[HN Gopher] Stanley Druckenmiller warns the stock market will be...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Stanley Druckenmiller warns the stock market will be 'flat' for an
       entire decade
        
       Author : RadixDLT
       Score  : 111 points
       Date   : 2022-09-16 12:15 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (fortune.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (fortune.com)
        
       | kubb wrote:
       | that would actually be great, the volatility and speculation only
       | helps a narrow group of dedicated traders. as long as stock
       | market saves you from inflation, you should be happy with your
       | investment
        
         | fny wrote:
         | You do realize that the stock market will not save you from
         | inflation if it remains flat for a decade?
        
           | davidkuennen wrote:
           | But it kind of does, since you don't own cash but a portion
           | of a company. As long as that company does well for the next
           | 10 years and doesn't go to shit the "value" stays the same.
           | 10 shares of Company X are still worth 10 shares of Company X
           | in the future in that case. But the monetary value of those
           | shares will most likely change based on inflation.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | Victerius wrote:
           | People need to stop trying to find the best portfolio to keep
           | up with inflation. It's futile. Just be happy if your
           | portfolio appreciates 3% in a year, like our forefathers
           | were.
        
             | seibelj wrote:
             | Property is great because the government subsidizes fixed
             | rate 30 year mortgages - you beat inflation on the backs of
             | tax payers. I own a lot of property!
        
         | jrochkind1 wrote:
         | Well, that was my question, if "kind of flat" means keeping up
         | with inflation at least, or not.
         | 
         | Although my understanding of the standard model of how
         | privatized "saving for retirement" via investment funds works,
         | is that you better have returns at more than inflation,
         | especially in the early part of your career, if you want to be
         | able to retire.
        
       | nprateem wrote:
       | I don't know if it'll last a decade or only be flat, but my local
       | city has lost a lot of upper end clothes stores and even a burger
       | king. The high street has well and truly died and if even BK
       | can't survive that's a bad sign
        
       | rq1 wrote:
       | A broken clock is right twice a day.
        
       | aaroninsf wrote:
       | No one knows what the hell is going to happen, the only certainty
       | is that compared to the long slowly-eroded geopolitical and
       | economic stability of the late 20th century for the capitalist
       | world, black swan events are much more likely and their impact
       | much greater.
       | 
       | The next few years may see Russia collapse. Or Russia use nuclear
       | weapons to prevent ceding Crimea. We may see accelerated
       | catastrophic climate change and knock-on effects like mass
       | migration or as the Thai floods only a few years demonstrated,
       | that knock out of critical infrastructure for our globalized
       | economy is only one bad storm away. We may see low-level domestic
       | terror campaigns in the USA dressed up as "civil war" or, we may
       | see a de facto internal balkanization with erection of internal
       | regulatory barriers to interstate commerce and logistics. We may
       | see China's economy collapse with calls for historically-
       | enshrined dynastic change resulting in internal chaos. We may see
       | next-wave pandemics.
       | 
       | Or maybe none of these things and the ship rights and we sail
       | quickly forward into renewed economic prosperity.
       | 
       | No one knows, least of all Stanley.
        
       | rurban wrote:
       | I'll still wait a few months to buy, but the green energy changes
       | will improve everything. No more oil/gas dependencies!
        
         | peteradio wrote:
         | Is this sarcasm? Few months before green energy turns the ship
         | around? Oil/gas is the backbone of most economy, dare say we
         | will remain dependent.
        
           | epistasis wrote:
           | I think the poster is saying he expects the stock market to
           | fall a few more months before turning around. Not that green
           | energy will complete its transition in a few months.
           | 
           | If you think oil/gas will demand the backbone, you ask
           | yourself why none of the oil and gas majors are drastically
           | expanding their production capacity during this time of high
           | prices. Oil and gas, and their investors, are planning for
           | their phase out, and nobody wants to be holding on to a new
           | asset that has a lifetime of 10-20 years but won't have value
           | after five.
           | 
           | Oil and gas companies and investors know that fossil fuels
           | are on the way out, it surprised me that the general public
           | doesn't know this.
        
             | peteradio wrote:
             | > why none of the oil and gas majors are drastically
             | expanding their production capacity during this time of
             | high prices
             | 
             | Because its a short-lived blip? Didn't we just have record
             | lows less than 2-years ago?
        
               | epistasis wrote:
               | When there's an influx of cash like now, it's usually an
               | ideal time to invest that money in new production because
               | you have the cash in hand.
               | 
               | General consensus is that new development should be small
               | and only in a few types of projects, due to the
               | transition under way. For example see this BCG report
               | (PDF):
               | 
               | https://web-
               | assets.bcg.com/5e/73/dcd6e1544ba2a964e6c082d684e...
        
