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I've stopped assuming that the stock market has any real meaning. Last week a Danish newspaper reported on how amazing the market was doing, breaking records an

I've stopped assuming that the stock market has any real meaning. Last week a Danish newspaper reported on how amazing the market was doing, breaking records and all that jazz. Then this morning: "Carnage", "Global collapse". If the economy can change that much over the weekend, then the traders, stockbrokers, Wall Street, whoever, is doing a pretty poor job at pricing companies. Two years ago: Oh no, the housing market is collapsing, interest rates will force people to sell their homes. Nine months later, after a slight slowdown in sales and everything is back doing better than before... Back to being massively overvalued. The financial markets are absolute bullshit.

bamboozled 2y ago
I feel similar, in three weeks it will probably have fully "Recovered"
- bugbuddy 2y ago
  I think you are a genius. You should try buying some call options on the QQQ! That’s a money maker if you’re right.
  - bamboozled 2y ago
    Do you think it won't recover? I would for certain buy today if I had some more spare cash lying around.
    - nemo44x 2y ago
      Of course it will. But it’s impossible to know if it’s 3 weeks, 3 months, or 3 years. Hence why options are tricky - you need to be right about direction and time.
      - bamboozled 2y ago
        I never spoke about options. I just no for sure that some time soon it will be all good no matter how "catastrophic" it's reported to be.
        nemo44x 2y ago
        When is “soon”? Timing the market is hard if not impossible.
        bamboozled 2y ago
        Who said I want to time the market, I'd just buy now and I know i'll make money later.
        bamboozled 2y ago
        It's up 10% again today :)
        johnnyanmac 2y ago
        Market usually trends upward if looking on the scale of years, decades. investors can work off that. The people who barely get by paycheck to paycheck are devastated.
jcfrei 2y ago
> If the economy can change that much over the weekend, then the traders, stockbrokers, Wall Street, whoever, is doing a pretty poor job at pricing companies. The opposite is true, if they didn't move much within a short period of time then the market would likely not be very efficient. The inefficient part is all the rest, labour markets taking time to adjust, governments changing policies, central banks injecting / removing liquidity. Things change fast in the real world all the time - markets are just usually the first to reflect it.
- mrweasel 2y ago
  > markets are just usually the first to reflect it. Maybe, but they have a history of overreacting to pretty much everything. Prices drop 10%+ in a day, without actually waiting to see if policy changes will be implemented. Frequently the market drops pretty massively, only to recover within a few weeks. I have a romanticised view of the stock market, where people invest long term, in companies they believe in. The real stock market will punish a company if it makes a decent profit, if that profit is less than someone guessed 12 months in advance. Maybe the stock market needs to move away from HFT and focus things 2 - 5 years into the future. Imagine if you could only sell stocks at the end of each quarter. Short term think hasn't exactly left us in a good place.
  - gpderetta 2y ago
    > Imagine if you could only sell stocks at the end of each quarter. how would you prevent people from doing that outside of the stock markets? Possibly on markets in other countries or with derived instruments? The only effect would be the loss of transparency.
GoToRO 2y ago
I think you misread the situation. People with money who can spend their time following the markets and the real news but also can pay other people to do this, found out earlier than the average person will, about the collapse. So they planned on selling at the highest price possible. To do this, they buy an article on a "newspaper", or maybe they own the newspapers, to tell the average person either to buy, or at least to not sell, because look "the markets are great!" There is a psychological effect, when you hear the same thing multiple times and even from different sources. People tend to believe it. The problem is that the many different newspapers are controlled by the same individual. Also when you meet your friends and talk about it, they will tell you the same story. And you tend to believe it, because they are your friends. But your friends probably have the same life like you do, so they read the same newspapers. So they shouldn't count as "another opinion".
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  Isn't this basically just insider trading, if not outright fraud? That sounds highly illegal.
  - Ekaros 2y ago
    Not insider trading, but market manipulation certainly. Though as everyone doing it is mostly big enough only those doing it on things like reddit have any chance at all to get charged. Insider trading would require some material knowledge specific to inside company. Taking a position and then getting others to take same position is not that.
whatevaa 2y ago
Stock markets are plagued by a lot speculation and manipulation. Those headlines there always silly.
TheAlchemist 2y ago
It depends how you look at it. As someone very wise once said - “In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run, it is a weighing machine.” Short term movements are mostly bullshit and the press tend to amplify it, obviously. Like this morning - "carnage" etc. What ? NVidia is trading at 96 as of now. Market cap of 2.5 TRILLION $, for a company that made a profit of 29 Billion $ in some exceptional circumstances. Previous best year was ~10 Billion $. After this morning 'collapse' Nasdaq is still ~10% up YTD. UP, not down ! In the long term the markets mostly make sense actually. But somehow, we are more interested by the short term drama.
- theGnuMe 2y ago
  nasdaq ain't open yet.. not sure what you are saying.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - TheAlchemist 2y ago
    Futures were opened and they reflect the indexes pretty well.
MrDresden 2y ago
If those markets include outsized volatile stocks, such as tech stocks, then yes the market will be volatile. Even with better than forcast revenue last quarter, Google dropped. With only around 7 stocks making up around 20% (or perhaps higher) of the S&P500, and all of those being fairly volatile tech stocks, that market has the very likely chance to be booming one week and not the next. Hedge your bets, choose different markets, spread the exposure.
- datavirtue 2y ago
  Anyone invested in mutual funds or pensions or ETFs has top line exposure to all those stocks.
  - throw0101d 2y ago
    > Anyone invested in mutual funds or pensions or ETFs has top line exposure to all those stocks. Anyone invested in a properly diversified portfolio/fund has exposure to all stocks.
datavirtue 2y ago
Stock market PLUNGED!!!! I don't even listen to media coverage of the economy or stock market anymore. Most of them failed that subject before they started and the small sliver that do know what they are talking about at all could have a vested interest in moving needles.
throw0101d 2y ago
> If the economy can change that much over the weekend, then the traders, stockbrokers, Wall Street, whoever, is doing a pretty poor job at pricing companies. One country invading another country can happen over a weekend. A bunch of terrorists / freedom fighters may do some action over a weekend. A bunch of investors (independent of each other) may decide to do a bunch of profit-taking and rebalancing over a weekend. New information and perceptions of old information can occur over a weekend (or a day, or an hour). > The financial markets are absolute bullshit. Market prices are thought to reflect the currently available information of companies and commodities, but—to paraphrase William Gibson—information is not evenly distributed. Hedge funds have been known to use satellites to get an information edge: * https://newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu/how-hedge-funds-use-satellite-images-to-beat-wall-street-and-main-street/ https://newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu/how-hedge-funds-use-satel... As new information becomes known, or 'old' information becomes more widely known, investors re-assess what they think things are worth. If it becomes (more) known that inflation has gone up/down, or unemployment has gone up/down, that has implications on what the economy is doing and will do in the future, what people ("consumers") will do, and how they will spend (if unemployment is rising, people may save more and spend less, lower revenues/profits, etc). Reality changes due to people's decisions, that impacts companies (and commodities), and that impacts how much a company may be 'worth' going forward.
cloverich 2y ago
> I've stopped assuming that the stock market has any real meaning Perhaps, or perhaps the media coverage is what lacks any real meaning. With 401k's and index funds, a substantial portion of the US and other countries populations are invested in the market passively, without having any real understanding of it. Hearing about the ups and downs will always be popular ways to sell attention, and the average person isn't well equipped to become meaningfully educated in market movements; until (/ if) the passive investing bubble pops, that will always be the case. I think even well intentioned, news media's coverage of the market will always be superficial with a hint of gloom and doom, because that's how we're all wired to greater and less degrees.

