Bull Market officially over!! Year heading negative.

[Breccia]

Stocks cap off best month since 1987

"Yeah! MAGA!"

Indeed, we're back to December 2017.

"Yea...oh. Right. The yuge bigly crash."

Yep. Thread title's still 100% accurate.

While the Fed's action probably helped, I do wonder what will happen if McConnell holds the line and no more relief aid is voted through.

[Felya]

Seriously? My wife always talked about retiring in Florida. I am glad I put my foot down on that matter. Florida sea water makes me breakout in hives. I have dived all over the world, and it only happens in Florida. I have always thought that there must be something wrong with their water. Otherwise how do you explain all the crazies?

Which parts? I did south beach on spring break a couple of times, the water was great... am a nerd, didn’t even get an std...

[Zan15]

Seriously? My wife always talked about retiring in Florida. I am glad I put my foot down on that matter. Florida sea water makes me breakout in hives. I have dived all over the world, and it only happens in Florida. I have always thought that there must be something wrong with their water. Otherwise how do you explain all the crazies?

my guess would be huge run offs from the gulf and east coast....there is a reason why there is such huge dead zones down there.

[Rasulis]

Stocks cap off best month since 1987

"Yeah! MAGA!"

Indeed, we're back to December 2017.

"Yea...oh. Right. The yuge bigly crash."

Yep. Thread title's still 100% accurate.

While the Fed's action probably helped, I do wonder what will happen if McConnell holds the line and no more relief aid is voted through.

Meh. The stock market is being carried by a few companies now.

Apple posted a gross revenue of $58.31 billion, beating the $53.67 billion forecast. Net revenue is $11.25 billion.

Facebook net revenue is $4.9 billion on a gross revenue of $17.33 billion.

Amazon revenue for the quarter rose 26.4% to $75.45 billion from $59.70 billion last year.

Apple stock up 2.1%, Amazon, 4.3%, and Facebook 5.5%. Five companies are now worth more than 20% of the S&P 500 and just under 18% of the entire US stock market. I wouldn't call that a healthy market.

- - - Updated - - -

my guess would be huge run offs from the gulf and east coast....there is a reason why there is such huge dead zones down there.

Probably. I have dived around the Naples/Sanibel area on the Gulf side and the Florida Keys. I always ended up with severe case of the itches. My wife never had any issue though. The strangest part is that I have dived in some pretty unsanitary water doing underwater welding inspection and never had any issues. So only in Florida.

[kaid]

Stocks cap off best month since 1987

"Yeah! MAGA!"

Indeed, we're back to December 2017.

"Yea...oh. Right. The yuge bigly crash."

Yep. Thread title's still 100% accurate.

While the Fed's action probably helped, I do wonder what will happen if McConnell holds the line and no more relief aid is voted through.

If states are allowed/required to declare bankruptcy thats a hell of a way to get a full blown depression going. Watch the municipal bond market explode as suddenly sure things are not so much any more.

[Poopymonster]

If states are allowed/required to declare bankruptcy thats a hell of a way to get a full blown depression going. Watch the municipal bond market explode as suddenly sure things are not so much any more.

Pensions? Sure, we'll let everyone have a pension. *bankruptcy* What pensions?

[Kasierith]

Stocks cap off best month since 1987

"Yeah! MAGA!"

Indeed, we're back to December 2017.

"Yea...oh. Right. The yuge bigly crash."

Yep. Thread title's still 100% accurate.

While the Fed's action probably helped, I do wonder what will happen if McConnell holds the line and no more relief aid is voted through.

Has little to do with the feds, and more to do with a less reactionary estimate of the economic impact of covid as is. The invisible hand of the market is prone to being startled, after all.

[Celista]

Hello, OT, long time no see...sad turn of events, hope everyone is being safe. Have fun shorting stocks in the meantime.

[Thepersona]

I'm curious when it will finally dawn on Wall Street that it's not the economy as a whole and start cratering again.

Yeah. This is bothering me. Dow Jones doing impressive gains while the economy is cratering and the recovery wont be "V" shaped as they hoped?
Wtf is happening there? What's happening on the minds of these people? What will happen when things turn out as expected (ie: not rosy) for the economy?

[Masark]

Yeah. This is bothering me. Dow Jones doing impressive gains while the economy is cratering and the recovery wont be "V" shaped as they hoped?

