anyway.

But at least they are using it to fix the roads/bridges to supplement the federal highway funds. Plus it finally provided a dedicated funding source for the Philly & Pittsburgh mass transit systems.

[skydive forever]

39. Florida

Just paid $2.04.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

57. Washington state is number 3

That explains a lot. Gas prices are a hair below 3 dollars a gallon in my area.

[Bengus81]

26. Gas prices are down until spring when they'll go screaming upward....

This won't last,it's all a rigged market and never stays down long.

[BumRushDaShow]

27. Yeah that was the WH failed attempt at "low gas prices before the midterms!!11!" trick.

(despite the fact that prices normally go down when they switch to the winter blend)

[OnlinePoker]

63. They say our gas gets cheaper because of the switch to "winter blends". n/t

[paleotn]

44. Speculators are tripping over themselves running for the exits...

due to a global economic downturn, partially caused by trade stupidity, coupled with overproduction. Pissing off the Saudis royally I bet. Putty probably isn't all that happy about it either. Oh what a tangled web they've weaved.

[BumRushDaShow]

48. The initial overproduction by OPEC - primarily Saudi - was as a "favor"

for the WH deep-sixing the Khashoggi murder and for the election, but it came too late to make any difference in the election and is now backfiring on all the oil countries (including us with the shale oil).

[paleotn]

61. Yep. The frackers are in an even more difficult position

Not only do they need oil above a certain price to make it pay, but interest rates are going up. Tough time to have to roll over those low interest loans they took out a few years ago.

[OnlinePoker]

62. Here in Victoria, BC, we're paying the equivalent of $3.69 a U.S. gallon. n/t

[BumRushDaShow]

64. I think you guys also have a (good-sized) VAT though.

[OnlinePoker]

65. That includes all taxes and fees. n/t

[BumRushDaShow]

66. Right!

[Stonepounder]

5. Well obviously it is Chuck and Nancy's fault.

Our President has a greater understanding of economics and how markets work than anyone, even greater than Adam Smith. Obviously the C&N Cabal is in cahoots with the Fed just to make Our Glorious Orange Orangatang look bad.

[SCantiGOP]

21. So, do I blame Chuck&Nancy or the Fed

For the fact that I don’t have several million dollars in the bank. It’s certsinly not my fault.

[jmowreader]

56. Except for the casino market, the water market, the meat market and the vodka market

[Iliyah]

6. Ugh

shithole said that the shutdown money should or would go for the wall. How fucked up is that. This man does not care about the USA nor her citizens.

[PSPS]

7. You'd think the moneyed class would have had enough by now and given the crook the hook.

[Texin]

20. I believe thy are fed up with his incompetence.

As long as the economy was clicking and the markets were soaring, they were able to suck up his moronic toddler tweets and outrageous behavior, but his disastrous trade policy and now the shutdown have left him nothing to hide behind. There are consequences to every policy decision a POTUS makes that affects the economy, and the effects are just beginning to emerge. And bonus points: right before Christmas. In the same week he shut the government down he topped that by pulling a Syrian troop pullout out of his ass, leaving the Kurds to genocide and the US more vulnerable to Isis-fed terror attacks here and throughout the Middle East.

Bullshitters like tRump can spew their bullshit all they want and get by with it for the most part most of the time, but the cumulative effects of their moronic decisions begin to surface inevitably, and when that begins to happen, they've got no cover and no clue. We all begin to know we're as fucked as he is. I believe these moneyed donor class folks are going to not only abandon ship, they're going start telling their politicians to have him keel-hauled.

[MarcA]

46. Plus most of the Intelligence Agencies and the Military n/t

[not fooled]

23. They're all short

they'll make money on the way down.


donnie is getting into hoover territory.

[Throck]

8. My $401K is down a whole $1.64

Stock market don't mean a rats ass when you're poor. Thank God for deposit bottles and cans. Drink more and fund my retirement.

[workinclasszero]

32. I feel ya

My piddly 401 was killed off back in Bush's Great Recession.