bamboozled 2y ago

I feel similar, in three weeks it will probably have fully "Recovered"

bugbuddy 2y ago
I think you are a genius. You should try buying some call options on the QQQ! That’s a money maker if you’re right.
- bamboozled 2y ago
  Do you think it won't recover? I would for certain buy today if I had some more spare cash lying around.
  - nemo44x 2y ago
    Of course it will. But it’s impossible to know if it’s 3 weeks, 3 months, or 3 years. Hence why options are tricky - you need to be right about direction and time.
    - bamboozled 2y ago
      I never spoke about options. I just no for sure that some time soon it will be all good no matter how "catastrophic" it's reported to be.
      - nemo44x 2y ago
        When is “soon”? Timing the market is hard if not impossible.
        bamboozled 2y ago
        Who said I want to time the market, I'd just buy now and I know i'll make money later.
        bamboozled 2y ago
        It's up 10% again today :)
      - johnnyanmac 2y ago
        Market usually trends upward if looking on the scale of years, decades. investors can work off that. The people who barely get by paycheck to paycheck are devastated.

jcfrei 2y ago

> If the economy can change that much over the weekend, then the traders, stockbrokers, Wall Street, whoever, is doing a pretty poor job at pricing companies. The opposite is true, if they didn't move much within a short period of time then the market would likely not be very efficient. The inefficient part is all the rest, labour markets taking time to adjust, governments changing policies, central banks injecting / removing liquidity. Things change fast in the real world all the time - markets are just usually the first to reflect it.

mrweasel 2y ago
> markets are just usually the first to reflect it. Maybe, but they have a history of overreacting to pretty much everything. Prices drop 10%+ in a day, without actually waiting to see if policy changes will be implemented. Frequently the market drops pretty massively, only to recover within a few weeks. I have a romanticised view of the stock market, where people invest long term, in companies they believe in. The real stock market will punish a company if it makes a decent profit, if that profit is less than someone guessed 12 months in advance. Maybe the stock market needs to move away from HFT and focus things 2 - 5 years into the future. Imagine if you could only sell stocks at the end of each quarter. Short term think hasn't exactly left us in a good place.
- gpderetta 2y ago
  > Imagine if you could only sell stocks at the end of each quarter. how would you prevent people from doing that outside of the stock markets? Possibly on markets in other countries or with derived instruments? The only effect would be the loss of transparency.