Wtf is happening there? What's happening on the minds of these people? What will happen when things turn out as expected (ie: not rosy) for the economy?

It's just another demonstration that the stock market is is only tangentially and tenuously connected to the actual economy or reality in general.

This is presumably a side effect of the fact that the owners of most of the stock are also disconnected from the general reality everyone has to live in.

[Omega10]

Trump gave the stock market all the reason it needs to shed some of the gains it made recently.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/coron...081016952.html

Coronavirus: Markets fall as Trump threatens China tariffs over pandemic

Trump is blaming China for starting the virus in the lab, and is taking actions to punish China.

Excerpts:

The US president has accused China of spreading misinformation in the early stages of the pandemic, and even claimed on Thursday he had seen evidence the virus started in a Chinese lab. Other US officials have downplayed the latter claim, with the virus widely believed by experts to have emerged in a market selling wildlife in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

Trump is taking actions based on this evidence.

Stocks sank in London on Friday after US president Donald Trump threatened to impose new tariffs on China over its handling of the coronavirus crisis.

OK this is pretty toothless. Trump threatens tariffs just for kicks. Meaningless.

But the Washington Post reports US officials are starting to draw up plans to “punish” or demand compensation from China over the outbreak. The US newspaper reports some US officials even floated the idea of cancelling part of its debt obligations to China.

THIS is a lot more serious. Even threatening this will have consequences throughout the world. Actually DOING it would hurt the US a lot more than it would hurt China.

[Felya]

Coronavirus: Markets fall as Trump threatens China tariffs over pandemic

Trump is blaming China for starting the virus in the lab, and is taking actions to punish China.

But, the investigation reported there was nothing there.

THIS is a lot more serious. Even threatening this will have consequences throughout the world. Actually DOING it would hurt the US a lot more than it would hurt China.

Does that include individual debit, like Trump’s debt to China, or just US government debt?

[Omega10]

Does that include individual debit, like Trump’s debt to China, or just US government debt?

Most likely, the parts of the negotiations that would be made public would only include US government debt. The Trump individual debt would be done behind the scenes. Whatever we "won" from China would be dwarfed by the hit to our reputation, and the multiple hits we take as other countries react to new realities.

It would be good if there was general trust in the figures that the US reports.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/hea...cy/ar-BB13t0LM

Title: Bing COVID-19 Report: Global Active Cases Pass 2 Million, Questions Arise About U.S. Accuracy

Excerpts:

Several incidents in the last 24 hours have caused experts to be skeptical about official U.S. fatal case data.

Bloomberg reported that the White House is using information from a report created by journalists to supplement CDC data about testing. This raises the question about the extent to which The White House will rely on the CDC data or not.

At a more local level, the Tampa Bay Times reported that the state of Florida will not publish data about COVID-19 deaths gathered from local authorities within the state, and then published as a total. The data was released in real-time up until this point. It is possible, according to the report, that the most recent data may be as many as nine days old.

In short, there are people suspecting that nationally the US is lying about the numbers it is reporting, and that at the local level the state of Florida is also lying about ITS numbers. It would be easier to make the case that China was bad because of their lying if people didn't suspect us of lying about the same stuff.

Trump's daily lies also does not help present a picture of honest America.

I believe that any attempts to blame China for mishandling the virus will backfire in a big way against the US. Especially since we have done such a bad job ourselves.

[Breccia]

The CDC reports 5,000 cases of coronavirus and 20 deaths at meat packing worksites, the worksites Trump just drafted people military-style to force them to continue working.

Again, as soon as we see evidence of federally-provided help with safety or medical assistance, please let me know. Because right now, it looks like essential workers are being forced into hazardous situations without extra help or even pay.

"But Breccia! Food is an essential service!"

All the more reason to protect it and its workers, right? What happens when the meat packers get sick or die?

Already Target, Wal-Mart, and Amazon workers join others with a "grass roots" sickout (meaning "I won't admit my union suggested this in a completely informal way"). And if that's not good enough, the next question is "when did the Senate come back from vacation?"

"Whoa, it wasn't a vacation!"

Trump said it was, therefore, Trump supporters must admit the Senate was also on vacation. Sorry. I don't make the rules. I just see to it they're enforced.

Which leaves Trump supporters in a bit of a bind, as it always does, when following lying loser self-contradictory Trump.

