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Okay, here’s my conspiracy theory…
Now let’s say you’re Trump and the supreme Court has said it’s just about impossible to convict somebody of corruption in the US. You see that you’re going to be elected president and your goal is to figure out how to make a crap ton of money off being present. Now you can do the boring old s make dignitaries stay at your hotel thing or have foreign governments. Give Jared kushner a bunch of money… But that’s all pocket change. If you’re president, you can crash the economy. If you know a bunch of Rich Russian oligarchs who can short the market and you can tell them exactly when the market will crash then they can make billions… And you can get your cut too.
This is why Trump doesn’t really give a shit why the tariffs are in place. That’s why he makes up bullshit answers when asked why the tariffs are implemented. He doesn’t care. … But he really really really wants to yank the market around. First he says tariffs happening, then he says they’re not, then they’re happening again. Every time the market goes up and down he can make a shit ton of money if he can accurately predict when it goes up or down.
I can’t get this idea out of my head. It makes more sense than anything else I can come up with. There’s so much money to be made if you have the power to yank around the u.s. economy and enough narcissism to not give a shit about the people hurt in the process.
Yeah, I think it’s either this, or the tariffs are extortion (announce tariffs, then solicit bribes from businesses and politicians). Could be both as well.
That was my idea. These jarring and quickly implemented money drainers only really help ppl outside the market.
Exactly what I have been thinking. I should have scrolled down and read your comment before I made mine
What I’m wondering when reading such theories is: does money matter all that much to these people? Like when you’re 80+ years old and a billionaire I don’t see what the end game there is, unless it’s just an uncle Scrooge attitude but I still find it a bit hard to believe. I think that in order to become a billionaire you need to be seriously driven by something more than 0s - maybe power, influence or attention.
Logically you would think the answer should be that money shouldn’t matter much, but it always seems to. It’s still a way of keeping score and a proxy for power. They’ve always longed for more money/power and as they get older and their brain slows down, they don’t suddenly change. What old billionaire have you seen says “you know what? I’m going to give everyone raises! I don’t need more money! We should all be happy together!” (Almost) never happens. They want more and more and more… and then they die.
Bill Gates seems to be like that. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like him and he’s still doing lots of shitty billionaire stuff, but he seems to be satisfied with “just” being a billionaire and making sure his offspring will be billionaires as well and giving away a lot of the money he will never be able to spend on his own anyway. Same goes for George Soros and Warren Buffet.
Didn’t know that. Fixed
He’s still leaving enough for buying eggs ;-)
They’re just tryna nut. It’s the only way they still can
You’ve got to step back a little to understand.
The key thing is that it is not possible (excluding inheritance) to become a billionaire without being a scheming psychopathic cut-throat selfish person and having a determined drive to have power over others.
The second key is it’s not possible to keep your billions without being a psychopath. This because you could never possibly spend that money in your lifetime and the only way to have accumulated it is through exploitation of labour.
So it’s a thing you don’t need that you got via abusing others. They want power and they don’t care how they get it. They have no plan beyond that. Personally I think it’s mental health issues and the fact that we allow this in our flawed system.
it’s not just allowed it’s encouraged, in fact i’d go as far as to say it’s the only way to “win” in this system
It’s not wealth hoarding, it’s wealth OBSTRUCTION as a means to control everyone. It’s pathological fo sho.
I like the little hopeful bump before the inauguration.
Still no idea why it happened, but it was a nice little bonus when I sold off all my positions before he came to power.
That’s not a bump. It’s in line with the rest of the world.
Yes, a bump in the world markets. On US news. A trend I hope we see less of in the future.
Any Americans tired of winning yet?
So very much
I am so tired of winning, I’d love alternatives.
Denmark, if you’re listening… I have an idea.
I can’t handle being any greater.
Maybe they should try more tariffs. More tariffs will fix it definitely.
We just need to hawk more $100k Teslas from the White House. …what a fucking embarrassment.
Yo dawg, I heard you like tarrifs…
Too much trade between the states. We need to rip up the Interstate Commerce Clause
Side note, why do people seem to struggle so much with the spelling of the word “tariff”? We’ve seen it so many times yet so many people get it wrong.
Hmm
Maybe easy to pronounce as “tear riff“ which would lend itself to the double R
Not really a side note, this is just the tip of the “American stupidity and overconfidence that got us here” iceberg.