So I'm in the work till you drop dead retirement category.

[C_U_L8R]

12. I got a lump of Trump in my stocking

and it sure does stink

[dalton99a]

13. Thanks, Obama

And the Deep State on Wall Street

[akraven]

14. From $2.89 to $3.15 -

despite a pipeline, they always keep it high and not any independent stations, all corporate.

[ZeroSomeBrains]

15. This economy is sinkin like the Titanic

And I wouldn't expect it to come back anytime soon. I'm thinking we're gonna go to somewhere around 10 to 12.5 k on the DOW. You can't fight the downward sloping yield curve.

[BumRushDaShow]

18. I don't think it is going to go down that far

They still have some piece of Dodd-Frank in place and do stress testing, although they keep chipping away at Dodd-Frank.

It might head towards what it was in 2017, which was ~19,000 I think, back when he first got into office. Right now though, it is coming off a record high back in October of about 26,000. I believe in 1987, that crash was 25% in one day. The Great Recession was 55% between fall 2007 (from 14,164 high) and spring 2009 (~6443 low).

[progree]

24. S&P 500 closed 3.8% above the last close before inauguration day

3.8% over 23 months or roughly 1.9%/year. But should add 1.7% or so dividend yield to that, so 3.6%/year. That could easily disappear in a couple more trading days.

[BumRushDaShow]

29. Yeah, a couple days like this and the Dow will be in bear territory too.

It's about 330 points away.

[ZeroSomeBrains]

37. We'll see

The issue is that a lot of the gains was artificial with these stock buy-backs and inflation-adjusted wages have been stagnant for 40 years. There's a shutdown where Drumpf seems to have no care for the workers that are employed by the federal government. These people have paychecks and the longer they don't have them the harder it will be for the economy.

There's also the tariffs which is killing most everything either directly or indirectly. It is not like China or some of the other countries that we are fighting in this will trust us even if Congress tries to change course. I may be wrong but there's a lot of areas of concern that may create another great recession.

[BumRushDaShow]

45. I wrote similar here

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142229893#post33

That 26,000 was basically fake (artificial) and now it is trying to find the true valuation.

[Bengus81]

25. The DOW was 19,830.40 at noon the day Trump took office.....

It could easily hit that number again and erase any gains under this fuck. Him and his buddies will swoop in and buy millions of shares at cheap prices and make tens of millions when the markets recover.

[BumRushDaShow]

33. You have about 1 week to lose about 2000 points, with 2 holidays and another shortened day

For some reason, I am thinking that the big boys might try to keep a "psychological barrier" from falling and will try to keep it at just above that 19,000.

The last go-around, you had the housing market completely collapse but right now, that market has been recovering so other than them having apparently gone back to the CDOs, swaps, slicing and dicing and other weasley stuff, the base of the system doesn't seem as bad as 2007 in that respect. What is bad is the trade situation, and that may come home to roost in 2019 in the commodities.

To me, it's more that the entirety of 2017 and much of 2018, was a fake run-up of the market and it was way way overvalued, and it is now correcting from that.

[Bengus81]

43. Correct...the runup was FAKE as hell but many peeps on this board

kept reminding me with post after post how small those Trump DOW crashes were back last Feb/March/April etc,etc and what the DOW was then....as if it could NEVER hit the same price as when Trump took office.


Wonder where they are now??

[BumRushDaShow]

49. Guess no one really knew what would be the trigger

But it could also be that so many things SHOULD HAVE BEEN the trigger that no one could not decide on what would be that last straw!

OTOH, the election (and strength of it by Democrats) may also have been a trigger for them realizing that oversight is on the horizon after having had none for the past 2 years!

[elmac]

36. Yep, the housing crash, banking collapse redux hasn't even happened yet so could be 8 to 10K

and there will be no more bailouts for anything but the wall street banksters.

