Dow sinks more than 700 points. Stocks are on track for their worst quarter since 2023

Thanks Trump

Thanks trump.
- The trump regime was designed to TANK the US economy so that stocks, businesses, and industries can be bought by billionaires at rock bottom prices.
  All is going according to plan.
  
  I have an acquaintance that works for an old money, very wealthy family from oil money. The kind that influences regional as well as national politics. He worked for them during the last major recession in the late ‘00s. He basically said that his employer and all their buddies were running all over the world buying everything they could “like it is a fire sale” during the recession.
  So yeah. This is how we get more billionaires, more oligarchs, and more meta national corpo monopolies where one company controls multiple brand names.
  
  Yeah, almost seems like it. I am convinced they are at least doing something like the "Mar-a-Lago Accord" to devalue the dollar, unseat the USD as the global reserve currency, inflate debt away, and make wages low enough and people desperate enough so more manufacturing is viable in the US again.
  
  Can you define "rock bottom prices"? -- asking for a friend.
  
  Buy it with what? Billionaires don't hold money, their valuation is all in stock value.
  I think you're giving them too much credit. Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.

I told my partner that we needed to stop excessive spending like going out to eat while the economy is so uncertain. She was ok with that. I'm not feeling great about our (collective) future. Sigh.
- I hate that going for a meal out is considered excessive, from someone who is in the same boat as you.
  
  And all restaurant owners are probably bracing for this to hit hard.

I find it deeply funny that fascism is completely compatible with capitalism (it's arguably its end-state), but they're still tanking the economy because Trump doesn't understand tariffs.
- Fascism ultimately tanks any system because it prices loyalty above all else and you inevitably end up without any compitent people in charge.
  
  Yeah, for sure, fascist regimes have a pretty short shelf-life in general because of cronyism and incompetence. I'm just saying there's nothing inherent to fascism that should be tanking the economy right now in the way, say, a communist revolution would by causing capital flight. If he wasn't pushing the worst, most unnecessary trade war in history, Trump could have a strong economy right now.
- They understand tariffs. They want stock prices to tank so they can rake in on slashed prices. This is just more and more of the same wealth transfer in the past 45 years, just so in our faces that people don't want to believe it's happening.
  
  I think that's true for some of them, mostly the Wall Street folks who have enough diversified wealth to buy a lot of stock during the crash and wait it out. But I think the start-up folks, who's companies have often never been profitable, and rely entirely on investors over-inflating their value to survive, are freaking the fuck out right now. And I think Trump is just legitimately dumb, doesn't understand that a trade deficit doesn't mean America is losing money, and genuinely doesn't understand tariffs.

This is also called a buy phase
Buy low, sell high
Trumps policies are expected to pass costs on to consumers but have the benefit of maintaining production and development internally which should long term keep more money inside the USA, hardening supply lines against foreign influence. Given that China is openly campaigning for war on Taiwan by 2027 latest, and they're responsible for close to 80% of critical imports to US minerals, this puts the US in a predicament which Trump (probably not on purpose tbh, I won't give him the credit) is preparing for.
Tariffs on raw metals and minerals have proven effective since his first term with significant improvements in domestic refinement.
-"Tardif pass-through and implications for domestic markets: Evidence from US steel imports" Ahmad et al. (2023).
This isn't shared by other aspects of the supply network though like finished products or more complicated manufacturing because market instability halts investment in those areas, so no development actually increases in the US and prices just increase. This is a fatal flaw in the tariff calculus that is hurting trade and the economy. Manufacturing takes years to develop and adapt, and no one will leap on that kind of investment without clear assurances.

So much winning.
- Billionaires and corporations are absolutely winning, in the foreseeable future.
  
  While yes, the stock market going down is the opposite of “corporations winning”

We also believe the dynamic macro environment has contributed to a more cautious consumer
Am I getting this right? Is this double speak for "the government is fucking up so badly, people try to save some wealth for the inevitable fall of society"?
- I think that is what the main point is. Brace for extremely hard times.
- I look forward to mainstream media using real words with real meaning, again.