Here in the US, I transfered most of my 403(b) investments into European, Asian, and “emerging market” funds, so I’m happy to be doing my part.
Same, babe. Sold all my iShares and Vanguard ETFs and moved into BMO emerging markets, Euro, and Canadian funds.
I still need to look into my employer group pension account. I don’t know how much control I actually have over that.
any guidance or resources for an idiot who would like to explore that?
If you have a 401(k) or 403(b) through your employer, your employer should be partnered with an investment firm to manage it (e.g. T Rowe Price, Prudential, or Transamerica). You need to figure out which company you’ve got and log in to your account. Ask your HR dept if you can’t figure it out.
That firm will automatically choose where to invest your money unless you log in to your account on their website and tell them where you want it invested.
Most investment firms will offer a limited selection of mutual funds with a variety of objectives. They usually link to each prospectus right there on the site, and the prospectus often has a pie chart telling you where a fund’s investments are located (US, Europe, Asia, etc). It will also list their performance over time, expense ratios, and other useful info, like whether they invest in large vs small cap businesses and their largest individual holdings.
You want to change both where your current investments are allocated and where your future contributions will be allocated.
You also want to try to find funds with low expense ratios (I try to stay below 0.10% unless it’s a fund I really like and am willing to make an exception for). Anything titled “index fund” is likely to be low. Your money is almost guaranteed to be automatically invested in funds with high expense ratios, cutting into your long-term growth, because the investment firm makes big bucks giving your money to people who aren’t wise with it.
If you want to get serious, you can even set up a personal choice account where you can totally independently decide where to invest your money, even in individual stocks. This comes with significant risk and is not a great idea for laypeople like you or I.
Thank you for the very thoughtful response, I will hopefully get a plan together
Fuck, that’s a good idea.
Thank you.
I did the same with my IRA. I was in VOO but moved to VGK and some short term bonds. So far I’ve saved myself a good amount of money.
Note the vertical axis does not start at 0.
It appears to be representing percent change from the close of the preceding period, so 100% isn’t a totally unjustifiable axis.
It’s starting at a reasonable point for the data shown, I’m not sure what your point is. Do you think this graph would be more readable if you had 80% of the vertical axis as wasted space so the graph could show nothing from 0 to 95?
I don’t care too much for my personal view because I think I can read the chart well. I met several people in my life that would misunderstand a chart if it would not show the axis starting at 0. I don’t consider the space a waste. I consider it an indication that the shown value is less of an effect than it would indicate if the chart is zoomed in.
To be completely honest, I just wanted to test that commenting on a thread on other lemmy instance from my new lemmy instance works.
To be completely honest, I just wanted to test that commenting on a thread on other lemmy instance from my new lemmy instance works.
LOL. Support. Good luck with your instance.
I don’t think this was done deceptively. Most financial graphs like this don’t start at 0.
And?
And nothing, sorry if i implied anything. I just wanted to point it out. I appologise. This was my first comment on lemmy.
No need to apologise, mate, all good. 👍
I was wondering what point you were trying to make.
Tbh Wall Street can fuckin off. They helped create this mess. If this ship is going down, let’s make sure none of the assholes find a seat on a life boat.
All of everyone’s retirement accounts are invested in the market. So it’s not just those assholes who get fucked by this.
How much of retirement accounts represent in % for the overall stock market?
Assuming that all of the equities held by the bottom 99% are invested in retirement accounts, it would be 50.1% of the market. [https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/table/#quarter:140;series:Corporate equities and mutual fund shares;demographic:networth;population:all;units:shares]
Not much, but the peecent of people who have their money in stocks for retirement is high.
Lucky me, I don’t have any retirement investments!
In fact, those assholes will be fine. WE won’t.
and the only way to turn it around is a lot of angry people with guillotines
Maybe it will force Americans to do something against that? If no one has any retirement, there’s bound to be a lot of public outcry. There’s nothing to lose if you have nothing.
I switched to cash last week.
All of everyone’s retirement accounts are invested in the market.
Americans not willing to recognize that Social Security exists is such a fucking capitalist vibe
Social security is not enough to live off of. Is projected to be unobtainable for future generations who are paying into it, and is currently on the chopping block
If the billionaires actually paid their share into it, it would be fine…
Yes.
Social security is not enough to live off of.
Nevertheless, it is 40% of retirement income. And none of it comes from the stock market.
projected to be unobtainable for future generations
Projected by advocacy groups trying to abolish social security.