         | epistasis wrote:
         | I think more important than removing dependencies on oil/gas is
         | that energy will be much cheaper, reducing the cost of
         | everything.
         | 
         | One other aspect of the IRA is that it heavily incentivizes
         | building the new manufacturing capacity in the US. If US
         | manufacturing is not competitive with other parts of the world,
         | this could be less efficient than a world where the best
         | manufacturers do more of it. So it has the potential to lower
         | growth rates, but personally I think the tech advances for cost
         | reduction of solar/wind/storage will likely be so massive as to
         | overwhelm any potential US-based inefficiencies.
         | 
         | In order to correct it, we could tie some of these benefits
         | back to the manufacturers being able to compete on the global
         | market; I.e. if they can't export X% of their product
         | successfully in a competitive market, then the subsidies taper
         | out. But we will see.
        
       | fny wrote:
       | For those who don't know, Druckenmiller is also very well known
       | for changing his mind the minute facts change which is one of the
       | hallmarks of good trading.
        
         | deehouie wrote:
         | This is the best comment in all. HN folks don't understand the
         | purpose of this article. You think Druckenmiller is so bearish?
         | for the next 30 yrs? Not a chance. He must have a huge short
         | position on the S&P500, and he likes you to sell your stocks so
         | he could cover at a lower level.
        
           | fny wrote:
           | Nah. Druck isn't one of those types. Bill Ackman is.
           | 
           | Druck is just known to change his opinion when the facts
           | change or he comes to a new conclusion. There's some anecdote
           | about him completely flipping on a position when going in and
           | out on an elevator ride that I can't quite remember.
           | 
           | By the way, _sideways_ means that the stock market is going
           | nowhere long or short. IMO, currencies and commodities are a
           | far better place to speculate.
        
             | deehouie wrote:
             | While you may know the guy better, notice this Druck
             | comment comes at a time when the long term buy-and-hold
             | thinking is at its weakest point. A slightly respectable
             | guru saying this sort of things is enough to make some
             | people sell.
        
         | snarf21 wrote:
         | Very true. Plus this is nonsense. Interest rates are still far
         | too low. There is wayyyyy too much money floating around in the
         | system and global growth has slowed. That money will be chasing
         | returns wherever they can find them and that has been the
         | market and now real estate. Both of these will be net up over
         | the next 10 years. It will be choppy for a few years as
         | inflation is battled and interest rates rise a little bit more.
        
           | peteradio wrote:
           | Inflation adjusted won't that look rather flat or negative?
           | Where are these real returns going to be coming from? Hot
           | stocks haven't been paying appropriate dividends for the last
           | two decades.
        
             | foobarian wrote:
             | I wonder how much the end Moore's law is a part of this
             | current slowdown. It would make sense to me that its impact
             | would lag a while, and would eventually catch up.
        
               | mostly_harmless wrote:
               | I don't know if it's moores law. except for servers, CPUs
               | are mostly running near idle.
               | 
               | My intuition would say tech saturation would make more of
               | a difference. That is, worldwide pretty much everyone
               | have now has adopted a computer and all businesses have
               | automated the low hanging fruit.
        
               | foobarian wrote:
               | You put in words what I was thinking. Thank you for your
               | comment :-)
        
       | newaccount2021 wrote:
        
       | mikeodds wrote:
       | Prime time to raise money to build a society based off Logan's
       | Run to deal with everyone that won't be able to afford to retire
       | in that scenario
        
         | giantg2 wrote:
         | Reviews at work already feel like the carousel. Might as well
         | extend that to other parts of society.
        
           | Kye wrote:
           | Trend pieces are worried about the new wave of Quiet Running.
        
       | giantg2 wrote:
       | TL;DR - nobody actually knows what the stock market is going to
       | do, but everyone has a theory.
        
       | iforgetti wrote:
       | For those of us still in the first half of our working careers,
       | this would be a welcome development.
        
         | jrochkind1 wrote:
         | How do you figure?
         | 
         | I was thinking the opposite: that the model of saving for
         | retirement via investment accounts requires good returns in the
         | early part of your career, so the smaller amounts of money you
         | can afford to put away for your relatively smaller early career
         | salary can compound over your career length to be enough for
         | retirement.
        
           | francisofascii wrote:
           | Assume for a moment that stocks are currently overvalued from
           | a historical perspective. So it is better if they stay flat
           | for a while and get back to normal valuations so when you buy
           | them each month, they are not overvalued. If they were to go
           | up in the next few years, they would become even more
           | overvalued and you would be buying them at even more
           | overvalued prices.
        
           | markvdb wrote:
           | Let me guess OP's reasoning.
           | 
           | Most of the HN audience is privileged class by courtesy of
           | being tech savvy. Unlike many others, most of us can keep
           | investing even in less fortunate times when others cannot.
           | Exactly those investments might yield extra high long term
           | returns.
        
           | iforgetti wrote:
           | What others wrote was pretty much my reasoning but a bit
           | further, over the very long run (30+ years) markets will
           | revert to mean performance. If you have strong gains in the
           | first half of your career then when you are in your peak
           | earning years, investments will be more expensive at time of
           | purchase. As a result when you are investing the most,
           | returns on that principle will be lower.
        