Personally, I am guessing that the American Dollar will end up like the Weimer Republic's currencies.
I am removing my life savings from the bank and turning them into Euros. Everyone's economy will dip, but I am pretty certain America will have a Greater Depression. Unlike the Great Depression or the Weimer Republic, the annihilation of government agencies and fiscal instruments is deliberate & total.
- I've moved most of my savings to Gold since around 2010 partly because I was in the Finance Industry during the financial crash of 2008 and saw how the "fixes" done back then weren't at all fixing the problems, just kicking the ball forward on the backs of people whose income mainly comes from work (hence the growth of inequality, slow down in social mobility and insane various bubbles including realestate that kept on getting inflated for the last decade) something which has been fueling the growth of the far right (people are feeling the pain, getting pissed of and lots of money has been put by very rich people into political entities and the newsmedia to spread the idea that it's outsiders who are to blame for all this rather than very wealthy insiders plundering an economy which has ground down to a halt its growth, in collusion with local politicians).
  I was also in the Tech Industry during the tech crash of 99, which probably made me even less trusting in the current system's long term stability.
  Gold is a pretty old fashioned way to try and retain some value on one's savings, especially in countries where government management of the Economy and the local currency is pretty bad (in my own country of Portugal it used to be pretty popular to get it in the form of jewelry for that purpose, though not anymore, and it apparently still is in India and most of Asia including China).
  (Basically, it's the "oh shit" option for when the Economic situation gets very bad and people fear the value of state issued currencies themselves won't hold)
  I can tell you that even though Gold has been mostly just kept up with inflation for the last decade and a half (with an uptick when Russia invaded Ukrained), Donald Trump's actions really made the value of Gold in most currencies (especially USD) take off like a rocket, or in other words, that the value of most currencies is falling hard compared to what up to 71 was treated worldwide as the reference "currency".
  IMHO, it's a pretty fucked up sign, especially for the US Dollar (which has the extra nasty bit that it stops being the World's Reserve Currency, all the benefits from it will unwind and if that happens fast - within a year or two - we might see shit like hyperinflation in the US).
  PS: And if I may gloat a bit, I was living in Britain back when Brexit happened and did call it successfully and saved my savings by having most of them in Gold and Euros when Brexit crashed the British Pound by about 30% vs the Euro, something it never really recovered from. Maybe I was lucky but I remember that at the time and even before the Leave Referendum I felt that the Austerity in Britain was stretching the political environment in the country and that it wasn't a safe place to hold my savings, even though back then all my income was in GBP.
  
  I was in the Finance Industry during the financial crash of 2008
  I was also in the Tech Industry during the tech crash of 99
  I was living in Britain back when Brexit happened
  Your life reads like the lyrics of Sympathy for the Devil.
- Not a bad idea. It's much easier for one country to fail than a coalition of countries.

Wake me up when it's worse than 2022.
- Hope you like short naps

Meanwhile, the CAC40...

11 weeks ago, '2023' was last year.
This isn't a slump yet. If Dougie shuts off the power to three states, I hope he does it during a break between the "oh no unregulated drinking water had maaaaaaaassive e.coli in it" diarrhea outbreak right when the softwood tariffs have cratered the toilet paper supply the worst.
At that point in time, expect a stark realization of the state of things to cause some sadness to leak into the market too. I predict three northern states fighting for black market TP and shitting prolifically in the dark to really affect the market. But probably, still, not his numbers.
- this isnt a slump yet
  Technically we are in correction territory, so id say we are a slump. This isnt the bottom though. Get some puts and ride this baby all the way down. I hit 10x on tesla puts that i bought yesterday. This markets dumb and with the volatility this high, everyone should be making money if they sell when they are green and done diamond hand it
  
  I love this idea that while 60% of the country is living paycheck to paycheck “everyone should be making money” like everyone has money to invest. We are well and truly fucked
- right when the softwood tariffs have cratered the toilet paper supply the worst
  Time to invest in bidets.
  
  Or just wipe your arse on the curtains.
- …what year do you think it is now?
  Edit: i mistook their comma for a semicolon
  
  Based on their comment, 2025.
  
  It's gotta be at least 2027 by now...

Looks like I made the right choice pulling most of my 401k out of stock/blended funds and into stable bonds.
- Looks like I made the right choice by not saving money at all and working until I die.
  
  Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue
  
  Bro just quit buying avocado toast and pull yourself up by them bootstraps, you're just not working hard enough bro get on the grind and then you can maybe retire in a slightly larger cardboard box
- Looks like I made the right choice pulling most of my 401k out of stock/blended funds and into stable bonds.
  You've made HALF the right choice. You "sold high", which is great!
  However, the harder part is knowing when to go back in for the "buy low" part. If you're out of the market when that recovery occurs you'll be missing out on those gains. I've look at historical recoveries and can tell there is no way I'll know when that time is. I will guess wrong every time.
  I hope you're better at it than I am.
  
  Most people arent playing the market daily. Especially in something like a 401k. You dont need to time the bottom. We're already in a correction, and its still going. You can wait until the market recovers, and as long as you buy back at a price lower than what you sold, call it a win.
  Dont chase, "what could have been" because youll always feel like you lost
  
  Timing the exact top and bottom is impossible, but you can always sell at an all-time high and buy at a 52 week low.
  Personally, I find it more effective for myself if I frame it in terms of "owning the most shares" instead of "making the most dollars".
  If I started with 100 shares and now have 200 shares, I consider that a win, even if the 200 shares together are worth less than the 100 shares were at one time.
  
  You can never time the lowest point. What you can do however is guarantee yourself a massive gain over the next few years when the stocks inevitably go back to pre-trump levels by buying it now, which is already much lower than it was 2 months ago
  
  The right time to go back in is whenever this admin is done, there is no "low" when the floor keeps falling out.
- That's great, until our money is worthless and hyper inflation sets in. Nothing will keep your money safe from that.
  
  That is a good point. I think Turkey is a good example of that happening right now. I don't know that they are technically an example of hyperinflation, but they have had extremely high inflation.
- About Jan 21st, I moved 50% to "international developed market", there is 0 stock from USA in the fund.
  https://finviz.com/map.ashx?t=etf&st=ytd
- Depends when you're going to need that money. If it's decades in the future, then reacting to market fluctuations like this only tend to make people lose money on the long run. There's yet to be a stockmarket dip that we haven't recovered from.

Honestly, kinda surprised it is only dropping this much. Would have though the collapse of the free world as we know it to have more of an impact.
- (extremely reddit voice) priced in
  
  Damn it, who is buying the dip?

Thanks trump. (if he can take credit for Biden's economy then he can take credit for his ineptitude too)
- This isn't because of Bidens ineptitude though. This is entirely Trump's fault. Anyone with half a brain could predict this after attacking our allies and bringing up the tariffs.
- The tarrifs are 100% donnie.
- If he can take credit for the past admin, he can take credit for his failures.
  He won't, Trump can do no wrong according to himself and his cult followers. Anything good is all him, anything bad is a nebulous thing he had no part of.

wow, pandemic numbers without a pandemic. trump rules...!
- imagine what it'll look like when the second pandemic hits

Its almost like it can't forever be going up..
- Almost like someone actively causing instability with bad economic policy and stirring global political instability would cause it to go down.
- Except if you follow very basic economic policy and buy low/sell high a recession/major correction is just a buying opportunity. Think new game+ mode, now you extra stonks on your new playthrough.
  Clarification: I'm talking about banks causing collapses as a way to consolidate. Not wallstreetbets shit.
  
  Investor bros always pull this line out.
  The stock market is more than 30 year olds who can put a extra 100k into it and wait.
  A lot of people's 401ks are tied to this shit, jobs are tied to the market, investments are tied to the market.
  It's a lot more complex than "buy the dip bro!"
- But... But line. Line go up.
  Youre telling me that exploiting the workers, making life horrible and expensive for the middle and lower class while giving tax breaks to the ultra wealthy makes the line not go up?
  B... But line. Line go up!
  
  With all this hysteria going around it seems like the general population has forgotten how we live in the real world and where we came from, how we got here.