GoToRO 2y ago

I think you misread the situation. People with money who can spend their time following the markets and the real news but also can pay other people to do this, found out earlier than the average person will, about the collapse. So they planned on selling at the highest price possible. To do this, they buy an article on a "newspaper", or maybe they own the newspapers, to tell the average person either to buy, or at least to not sell, because look "the markets are great!" There is a psychological effect, when you hear the same thing multiple times and even from different sources. People tend to believe it. The problem is that the many different newspapers are controlled by the same individual. Also when you meet your friends and talk about it, they will tell you the same story. And you tend to believe it, because they are your friends. But your friends probably have the same life like you do, so they read the same newspapers. So they shouldn't count as "another opinion".

johnnyanmac 2y ago
Isn't this basically just insider trading, if not outright fraud? That sounds highly illegal.
- Ekaros 2y ago
  Not insider trading, but market manipulation certainly. Though as everyone doing it is mostly big enough only those doing it on things like reddit have any chance at all to get charged. Insider trading would require some material knowledge specific to inside company. Taking a position and then getting others to take same position is not that.

whatevaa 2y ago

Stock markets are plagued by a lot speculation and manipulation. Those headlines there always silly.

TheAlchemist 2y ago

It depends how you look at it. As someone very wise once said - “In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run, it is a weighing machine.” Short term movements are mostly bullshit and the press tend to amplify it, obviously. Like this morning - "carnage" etc. What ? NVidia is trading at 96 as of now. Market cap of 2.5 TRILLION $, for a company that made a profit of 29 Billion $ in some exceptional circumstances. Previous best year was ~10 Billion $. After this morning 'collapse' Nasdaq is still ~10% up YTD. UP, not down ! In the long term the markets mostly make sense actually. But somehow, we are more interested by the short term drama.

theGnuMe 2y ago
nasdaq ain't open yet.. not sure what you are saying.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- TheAlchemist 2y ago
  Futures were opened and they reflect the indexes pretty well.

MrDresden 2y ago

If those markets include outsized volatile stocks, such as tech stocks, then yes the market will be volatile. Even with better than forcast revenue last quarter, Google dropped. With only around 7 stocks making up around 20% (or perhaps higher) of the S&P500, and all of those being fairly volatile tech stocks, that market has the very likely chance to be booming one week and not the next. Hedge your bets, choose different markets, spread the exposure.

datavirtue 2y ago
Anyone invested in mutual funds or pensions or ETFs has top line exposure to all those stocks.
- throw0101d 2y ago
  > Anyone invested in mutual funds or pensions or ETFs has top line exposure to all those stocks. Anyone invested in a properly diversified portfolio/fund has exposure to all stocks.

datavirtue 2y ago

Stock market PLUNGED!!!! I don't even listen to media coverage of the economy or stock market anymore. Most of them failed that subject before they started and the small sliver that do know what they are talking about at all could have a vested interest in moving needles.

throw0101d 2y ago

> If the economy can change that much over the weekend, then the traders, stockbrokers, Wall Street, whoever, is doing a pretty poor job at pricing companies. One country invading another country can happen over a weekend. A bunch of terrorists / freedom fighters may do some action over a weekend. A bunch of investors (independent of each other) may decide to do a bunch of profit-taking and rebalancing over a weekend. New information and perceptions of old information can occur over a weekend (or a day, or an hour). > The financial markets are absolute bullshit. Market prices are thought to reflect the currently available information of companies and commodities, but—to paraphrase William Gibson—information is not evenly distributed. Hedge funds have been known to use satellites to get an information edge: * https://newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu/how-hedge-funds-use-satellite-images-to-beat-wall-street-and-main-street/ https://newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu/how-hedge-funds-use-satel... As new information becomes known, or 'old' information becomes more widely known, investors re-assess what they think things are worth. If it becomes (more) known that inflation has gone up/down, or unemployment has gone up/down, that has implications on what the economy is doing and will do in the future, what people ("consumers") will do, and how they will spend (if unemployment is rising, people may save more and spend less, lower revenues/profits, etc). Reality changes due to people's decisions, that impacts companies (and commodities), and that impacts how much a company may be 'worth' going forward.

cloverich 2y ago

> I've stopped assuming that the stock market has any real meaning Perhaps, or perhaps the media coverage is what lacks any real meaning. With 401k's and index funds, a substantial portion of the US and other countries populations are invested in the market passively, without having any real understanding of it. Hearing about the ups and downs will always be popular ways to sell attention, and the average person isn't well equipped to become meaningfully educated in market movements; until (/ if) the passive investing bubble pops, that will always be the case. I think even well intentioned, news media's coverage of the market will always be superficial with a hint of gloom and doom, because that's how we're all wired to greater and less degrees.