             | bart_spoon wrote:
             | Isn't this just the gambler's fallacy? Yes, markets over a
             | given period of time will likely conform to a particular
             | distribution of performance, with some below-average
             | periods and above-average periods that average out. But
             | that does not mean that if there is an extended time period
             | of terrible performance now, X years from there is likely
             | to be a very strong rebound to compensate.
        
       | tppiotrowski wrote:
       | Personally, I wish it was as rewarding building or creating
       | something as it is to invest in the stock market over the past
       | decade. If you have capital it makes more sense to put it into
       | stocks than opening a coffee shop or computer repair shop, etc.
       | If the stock market stops paying out maybe we'll go back to
       | trying to create value instead of profiting from value created by
       | others.
        
         | returnInfinity wrote:
         | stock market is a future indicator of economic activity, so if
         | its down, it also an indicator that less coffee shops will be
         | opened because of lack of capital
        
         | bidirectional wrote:
         | If you built or created something that other people like (i.e.
         | will pay for), you could probably get a way better 10 year ROI
         | than you would in the market.
        
         | ModernMech wrote:
         | Depends on what you mean by "rewarding". I feel that building
         | and creating is far more rewarding then clicking a button and
         | watching a number go up. I hope others feel the same, because
         | when everyone is clicking buttons and watching numbers, that's
         | not something society can sustain.
        
         | altdataseller wrote:
         | It's getting more rewarding to put into Treasury Bills, when
         | it's paying 4% in interest as of today.
        
           | caeril wrote:
           | That's a really good yield, so you're only losing 4.3%
           | annually on a real basis.
        
             | [deleted]
        
       | jrm4 wrote:
       | People say this like it's a bad thing.
       | 
       | Look, at a fundamental level, the stock market is a tool for
       | letting people put money into risky ventures without them
       | actually experiencing consequences for that risk.
       | 
       | Given the extent to which the nature of information has changed,
       | I'm comfortable no longer letting this be a driver of economic
       | growth. You want to put money in a thing in the hopes of getting
       | more money, fine. But do your homework -- if they screw up, yes,
       | YOU have to pay.
        
         | hcmacro wrote:
         | OTOH probably gonna be harder for startups and VCs to "pull one
         | over" public investors and dumb management teams.
        
       | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
       | "There's a high probability in my mind that the market, at best,
       | is going to be kind of flat for 10 years, sort of like this '66
       | to '82 time period"
       | 
       | From another article on '66-'82:
       | 
       | > The Dow went sideways, but the S&P actually earned a
       | respectable 6.8% return in that time.
       | 
       | 6.8% is hardly apocalyptic. The S&P 500 usually averages 10% over
       | long timescales.
       | 
       | His former hedge fund also delivered an annual average rate of
       | return of 30% from 1986 to 2010. What an absolute unit.
        
         | bitshiftfaced wrote:
         | I don't know about apocalyptic, but US Treasury bonds either
         | exceeded that return, or trailed not far behind for much of
         | that period. If you look at the S&P at a reward/risk
         | perspective, it wasn't very attractive at that period of time.
        
         | kritiko wrote:
         | 6.8% with 6.8% inflation, according to that article.
         | 
         | Edit: just got to the conclusion of this article, from 2014:
         | "Many smart people in the industry are predicting lower
         | investment returns over the next decade or so."
         | 
         | Funny.
        
         | reedf1 wrote:
         | "The S&P 500 usually averages 10% over long timescales."
         | 
         | This is a pretty meaningless statement.
         | 
         | 6.8% over 10-20 years is certainly a nightmare scenario for
         | most investors and is probably a significant loss against the
         | risk free rate over the same period.
        
         | concinds wrote:
         | 10% per year, not 10%.
         | 
         | 6% in 16 years is utterly pathetic.
        
       | jxf wrote:
       | > "There's a high probability in my mind that the market, at
       | best, is going to be kind of flat for 10 years, sort of like this
       | '66 to '82 time period," he said in an interview with Alex Karp,
       | CEO of software and A.I. firm Palantir.
       | 
       | Adjusting for inflation, the stock market was not "flat" during
       | this period [0]. The DJIA, for example, closed at an effective
       | price of 9,160.41 in January 1966 and closed at an effective
       | price of 3,176.25 in December 1982. That's a 65% drop, which is a
       | pretty big stretch to call "flat".
       | 
       | [0]: https://www.macrotrends.net/1319/dow-jones-100-year-
       | historic...
        
         | jibe wrote:
         | You are correct, but to clarify, you are saying the value
         | declined when adjusted for inflation. The DJIA average sat
         | around 900 the about a decade, with the real value getting
         | eaten away by the high inflation of the time.
        
           | jxf wrote:
           | > You are correct, but to clarify, you are saying the value
           | declined when adjusted for inflation.
           | 
           | That's what I meant by "adjusting for inflation" and "65%
           | decline". Apologies if that was worded confusingly.
        