You are being untruthful and dismissive: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/tr/2024/tr2024.pdf Page 9 is the jist.
They are going to have to change something either raise the retirement age or lower the payments both which make it more unobtainable then it already is. And that 40% is based what people make… in a time of rising inflation and stagnant wages…
The fact that social security is not tied to the market is super irrelevant, when the argument was that the 401k is in danger, when social security already is not enough to live on. so it’s important that people have a successful 401k to supplement it.
The real solution is making the average wage go up. Significantly. Which puts more money into the program overall.
With so much money having been shifted away from the average worker and Into the pockets of people who hit the FICA cap in their first paycheck of the year, over the last few decades, it was bound to have issues.
I agree with that, or a ubi, or taxing the rich. All that jazz
They are going to have to change something either raise the retirement age or lower the payments
Or just pay directly out of the general fund, which they can do with a simple vote in Congress and which they already do for Medicare/caid.
The fact that social security is not tied to the market is super irrelevant
It is the primary argument both for and against the program. Investors kick and scream about the benefits of compound interest, right up until a big market nosedive and bankruptcy spree. Meanwhile, it’s the benchmark for guaranteed basic income that progressives love to reference.
Decoupling income from economic growth isn’t irrelevant. It’s the program’s entire raison d’etre.
You would have the tax payers pay even more of the burden now, with out the benefit of even having it contribute to their social security… to pay the gap in social security, damning the tax payers twice. That’s not a permanent solution on top of that! I’m not saying social security should be attached to the market. I mean we are talking about the market fall after all! I am saying that being flippant that everyone Just needs to remember they have social security is dismissive and not relevant.
You think they aren’t already profiting off of the downturn?
half of them voted for this guy, so yeah I’m wondering whether they actually saw it coming or not
They’ll buy everything that collapses up at a great discount
Oh you can be sure Congress will be working overtime to pass a bill with relief to those big businesses that cannot fail.
I’m feeling pretty smug lately having always avoided the stock market so my money has been the same this whole time
Maybe should convert some of those dollars to Euros tho just in case
I actually get paid in euros and just stopped converting
lol it’s not going to zero. It will rebound sooner or later. Just another cycle.
lol so how much did you lose
Nothing? I have not sold any of my investments so there’s no realized loss. In fact, I’ve put more money in since the last week.
Also, I’m not even from the US. I’m just telling you how stock markets work in general.
Buy the dip.
This is financial advice.
Lol just wait until the reports come out about the inflation rate since Trump took office.
Yeah but I still didn’t burn my money in stocks
What’s interesting to me is that the “shape” of the line still matches the global line pretty well so there are some “fundamental” aspects that still affect markets, but overall we’re in a nosedive for “some reason.”
Sometimes The USA line goes up when the world line does, but sometimes it’s totally inverse, as the world quickly dumps US stocks and invests elsewhere.
You know if you just use a sharpie to draw the line going up instead of down there isn’t a problem anymore.
Don’t worry, the rest of the world will get pulled down when we really nose dive… hooray contagion.
Yes, the global casino of interdependent pyramid schemes is extremely fragile.
Don’t worry though. Capital will print as much money, build as many prisons, and blow up as many brown people as it takes to maintain hegemony.
I agree, but I don’t think it will be as bad as the last few times for anyone but the US. Trump has managed to piss off literally the biggest trade partners the US has, so they will happily just invest elsewhere and leave the US economy in the dust instead of trying to survive the crash together.
I also agree with you here.
We’ll pull the world down… but we will do significantly worse ourselves.
To be fair, showing no historical correlation and just assuming the problem or separation started this year because it’s specifically indexed to the start of the year, is garbage math. Like, you got the correct answer, but you did the problem completely wrong.
What ever could the problem be? Tariffs! No tariffs. Tariffs! No tariffs … well some, maybe. Tariffs! Delayed tariffs … delayed tariffs again.
I can’t. Is this mental difficulties or that thing journalists do where they have to act like they were literally just born and don’t know anything about the world? I don’t know the dude in OP.
Wait, are you not aware of sarcasm?
Pretty ironic for someone with the handle, JokeDeity.
Honest to god, I really just missed it. Reading it now it’s so blatantly sarcasm, I’m going to just have to blame it on a combination of lack of sleep and my being a dumbass.
slams fist on desk
Biden!
