Join institutional investors, analysts and strategists from the world's largest banks: Subscribe today for as little as $7/month
Already have an account? log in
Inside The Bubble
Years ago, an episode of Family Guy (the edgy cartoon sitcom) featured a subplot that revolved around a local news segment called "What Really Grinds My Gears."
The cartoon's main character, Peter Griffin, anchored the segment, which was just a forum for him to rant about things that perpetually annoyed him.
Like everything else on Family Guy, all aspects of the segment (from the circumstances that brought it to life to the rants themselves) were crude, so I won't recap it. But Tom Tucker, a f
It’s also worth pointing out that a large percentage of a small number is still a small number. If the number of people with incomes under $75K went from 2% to 3% or even 10% to 15%, even with that 53% increase in trading, most people are using the stimulus for something else, like eating.
Number of people with income under $75K who are trading ….
To be clear.
I have commented in similar fashion on some of your posts. I think its a good idea to lower the threshold, but not by that much- and as part of a compromise package if necessary. State and local aid, and more generous unemployment insurance is prime territory, along with rent aid/eviction moritorium, student loan moritorium, and vaccine aid to localities. The checks are a good idea- and I would lower the income threshold a bit but not much and phase it out, rather than just stop it at the limit. It has been presently structured with such a phase out. Whenever there is a government aid package, bailout or what have you, the boo birds come out and talk about fraud and other leakages in such a program. It is always going to happen. Short of interviewing every receipient, you are not going to get to perfect- and not even then. That is not the point. Perfection is the enemy of effective and rapid help for many. And that is most important.
Everything old is new again. When I was much younger the argument against any kind of welfare was that the poor people would just take the money and spend it on wine or cigarettes or some other such evil. By the same argument I suppose we should increase the taxes of billionaires because if they have too much money they’ll just but a super-yacht. Too many Americans, by their nature, are just bossy and judgmental and love to try to run other people’s lives. Doing the right thing may not always turn out the way you intended for everyone, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t the right thing.
Moralizing.
The young who do have a month or two tucked away no longer have motivation to leave money in savings accounts. Trading accounts to debit card is a couple of keystrokes. Would they prefer under the mattress.
Excuse them for being modern. As far as they are concerned markets crash and come right back. It is fixed.
Penalizing savers at every turn is having consequences.
Great read. Thank you
Said clearly and with enough information that anyone who is using their brain to evaluate the situation will clearly see this as the tired old saw (poor people can’t be trusted with money) that’s been around for a long time as many readers have pointed out. It’s pathetic how the well to do in their own gated access bubble will constantly proclaim that ‘poor people are too stupid to be given anything of worth’. It’s shameful and conveniently ignores lots of stories of waste by the wealthy and large corporations whose sins are calculated in the trillions. Waste is everywhere, but always less at the bottom of the financial ladder where food, shelter and health are in limited supply. Why is buying a $2 lottery ticket a financial sin for those making $35,000, while ordering a $25 wagyu burger at a restaurant that charges $12 for a beer is fine as long as you’re driving a Tesla and have a Porsche in the garage. Children are starving everywhere and the money needed to fix that is stuck in the safes of the wealthy.
The mainstream media is made up of wealthy people who have decided they can speak for the lower classes. Those people at the bottom need more chance to speak for themselves. Is it any wonder that many are so lost, frustrated and ignored that tearing something down is about they only way they can speak and be heard. How many poor had to die from opioid addiction before it was even a mainstream concern. The rich can take a time out at a Malibu clinic while the poor have to work it out homeless and living on the street.
Consider this; is Jeff Bezos a builder of capitalism or a destroyer of it? On first blush, this might seem a ridiculous question given that he’s created Amazon. But consider that economic systems work when they keep the distribution of wealth more evenly balanced. If they don’t, they eventually get replaced. When one guy destroys many companies that paid decent wages and transfers that wealth primarily to himself rather than sharing it with those doing the real work, I’d propose that he’s a destroyer because he’s perpetuating the unequal distribution of wealth.
“How many poor had to die from opioid addiction before it was even a mainstream concern.”
Sadly, the trigger was ….. racial.
Heroin? Crack? “That’s a ghetto problem tjat should be dealt with by more aggressive law enforcement. Step up the war on drugs.”
Then, along came methamphetamines in rural, white areas. That started to discomfort our friends on the right, but not enough to do much outside of muttering that “something should be done.” Thankfully for the GOP, local “cookers” were augmented by supply from Mexico so they could be blamed for it.
Opiods were the step too far. All of a sudden countless WHITE lives in Republican parts of the US were getting decimated. As were Medicaid budgets in those states. White lives did matter and some increased spending on treatment rather than incarceration was begrudgingly accepted by so-called conservatives.
It has become increasingly clear over the last 10 years of just what “conservatives” want to conserve.
Who will join me in donating half your stimulus check to a food bank? You can still use the other half to buyTSLA or Bitcoin.
When you give money, imho, you shouldn’t tell the recipient what to do with it- seems like everyone can make that decision for themselves regardless of their background or situation.
Also, this pandemic is far from over and Congress should be focusing on providing adequate vaccines not on a fleeting one time cash transfer that isn’t going to matter much financially to the financial condition of the US- in the long run.
From an investment standpoint, I am getting nervous that the market is expecting the virus to be contained much sooner than it will be.
I agree with Joe Biden- going to be a “very dark winter”.- typical that Congress takes forever to do something that is relatively easy and ignores the difficult problems.
If people are so worried about those unaffected by the pandemic or making “too much” money getting stimulus checks, tax it back in 2022. In essence it becomes an interest free loan to those who need to repay it, a concept the federal government has been happy to use for various corporations.
Saying that the rate increased by some percentage is meaningless without knowing what the starting rate was. If the starting rate was 1% and it increased 50% to 1.5% then their point is mute. If the rate had been 40% and increased 50% to 60% then that would be interesting, but who in the world believes that there exists a large contingent of people earning less than $75,000 that are trading in the stock market. Not a likely state of affairs.
On the other hand, a married couple in Florida or Texas with combined earnings of $150,000 are very likely to not need the stimulus money and will dump it into the stock market whereas a similar couple in California could very well need the stimulus money. So many factors in play and the arguments are being made using insufficient information.
PS – a fine graphic up top!
That’s an old favorite. I try to only roll it out for special occasions and I liked this post, so I blessed it with the shoes/bubble/plane
Apps like Stocktwits is where these people hang around for ‘insight’ or ‘trends’, normally a constant meme and insult battle between bulls and bears. The amount of people that do not understand the concept of number of shares/market cap and compare stock prices to each other is mind blowing (I though the Tesla stock split would help but not enough), let alone any other financial metrics. Social media; reddit, twitter, youtube and the ‘influencers’ are here to stay I just wonder how the SEC will control these non-regulated promoters, its easier than ever to engineer pump and dump schemes.
Market cap is really crucial. I mean whatever else you want to call crypto… it’s all in all about $1T total value. That’s about 2x Visa. That’s pretty big, but it’s still smaller than Amazon. The derivatives market is roughly $12T in gross assets. Then again bubble is a stranger and stranger term by the day. It seems that in order for a financial bubble to exist there has to be non-accommodation by reserve banks and there has to be a focus on utilizing the economy to generate utility rather than just returns. I’m sure we can make arguments as to why we should do that… but it gets harder and harder to see when we would do that. Maybe when millions are starving and homeless… but then… maybe not…