         | tootie wrote:
         | A lot of the adjectives that traders use are different from how
         | casuals would interpret things. They are looking for massive
         | profit opportunities and declare hell on earth when they aren't
         | there because it is for them. People who are just putting 401K
         | money into index funds just need their money to slightly
         | outpace inflation which it will almost always do in a long
         | enough time horizon. We saw an outsize bull market and are now
         | giving up a lot of those gains, but if you just buy and hold,
         | you're nearly guaranteed to come out ahead even if you don't
         | really have much chance of making a killing.
        
           | svachalek wrote:
           | "Nearly guaranteed" may be a stretch. There are decades in US
           | history where you wouldn't really come out ahead (although
           | I'm not sure any alternatives to stock would have done
           | better) but internationally, there are many clear examples
           | where the stock market hasn't been a good investment on a
           | generational basis, like Japan now. The question is how much
           | do you believe in American exceptionalism, are US markets
           | really immune to this kind of failure forever, or have they
           | just been on a really good run?
        
             | tootie wrote:
             | There's an awesome website posted to HN a while back that
             | calculates total real returns (accounting for dividends and
             | inflation). Here's the chart for the Vanguard S&P500 index
             | fund:
             | 
             | https://totalrealreturns.com/s/VFINX
        
         | mvc wrote:
         | Presumably dividends would balance it out though.
        
           | O__________O wrote:
           | Dividends would balance out a 65% drop during the same
           | period, how so?
        
             | giantg2 wrote:
             | I think we'd have to look at the data, but it's possible
             | given that drop happened over an almost 20 year period.
             | Dividends around 2-4% annual over that time could make up
             | for it depending on specifics.
        
             | teraflop wrote:
             | A 65% drop in price over 17 years is "only" about 6% per
             | year. The S&P500 annual dividend yield during 1966-1982 was
             | not much less than 6%, especially during the latter half of
             | that period.
             | 
             | If you look at an inflation-adjusted total return chart (as
             | opposed to just price), the actual drop in investment value
             | was much smaller. I think "flat" isn't a terrible way to
             | describe it.
             | 
             | https://www.multpl.com/s-p-500-dividend-yield
             | 
             | http://www.simplestockinvesting.com/SP500-historical-real-
             | to...
        
               | jibe wrote:
               | Total return (dividends reinvested, inflation adjusted)
               | is -13.4% for 1965-1983.
        
             | treis wrote:
             | By being more than a 65% drop
        
           | rufus_foreman wrote:
           | With dividends reinvested you get -25.096%,
           | https://dqydj.com/dow-jones-return-calculator/.
           | 
           | S&P 500 is -3.745%.
        
             | onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
             | So one of the worst long-term periods in history - the S&P
             | was still ~50% better than cash.
             | 
             | What else is a passive investor gonna do?
        
               | fny wrote:
               | Sometimes you can't beat inflation. Wealth equality is
               | inherently inflationary. If people in developing nations
               | start demanding the same standard of living, prices are
               | screwed, costs go up, and certain cost changes cannot be
               | hedged.
               | 
               | For example, how exactly would you plan on protecting
               | yourself against wage increases? It's not like there's a
               | futures market for wages.
        
               | jsmith45 wrote:
               | If people could agree on some source of unbiased data
               | about average wages that updates frequently for a job
               | type, then there certainly could be (cash-settlement
               | only) futures based on that value.
               | 
               | What seems relatively unlikely is that you will find
               | people willing to offer physical settlement futures!
               | 
               | The market would probably also be somewhat shallow, being
               | more speculators than anything else. Basically only
               | groups acting more like insurance companies would be
               | willing to add much to the depth of the market, and
               | obviously they would sell such futures at such a steep
               | premium that is unlikely to be a very useful hedge.
        
               | datavirtue wrote:
               | Grow some balls and start a business?
        
               | onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
               | What if you already have a business with enormous profits
               | and don't want to spend them all, but invest some?
        
               | rufus_foreman wrote:
               | 10-year treasuries, coupon payments reinvested, would
               | have returned 18.156% adjusted for inflation over the
               | same period, https://dqydj.com/treasury-return-
               | calculator/.
               | 
               | They returned over 36% in 1982 alone!
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
         | What about S&P 500? The Dow Jones Industrial Average indexes a
         | mere 30 companies.
        
           | jibe wrote:
           | S&P was about the same, large decline in real dollars over
           | that time.
           | 
           | https://www.macrotrends.net/2324/sp-500-historical-chart-
           | dat...
        
           | cypress66 wrote:
           | Not just that, but weighed by their nominal price which is
           | insane.
        
           | bilsbie wrote:
           | I wish we'd stop talking about the Dow. It isn't useful.
        
             | jdkuepper wrote:
             | Yes, but also, stock correlations are so high that it's not
             | as big of a difference as you might think.[1]
             | 
             | 1: https://www.macroaxis.com/invest/pair-
             | correlation/DIA/%5EGSP...
        
       | pfortuny wrote:
       | And then suddenly someone comes up with, say, a working fusion
       | reactor.
        