[ZeroSomeBrains]

40. Bailouts are only for the rich

The rest of us have to pay for their mistakes. There will be a lot of pain and suffering and people living in their cars again unfortunately. I shutter to think of the children who will go hungry and have their futures ruined.

[BumRushDaShow]

50. Sonny Perdue's USDA already kick-started that starvation policy for SNAP.

[Hugin]

22. Pretty wide sell off, too.

Everything, and I do mean everything... With the exception of Facebook (for some odd reason), lost between 2 and 7% with a median of around 5%.



MERRY SECOND TRUMP CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY!

Wooboy!

[The Liberal Lion]

30. I love how that orange freakshow says "Democrat Shutdowns over Borders"

as if we don't have the tape of that arrogant asshole proudly stating that he would own any shutdown. Teddy, please roll the tape:

?t=896

[underpants]

34. All he can think about is his putts

He REALLY hates having to stay in the White House and not being in Mar a lago

[lunatica]

41. So there is a modicum of cheer for Christmas after all!

I do hope they have a terrible Christmas. I just can’t pretend otherwise. Why should everyone else suffer because of him and not him.

He is so due for karmic adjustments! May 2019 visit a deluge of them to him and his family.

[OKNancy]

35. I'm living on Social Security and an Individual IRA

I put money in (was self employed) and hoped it would last a little while. Unfortunately we had to dip into the IRA for medical bills and my husband's inability to work when he was sick. My husband died of cancer in Nov. 2107. So there is not very much left. However I think enough to last two or three years. Then I'll have to go live with my daughter. I'm scared to even look at the balance this evening when it is posted.

I want to add that I get really pissed when people here on DU cheer for bad news in the market. I did the responsible thing. Lived a very frugal life. OK, that's all. Stopping before I write something hateful.

Merry Friggin' Christmas

[lunatica]

47. I hear you! I had to use what I had accrued

to take care of my mother when she became bedridden and got Dementia. When I was able to go back to work I accrued on my 401k enough to pay for my transition into downsizing for retirement. I live solely on social security and my pension. I have nothing in the stock market. But at least the income I have is guaranteed for the rest of my life.

My income has plummeted by thousands of dollars a year. But I consider myself well off compared to others.

[MarcA]

38. He acts like a despot/dictator just before they're removed by some means n/t

[ananda]

42. The Reeps have overshot themselves.

NORFOLK

Be advised;
Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot
That it do singe yourself: we may outrun,
By violent swiftness, that which we run at,
And lose by over-running. Know you not,
The fire that mounts the liquor til run o'er,
In seeming to augment it wastes it?

Henry VIII, Act I, Scene 1

[wishstar]

51. WP headline should have said it is THE worst Christmas Eve stock plunge ever

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-sp-500-is-on-the-verge-of-tumbling-by-the-most-it-has-ever-fallen-on-christmas-eve-2018-12-24

The market has NEVER dropped more than 1% on Christmas Eve before. Worst previous day before Christmas was in 1933, but that was not as steep as today's plunge.

[paleotn]

52. One word...stability. Or lack there of is the problem.

No one knows what this crazy asshole will do next. He doesn't know himself. Who wouldn't start moving their money to relatively safer assets? How can you plan one day without fear this jackass won't come up with something insane the next, blowing up your investment strategy?

[W T F]

53. Now that Trump has gutted Dodd Frank, the Banks are next in line to fail....Again

The only safe place for your money these days is under your mattress. Thanks Republicans!

[iluvtennis]

54. Trump owns this stock market drop with all of the uncertainty he has injected into the US and world

Gov't shutdown, pulling out of Syria, pulling out of Afghanistan, tariffs, etc.. He owns this hot mess.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

55. Assholes

As someone who's semi-retired I've really been taking some hits.

[RussBLib]

59. Talking heads on CNBC seem to be bending over

Backward to not blame Trump, but this is all Trump.

I can't help but think Trump et al are shorting the market

[humbled_opinion]

60. GOP new spin

Markets collapse coincides with electing Democrat controlled House....

[ck4829]

67. Kick