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Personal take: A subset of "Main Street" is unhealthy not the entire country. Most things are not closed anymore and the stock market is propped up by tech stoc

by belval 6y ago

Personal take: A subset of "Main Street" is unhealthy not the entire country. Most things are not closed anymore and the stock market is propped up by tech stocks that saw little slow down due to COVID. It's weird situation because I'd be willing to bet that the people who own stocks are simply not the one that have been laid off.

wccrawford 6y ago
And if all businesses are hit by hard economic times, should all stocks go down? Wouldn't that mean that people are selling stocks and not buying other stocks? I don't think modern investors just don't-buy-stocks unless they need the money for something else. They invest in something. And if everything is doing poorly, that means the market doesn't change.
- JamesSwift 6y ago
  They either keep the money as cash, so that they can buy stocks when the market gets even lower, or they buy alternatives like gold.
- ry_co 6y ago
  I wouldn't assume everything is doing poorly. There are big winners and big losers in this economy, and the S&P 500 happens to be constituted primarily of the winners. Almost anything digital right now is gold. There's also the fact that many companies that are doing well right now are keeping quiet about it. I know from personal experience at the company I work for (fintech midsized startup) that executives are very careful not to be openly positive about benefiting from the pandemic. Publicly admitting that you profitted by a global pandemic and an economic recession is in poor taste, and companies are rightly tentative about doing so. From my work I've seen anything adtech related explode. Publishers or aggregators whose primary revenue stream is online advertising income are growing at incredible rates. Assuming that everyone is hurting because physical businesses are hurting is a huge mistake. Additionally, as many analysts have been saying, the pandemics primary effect so far has been to accelerate existing trends, not create new ones. We're seeing a fast-foward in economic transition. Companies that were well positioned before the pandemic for the economy of the future (automation, digital) are doing swimmingly.

by belval 6y ago

wccrawford 6y ago

And if all businesses are hit by hard economic times, should all stocks go down? Wouldn't that mean that people are selling stocks and not buying other stocks? I don't think modern investors just don't-buy-stocks unless they need the money for something else. They invest in something. And if everything is doing poorly, that means the market doesn't change.

JamesSwift 6y ago
They either keep the money as cash, so that they can buy stocks when the market gets even lower, or they buy alternatives like gold.
ry_co 6y ago
I wouldn't assume everything is doing poorly. There are big winners and big losers in this economy, and the S&P 500 happens to be constituted primarily of the winners. Almost anything digital right now is gold. There's also the fact that many companies that are doing well right now are keeping quiet about it. I know from personal experience at the company I work for (fintech midsized startup) that executives are very careful not to be openly positive about benefiting from the pandemic. Publicly admitting that you profitted by a global pandemic and an economic recession is in poor taste, and companies are rightly tentative about doing so. From my work I've seen anything adtech related explode. Publishers or aggregators whose primary revenue stream is online advertising income are growing at incredible rates. Assuming that everyone is hurting because physical businesses are hurting is a huge mistake. Additionally, as many analysts have been saying, the pandemics primary effect so far has been to accelerate existing trends, not create new ones. We're seeing a fast-foward in economic transition. Companies that were well positioned before the pandemic for the economy of the future (automation, digital) are doing swimmingly.