Dow jones plunges 512 points in one day; nasdaq down 136; s&p down 60

I donot doubt you're early gut feelings, but that's different from what the general idea was. I was laughed at when I posted early on that the Olympics are going to be cancelled and the soccer tournement in it wasnot going to happen.
All those people who reacted in those months with shrugging shoulders and remarks it's going to be like a flue simply went with the info they got in the mainstream media at that time.

 

I'm pretty sure that institutional investors understood the coronavirus would kill a bunch of people. What they missed was that unlike with the Spanish flu, when the attitude was largely "get to your job while stepping over the bodies," that modern societies wouldn't accept that level of death in exchange for doing business as usual.

 

So buy now?

21,095.20 −821.96 (3.75%)
Apr 1, 12:29 PM EDT

Let's see what Wall St. expert and Trump stooge had to say at Dow 25k

Kudlow: Buy on the dip, on COVID-19 "this is contained", "relatively contained." pic.twitter.com/iF4Nheem4i

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) March 6, 2020

 

The Republican base gets terrible investment advice. When Obama was President, it was told to avoid stocks, buy gold, and that bonds would blow up due to Obummer overspending and the bad bad Fed. Zero for three. Now iit hears nonstop about the pandemic being a hoax, buy those stocks!

 

Now you are just making shit up. First of all, investors range on all sides of the political spectrum, second, I don't recall anyone suggesting to avoid stocks after the 2008-9 crash... but carry on John.

 

I vividly recall my coworker telling me how his Harvard MBA, former CEO dad had been listening to Rush and Glenn about Obummer, so had dumped his stock for gold. A smart and educated man lost his mind ...and his money.

 

Listening to The Smiths might have made me sell stocks but not Rush.

 

To continue the discussion, hard-core Republicans suck as investors. People think they are good because they are often wealthy and then tend to care about their money, a lot, but they are too paranoid and anti-government. They constantly expect disaster and are attracted to bear-market schemes, especially if a Democrat is involved. They have a hard time understanding that businesses mostly do what businesses are gonna do, not matter what the tax code or who is charge or whatever.

BernieBros might even be worse but they don't own stocks.

The people who make the real money are establishment optimists, like Warren Buffett. He happens to be a Democrat, but moderate Republicans fall into the same camp.

 

Again, you are simply making shit up. The fact is most political donations from high net worth investors go to the Democrats.

 

You are correct that financial advisors don't do this, not the ones who wish to stay in business. I am talking a segment of the do-it-yourself Barron's readers.

 

I would like to post a reminder that the man who is always wrong tweeted on February 24th, "Stocks are starting to look very good to me!"

Good call, Donald. Spot on, as usual. You know more than all the generals, and all professional investors too.

 

He doesn't need to. If Joe Mug is buying individual stocks he is going to get squashed by the elephants stampeding this way and that. But because Joe is small he can easily move money in on big dips and as long as he has a long term horizon he'll beat the market.

 

6.6 million more jobless claims. Wonder how fast the shut off valve is triggered today.

1245690790539595777 is not a valid tweet id

 

Oil prices up a bit so that provided a little lift. Futures just slightly down at this point. Unemployment is going to be ugly for awhile.

 

How much money was spent on tourism? Like gas for cars, air traffic, hotels, theme parks, etc?
This is spending that's gone for a very long time and probably not coming back at the levels before the virus for a very long time.
These effects radiate out as those millions who depended on income from that arenot spending those earned $$/€€ etc. on other things.

 

I keep seeing dire predictions like yours and I'm just not buying it for a couple of reasons.

First, there has already been movement at lightning speed toward more accurate tests that show results more quickly. Once that makes it into the mainstream tracking and quarantining the sick will be much more efficient.

Second, I am seeing the grumbling on my neighborhood FB and Nextdoor pages about keeping the kids locked down. Granted, some of these people simply aren't very smart, but at the first indication that we have shown to be able to treat this virus, those people will be back out in force.

Third, we have seen similar viruses in the past and we will develop a vaccination. I believe the H1N1 is now just a part of the seasonal flu as I assume this will be.

 

No doubt. But mass deployment of that vaccination looks to be about 18 months out.

Overall, the stock market agrees with your assessment. It expects a return to something approaching normalcy over the summer. Otherwise, stock prices would be lower. Of course that doesn't mean that the stock market (and you) are correct in that assessment. For example, the market was brutally wrong with its mid-February forecast.

 

Of course. Nobody says things will go back to the way things were. I just made a comment about the market for today. That is all.

 

Given the hit on the paycheque suffered up till now and lasting for a couple of months from now, tourism isnot going to recover very much and thus that money flow it generated. International tourism isnot going to jump up either as the dangers of getting infected are still out as long as a vaccin isnot available and used globally. That vaccin is still at least 6 months away in optimistic projections, but going by the regular development history it's a year if at all.

 

Trump tweeting about talking to his good friend MBS concerning him and Putin cutting back on production. Moot point as soon there will be no place to store oil due to zilch demand. Many oul producers in US are still pumping as they need the cash flow, no matter how small, to pay off their significant debt. Even worse for Canada as not only is shale oil expensive to produce, they also cannot just shut off the valve due to the technology constraints. Some predictions that oil prices will hit $9.75/barrel as there is no demand and there will be huge fallout with producers. So, that will get factored in soon enough.

 

Not criticising, but adding things to consider.