       | mandeepj wrote:
       | Don't listen to these seasonal frogs. There's no such thing as
       | 'flat' in economy.
        
         | bitshiftfaced wrote:
         | Tell that to 1991 to 2010 Japan.
        
         | pydry wrote:
         | I wondered if it wasnt a reference to Irving Fisher's
         | "permanently high plateau" remark.
        
       | anm89 wrote:
       | The amount of dumb takes in this thread is staggering. The level
       | of dialogue here is 4chan level.
        
       | 8jef wrote:
       | _he has a history of a _bearish bias_ that he has had to work
       | around his whole career. _I like darkness_ he said._
       | 
       | Well, that's the only way to win long term at playing that game.
       | Buy very very low and sit on it. It helps if you already have
       | money. The bear feeds on the bull. Never be the bull.
        
       | apples_oranges wrote:
       | I, a random anon from the Internet, think SP500 is heading for
       | 2400 or even lower (1600ish?), which is great news, as millenials
       | will get a chance to buy stocks at a low price.
        
         | Workaccount2 wrote:
         | You probably don't realize it, most don't, but your statement
         | is contradictory.
         | 
         | It's the same line with the housing market doomers "Prices will
         | crash and I will be able to buy a nice home".
         | 
         | If something is crashing, it means no one can or will buy it.
         | If people can buy something or want to buy it, it will no
         | crash.
        
           | chmod775 wrote:
           | > You probably don't realize it, most don't, but your
           | statement is contradictory.
           | 
           | It's not.
           | 
           | > If something is crashing, it means no one can or will buy
           | it. [..] If people can buy something or want to buy it, it
           | will no crash.
           | 
           | You're only looking at demand as if that's everything that
           | determines price. There's also the supply side to consider,
           | as well as the fact that markets aren't a formless thing with
           | no fixed location existing in a vacuum.
           | 
           | Price crashes can also happen because of competition
           | destroying high margins or production simply becoming way
           | cheaper. Price crashes don't have to be related to demand: it
           | can simply be a matter of companies undercutting each other.
           | 
           | A third way for price crashes to happen is investors buying
           | up a commodity, increasing the price. This will likely cause
           | production to ramp up to compensate, slowly driving the price
           | back down. Once investors see the price beginning to drop,
           | they may sell in a panic. You're left with a market that is
           | flooded by investors trying divest themselves amidst an
           | overproduction, causing a price crash. The consumer never
           | went away or was unwilling to buy though! Averaged over the
           | entire timespan, demand never changed.
        
         | AnimalMuppet wrote:
         | If that happens, will millenials have any money with which to
         | buy stocks?
        
         | recursivedoubts wrote:
         | looking at the pullbacks in 2000 and 2008, there is a non-
         | trivial chance that the S&P will bottom sub-1000
        
           | chasd00 wrote:
           | Do you remember the financial crisis? In 2008 Paulson was
           | literally on his knees in front of Pelosi begging for
           | congress to do something. I doubt we're headed there again.
        
           | babyshake wrote:
           | Did the S&P drop by 80% or more in those recessions?
        
           | apples_oranges wrote:
           | yeah who knows, in the long run it will go way up of course,
           | as the USA and other industrial nations will grow and grow..
        
             | recursivedoubts wrote:
             | that's not clear either, w/population growth set to reverse
             | in the next 20-30 years
             | 
             | consider the Nikkei...
             | 
             | no crystal ball
        
       | chiffre01 wrote:
       | Looks like this guy's been making these kind of predictions for
       | at least the last 10 years:
       | 
       | https://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/04/druckenmiller-get-out-of-the...
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4W58zLwdDzM
       | 
       | https://www.cnbc.com/2015/11/03/stanley-druckenmiller-heres-...
       | 
       | https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/busi...
        
         | melling wrote:
         | This guy? One of the best traders in history.
         | 
         | https://priceonomics.com/the-trade-of-the-century-when-georg...
         | 
         | His streak was something like 25% or 30% over 30 years?
         | 
         | The tide is definitely going out. The Fed created a huge bubble
         | and everyone knew it.
         | 
         | Fed Balance sheet at $9 trillion...
        
           | danielmarkbruce wrote:
           | _was_.
           | 
           | He has been making a lot of similar predictions for a while.
        
             | Proven wrote:
        
           | anm89 wrote:
           | Yeah some clowns named Ray and Warren also keeps crying wolf
           | about how the economy has issues too. These guys have no idea
           | what they are talking about! I don't think they even trade.
        
             | nprateem wrote:
             | Buffett has also been predicting the mother of all crashes
             | since 2016. Lesson: never listen to experts unless you
             | discover one with a time machine.
             | 
             | Like they say, more wealth has been lost trying to time the
             | market than in crashes.
        
               | towaway15463 wrote:
               | The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay
               | solvent.
               | 
               | We're in a massive bubble but only a fool would try to
               | predict exactly when it will pop.
        