It's hard to lie about stock prices, let's watch them continue to shout their propaganda as the riots start.
- They inherited Biden's economy
  trump can't affect anything so soon
  It would be worse under Kamala
  We'll just have to suffer a little pain while trump fixes things
  Take your pick of weak excuse
  
  At this point the people that still like trump would happily live in a cardboard box as long as people they didn't like were denied a cardboard box
- There has been a lot of "lying" about stock princes over the last decade but quite indirectly so: for example the ultra low interest rates have allowed many companies to get loans merely to buy their own stocks, which pushes stock prices up whilst loading the company with more debt (and bad debt rather than good debt: not having been taken for investing in productive and marketing activities of the company, those loans will not lead to the increase in profitability needed to pay the debt back plus interest).
  Similarly, because the wealth has been concentrating in fewer and fewer hands there has been a lot more money floating around looking for investments (every extra dollar in the hands of a poor or working class person is one extra dollar that goes into consumption, every extra dollar in the hands of a rich person is one extra dollar that's looking for investment), which has pumped up bubbles from realestate to crypto, and that includes stocks.
  It's not "lying" in the sense that one person moved the markets by telling porkies, it's more of a mix of economic manipulation and an emergent system (in the Mathematical sense) transforming the actions of the various agents under these manipulated financial conditions into a big picture of stocks (and other "investment" class assets) going up in price even though no real increase in their underlying value has happened (the companies aren't really profiting so much more that it justifies their market cap increases, the houses whose prices are going up have no actual improvements to justify the higher prices - the value going up is basically justified by the value going up).

OMG... Trump was lying about fixing the economy? Please say it isn't so!

This brings a smile to my face. My stocks are somehow all steady. The smile is not for those like me losing out. It for all those rich 1-3% who it really hurts. When the orange tumor and his apartheid nazi loses their support then perhaps we can do something that doesn't equate to civil war.
- lol, no. Rich ppl just gonna buy when retail sells. Smart money sold already.

Stable genius getting results!!!

Wow who would have thought a demented orange traitor shitstain and his micropenis techbro side kick were absolutely imbeciles …..if only there had been signs
- You're missing the part where they're completely awesome and no one could have predicted this. /s

Its a bit higher than the low it hit two weeks backish on the 13th. Its significant because the bit of recovery petered out and in the past little false recoveries like this was the stair step down that made it into a truly crashing market. It did not so far though fall below the low of the recent drop but it is pretty close to it.
- "Technical" analysis is bullshit. There are enough value based indicators that show why the US stock market is going to have a rough time in the coming years without this hocus pocus speak.
  E.g. the combined P/E of all stocks on the NYSE is over 25 while that of Nasdaq is over 29. That indicates a massive bubble as this ratio historically averages around 20.
  This was already under Biden, Trump is just triggering the correction with his ineptitude instead of some outside factor. The fact he, unlike Biden, is not even trying to resolve the underlying causes will just make it worse.
  
  I agree. honestly even that P/E is greatly skewed by this millenium. The correction was meant to happen about the time of covid but ironically covid caused a very short spike drop and I think the emergency itself combined with the efforts taken sort tar papered it out of it and it kinda went crazy opposite.

since 2023
So what's the explanation for why stocks dropped so much in 2023?
- Inflation was part of it, also the Russian incursion into Ukraine was sparking fears of ww3.
  The actions of this admin are reigniting those fears and we’re witnessing similar results in the market.
- 2022 4th quarter was the big drop, 2023 was small decline. The reason was higher than expected inflation, with expectation of interest rate hikes by the Fed.

Why is Captain Kirk chilling at the Dow?

Good.... goood...

as businesses brace for ~~President Donald Trump’s tariffs.~~ cheap stock buybacks

Younger generations should be itching for an entry into the market. Endless up and to the right isnt sustainable and, frankly, our economy is a lot of overvalued fluff to begin with. After decades of cheap money and speculation we are WAAAY overdue for a massive correction. I know I'm supposed to use this time to trash Trump but I swear some people just complain without ever identifying an opportunity to actually help themselves.
- "Gotta get in there & scoop up grandma's retirement funds while they're cheap!"
  
  Gramma should have no guarantee that her assets go up indefinitely. That is a boomer concept. Infinite growth is unrealistic and unsustainable. Hopefully her kids and grandkids will take care of her like they are supposed to.
- I forgot how a tax by Trump on Americans to line his $trumpcoin pockets is going to help Joe Busboy. #bootstraps?
  
  I literally have no idea what you're saying but it sounds like a weak attempt to trash talk Trump even though that's not what I'm talking about.
  
  Let the lemmings follow Trump off a cliff. Everyone else, buy low if/when they can.
- Buying in is perpetuating the bubble. Maybe those younger generations should be itching for a livable planet and not a few extra shares of the orphan crushing machine.
  
  Very brave. Let's all sing kumbaya.