1) They can admit that the House and Senate can go on vacation because they're not essential, thereby denouncing Trump for decrying the Senate for going on "vacation" (his word) or
2) They admit drafting meat packers into provably plague-ridden worksites is not the right thing to do, since other essential workers are not required to do so.

Pick one. You're either essential or you're not, there's no grey area.

[Rasulis]

The Federal Reserve made some changes to its Main Street Lending Program according to a Thursday press release by the central bank that will now extend a much-needed lifeline to the U.S. oil industry.

Prior to today, those funds were not available to companies who had more than 10,000 employees and $2.5 billion in revenues. Borrowed funds could also not be used to refinance existing debt.

But lawmakers in oil-dependent states such as Alaska, North Dakota, and Texas—have been furiously lobbying to change those limits in a move that would allow more oil and gas companies access to the funds they need to weather the low oil price environment caused by the pandemic.

On Thursday, at the behest of those lawmakers, the Federal Reserve increased the employee limit to 15,000 and the revenue limit to $5 billion. What’s more, companies applying for the funds do not need to prove they were in good standing as of March 2020—an earlier requirement that excluded many oil and gas companies because they often carry heavy debt.

Wait! What? So basically “Subprime Lending Part Deux - The Oil & Gas Version?”

[Omega10]

Wait! What? So basically “Subprime Lending Part Deux - The Oil & Gas Version?”

The most interesting part to me is that these rules changes were made just by the Federal Reserve, which basically means they are allowed to legislate. And, also it is not surprising that these changes did not get much press.

[Breccia]

The headline Jobless claims top 30 million as coronavirus continues to devastate economy is followed by "Around 18 percent of the workforce is currently unemployed."

Continuing claims, or the number of people receiving ongoing benefits, hit 18 million last week, far surpassing the recessionary peak of 6.6 million, according to data released Thursday from the Department of Labor.

Nationwide lockdowns led to the abrupt shutdown of the economy in mid-March, leaving millions of people scrambling to file for unemployment insurance. The sheer volume of applicants overwhelmed the system, with many states reporting website outages and hourslong delays on telephone helplines.

That has led to inaccurate accounting of the jobless, with many people reporting waits of six weeks or more.

States have ramped up staff at workforce centers, with New York adding 1,000 more workers and Texas tripling the size of its phone center staff. But that is still not enough.

According to new data from the Labor Department, California — the first state to issue a stay-at-home order — paid only 1 in 8 claims in March. With an estimated labor force of 19.5 million, 3.3 million Californians have filed unemployment applications in the four weeks after March 14.

And now:

Our real unemployment is anywhere from 18 to 20 percent. Don't believe the 5.6. Don't believe it.

You'll remember that line from when Trump was running for office.

Alright Trump supporters, you know the deal. If Trump was claiming the listed unemployment he inherited from Obama (thanks, Obama) of 5.6% was false and really 18 to 20 percent, I believe he was suggesting that 18 to 20 percent was bad. So you have three options because it's Friday and I'm feeling generous:

1) Decry Trump's 5.6% = 18 to 20 percent claim as a lie, and that saying such was dishonest and the wrong thing to do, or
2) Agree that 18 to 20 percent unemployment is bad, and therefore, Trump has allowed things to get just as bad. (Except with official numbers), or
3) Say that 18 to 20 percent unemployment is not bad, and therefore, decry Trump for suggesting that it was.

That's it, you don't get any other options.

"But these are special circumstances!"

Yeah, that's an invalid argument and will not be accepted. "It's different when it's my responsibility" sounds a lot like “They may have been phony in the past, but it’s very real now.” when in March 2017 Trump started touting better unemployment numbers, 2 months (not even 2 months) after being inaugurated and having passed no laws or executive orders that would have kicked in by then.

Refusing to answer means you're a craven coward and I get to answer for you. Trying "it's different this time" makes you a coward and a hypocrite and I still get to answer for you.

24 hours. Time starts now.

[I Push Buttons]

Elon Musk is operating on like a whole different plane of existence at this point.

Elon Musk tweet wipes $14bn off Tesla's value

[Thepersona]

Elon Musk is operating on like a whole different plane of existence at this point.

Elon Musk tweet wipes $14bn off Tesla's value

Elon Musk is a Bitcoin weeb? God how much have we strayed from your light.

[Edge-]

Elon Musk is a Bitcoin weeb? God how much have we strayed from your light.

He's a fucking troll at this point, that's pretty much the long and short of it.