               | danielmarkbruce wrote:
               | Source? I haven't seen Buffett say anything of the sort
               | and am pretty certain he hasnt.
        
               | anm89 wrote:
               | Right. What an idiot. Guy has no idea what he's talking
               | about. As I said, he's probably never even made any money
               | trading.
               | 
               | Good thing I've got the bright denizens of HN to set me
               | straight.
        
               | hedora wrote:
               | Are you talking about this, where he hedged against a
               | market collapse, and then his portfolio only dropped 66%
               | of the drop at the beginning of 2016:
               | 
               | https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/01/26/how-
               | warren...
               | 
               | I'd read the strategy there more as "don't be greedy and
               | invest in companies with lots of growth and weak
               | fundamentals". That applies to bull markets too.
        
               | deltree7 wrote:
               | What? Buffett never predicts crashes.
               | 
               | His Mantra is keep identifying great businesses and keep
               | buying it
        
         | greenhatman wrote:
         | He's going to be right eventually. Now seems like a likely time
         | for him to be right.
        
       | dkrich wrote:
       | Saying the market was "flat" between 66 and 82 is a ridiculous
       | oversimplification.
       | 
       | There was a pretty strong bull market leading into 1973 which
       | then began the worst bear market since the great depression,
       | lasting until November of 1974.
       | 
       | Then the market bounced and a strong bull market ensued. Net
       | inflation and price over a long period one could argue the market
       | was flat or down, sure, but on a year-to-year basis to argue
       | there was no money to be made or lost holding stocks during this
       | period is just wrong.
       | 
       | If you were clever enough to get out of the market early in the
       | 73-74 bear market and then get in relatively early after the
       | November of 74 rebound, you'd have certainly had good returns. If
       | you think that's just hindsight and nobody could've done that,
       | read Marty Zweig's Winning on Wall Street where he has a section
       | entirely devoted to that period and how he did avoid most of the
       | drawdown.
        
       | iLoveOncall wrote:
       | It's okay because iLoveOncall says it won't, and this guy knows
       | as much as Stanley Dundermifflin here.
        
       | throwoutway wrote:
       | At this point, I'm expecting both stagflation and a flat market
       | for years to come. Odd that mortgage rate is above 6%, inflation
       | is high, layoffs are happening, and yet the White House is
       | pretending it's not a recession and won't say the word.
        
         | fullshark wrote:
         | They will admit it on November 9th
        
         | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
         | Employment remains high on average.
        
         | jhickok wrote:
         | I don't doubt that high interest rates will cause unemployment
         | to rise, but saying "layoffs are happening" is a little
         | disingenuous. We are still in the midst of one of the strongest
         | labor markets in US history.
        
           | datavirtue wrote:
           | Fact: economy is growing
        
         | treis wrote:
         | Inflation isn't high any more. July was 0% and August was 0.1%.
         | The headline number looks at a 12 month window. Until the very
         | high inflation months earlier this year drop out of that window
         | the headline number will be high. But it does not look like
         | prices are increasing much anymore.
         | 
         | All of the long term trends still point to low inflation like
         | they did before Covid. Slow population growth, technology, and
         | boomers aging out are strong forces keeping inflation in check.
         | IMHO we are going to go back to worrying about deflation in the
         | next 12 months or so.
        
           | copenja wrote:
           | The reason people find the 'zero inflation' headlines
           | misleading are mainly for three reasons:
           | 
           | 1) Aggregate month-to-month inflation metrics were flat/low
           | due to gas prices falling, but many important categories were
           | still quickly inflating. Notably rent, but also food.
           | 
           | 2) The reason people normally reference 12 month inflation
           | windows is because many things, like energy prices, are very
           | volatile month to month. It is going to take time to really
           | see the trends.
           | 
           | 3) For things that skyrocketed like food, people are hoping
           | to actually see the prices come back _down_.
           | 
           | So, yeah, you are correct on your numbers, clearly. But as an
           | non-expert, I'm not really sure the current trends are
           | positive. I think they are still pretty troubling.
        
           | prottog wrote:
           | > Inflation isn't high any more.
           | 
           | The CPI was 255.7 in 2019 and estimated to be 294.4 for 2022.
           | That's a 15% increase in three years in an index that's
           | acknowledged to somewhat under-report inflation. CPI could
           | flatline (zero MoM) for the next two years and we would still
           | be at 3% annual inflation over five years, which is above the
           | Fed's target, in addition to all the asset inflation we've
           | had that the CPI doesn't really track. Absolutely nobody who
           | pays real bills will feel like inflation has subsided.
           | 
           | > IMHO we are going to go back to worrying about deflation in
           | the next 12 months or so.
           | 
           | There's a lot of money to be made in the STIRS markets if
           | your prediction comes true.
        
             | treis wrote:
             | >That's a 15% increase in three years
             | 
             | Which means it's high over the last three years. It doesn't
             | mean it's high today.
        
               | prottog wrote:
               | You're right, but it's going to take either a while or
               | actively lower prices before people will stop feeling
               | like everything is more expensive than it should be.
               | Psychology matters for the effects of inflation on the
               | macro economy.
               | 
               | I've definitely altered my purchasing behavior because
               | things "feel" too expensive, and a few months of 0% MoM
               | inflation isn't going to change that. Either in two years
               | I'm going to finally get used to a cart of groceries
               | costing $250, or prices come down sooner.
        
               | foobarian wrote:
               | Don't forget the impact of COVID measures, which had a
               | huge once-in-a-lifetime effect that is now going away.
        
         | SantalBlush wrote:
         | "Layoffs are happening" is not a metric, it's a truism. Layoffs
         | are always happening somewhere, even in a growing economy. How
         | prevalent are layoffs in the overall economy? You didn't even
         | bother to check.
         | 
         | Current mortgage rates have little to do with recession, if at
         | all.
         | 
         | Inflation is a problem, and it could absolutely lead to
         | recession in the near future, but it hasn't yet. This is why
         | the White House is "pretending" we're not in a recession.
        
         | Workaccount2 wrote:
         | The top 40% are unbelievably flush with cash and the job market
         | is strong as ever (bloated tech companies don't count, their
         | value was solely promises anyway).
         | 
         | The fed is fighting to undo the QE it over did during the
         | pandemic
        
           | coldcode wrote:
           | I think it's unwinding the QE it did since 2008.
        
             | boole1854 wrote:
             | They are nowhere near unwinding the QE since either the
             | pandemic or 2008:
             | 
             | https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WSHOSHO
             | 
             | Why would they even try to undo 14 years of asset
             | purchases? Their goal is only to reduce the growth in
             | nominal spending in the economy so that it grows at around
             | 4% annually (yielding an inflation rate of 2%). The goal is
             | not to return nominal spending back to where it was in
             | 2008, which would involve nearly a 50% cut from current
             | levels.
        
       | ParksNet wrote:
       | We need to drastically increase pension ages and even abandon
       | retirement as a mainstream concept. Working part-time in 60s and
       | 70s should be commonplace.
        
         | efficax wrote:
         | why even let people quit? perhaps labor should be mandatory on
         | pain of death
        
         | diordiderot wrote:
         | And eliminate child labour laws. All these kids expecting free
         | lunches and what not.
        
       | zackmorris wrote:
       | Investment in general.
       | 
       | After the global awakening, the rest of the world doesn't want to
       | do our work for pennies on the dollar anymore.
       | 
       | For example, Apple won't be able to enjoy high profits on the
       | back of indentured servants at Foxconn. Marketplaces like app
       | stores and Amazon won't be able to skim such high percentages
       | from the people doing the actual work of making and shipping
       | things. Even portals like Google will find that their best
       | efforts can't keep up with the dizzying pace of technological
       | improvements in areas like machine learning as tech becomes more
       | and more democratized.
       | 
       | I have a question about this: I perceive profit as theft because
       | I've spent my life working for employers for pennies on the
       | dollar too. I'm averse towards investing because I don't want to
       | use people. What's a "fair" return on investment? 5%? 10%? Or is
       | investment inherently usurious? I'm concerned that my
       | unwillingness to invest could end up being a burden on
       | Millennials and Gen Z, the same way that the Boomers refusing to
       | invest in Gen X caused us many lost decades. Your experience may
       | not have been like mine, but trust me, the
       | proletariat/plebeians/paupers of the world are wrestling with
       | this as one of the central issues this century. Can we have
       | capitalism without exploitation, and if so, how will we
       | accomplish that?
        
       | pydry wrote:
       | I think the investing goal for the next decade is to pick the
       | asset class that will lose the least.
       | 
       | Stocks wont do well, but that asset class could still be stocks.
        
         | Kon-Peki wrote:
         | Let's say the market does what he is warning it will do:
         | 
         | Dividend reinvestment will be a major component of you
         | portfolio returns. So you need to focus on companies that pay
         | dividends. Also, avoiding obvious scam companies. Hanging out
         | here has already given you a picture of how to identify a
         | certain class of such companies long before their IPO ;)
        
       | blantonl wrote:
       | Great.
       | 
       | One of my favorite investment strategies is to sell options, so
       | I'll sit back for the decade and collect theta.
        
       | max_ wrote:
       | > "There's a high probability in my mind that the market, at
       | best, is going to be kind of flat for 10 years, sort of like this
       | '66 to '82 time period,"
       | 
       | Is there a resource that has the chart between '66 & '82 so I can
       | have a look at what it was like?
        
         | JKCalhoun wrote:
         | I played a bit with this:
         | https://www.barchart.com/stocks/quotes/$DOWI/interactive-cha...
         | 
         | You can drag to scroll back for historical data.
        
         | kritiko wrote:
         | Just found this article:
         | https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2014/06/1966-1982-stock-mar...
        
       | matt_s wrote:
       | And Michael Burry has been predicting crashes every few years
       | since the 2008 one.
       | 
       | And Bill Ackman predicted 'hell is coming' at the onset of the
       | pandemic and made $2B [0]. And there were US Senators that also
       | did possibly illegal things to pull money out of the market
       | before the public knew about the pandemic.
       | 
       | Outside of disclosures filed with the SEC, stock trading is
       | anonymous yet they will have all sorts of headlines like today on
       | Yahoo Finance it states "Stock futures tumble on heels of grim
       | warning from FedEx". So all players in the market are just
       | selling everything across the market to the tune of -1.4% because
       | FedEx is having issues? I question headlines in the financial
       | sector, more often lately it feels like its just what they want
       | you to believe to get you to take actions that benefit
       | themselves.
       | 
       | [0]https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/25/bill-ackman-exits-market-
       | hed...
        
         | bidirectional wrote:
         | Ackman said hell was coming, was appropriately hedged using
         | instruments which would appreciate when hell did indeed come,
         | and made $2bn on his hedge which offset the losses in his
         | equity positions. He didn't net profit $2bn.
        
           | llampx wrote:
           | He appeared on TV crying while his firm was unrolling their
           | hedges and buying stock for the rebound. Never trust media.
        
             | steveBK123 wrote:
             | its called "talking your book"
        
             | dkrich wrote:
             | Ackman has a very mixed track record and has not had
             | particularly great returns. To believe that he somehow
             | predicted the entire sequence of events is being incredibly
             | generous. Earlier this year he laid out an unbelievably
             | lazy bull case for Netflix when it was around $350/share
             | and said he had accumulated over a billion dollar position
             | only to sell it a month later a massive loss saying the
             | story had changed.
        
             | Buttons840 wrote:
             | This is the first time it's occurred to me that _any_
             | "market-expert" who is widely listened too has an inherent
             | conflict of interest. By misleading the public they can
             | increase their own gains.
        
         | impulser_ wrote:
         | There is a reason why they hedge funds underperform the market.
         | Not by a little, by quite bit.
         | 
         | They try too hard to predict the market, when in the long run
         | if they just stayed long they would have done better.
        
           | bidirectional wrote:
           | Why is 'the market' the only benchmark worth comparing to?
           | For many investors it is too volatile, they can take worse
           | performance if the chance of major drawdowns is reduced.
        
           | selectodude wrote:
           | The key word in hedge fund is hedge. They're not supposed to
           | outperform the market. They're supposed to not fall as far as
           | everything else during a crash as well.
           | 
           | Granted, that's not really how things work in practice
           | anymore, but that's supposed to be the idea.
        
         | coldcode wrote:
         | I read a lot of these type of predictions, often you see some
         | people say it's a great time to buy, and others it's a bad time
         | to buy, and generally you will only remember the people who
         | guessed correctly, so none of this helps you today at all.
         | Every time those people who got lucky will appear in some
         | future ad or article making a new prediction, and generally
         | fewer will be lucky twice. In the long run, everyone is likely
         | wrong.
        
           | hotpotamus wrote:
           | It turns out it's hard to make predictions; especially about
           | the future.
        
           | taylodl wrote:
           | This is why the dollar cost averaging technique works so
           | well. No, it's not likely to provide you a financial
           | windfall, but it's also not likely to yield you financial
           | devastation either. If you're investing for retirement then
           | it generates quite a bit of wealth in the long term.
        
             | serioussecurity wrote:
             | This is incorrect.
             | 
             | https://static.twentyoverten.com/5980d16bbfb1c93238ad9c24/r
             | J...
        
               | taylodl wrote:
               | Yeah, no. Us normal working stiffs don't typically have a
               | $20M windfall we're looking to invest. That's a whole
               | other ballgame.
        
             | llampx wrote:
             | I wonder how well dollar cost averaging is going to work in
             | an era of rising interest rates.
        
             | lexapro wrote:
             | Yeah, but if you have a lump sum of money it's still better
             | to invest everything at once if you plan to hold it for
             | decades. Vanguard has a good paper on that titled "Dollar-
             | cost averaging just means taking risk later". And as you
             | get close to retirement, you need to be mindful about
             | sequence of returns risk.
        
               | nprateem wrote:
               | Got a link please? That surely depends on having a > 20
               | year time horizon
        
               | serioussecurity wrote:
               | https://static.twentyoverten.com/5980d16bbfb1c93238ad9c24
               | /rJ...
        
               | tunesmith wrote:
               | This one isn't bad:
               | 
               | https://www.reddit.com/r/Bogleheads/comments/wpqsno/lumps
               | um_...
               | 
               | And here's a question. Say you have a windfall and you're
               | deciding whether to lump sum or DCA it. And you decide to
               | DCA. So therefore, why wouldn't you liquidate your entire
               | investment portfolio and also DCA that the same way?
        
               | andrewf wrote:
               | If you liquidate your portfolio you're going to have to
               | recognize (pay tax on) capital gains.
        
               | tunesmith wrote:
               | Good point, but how about for retirement portfolios?
               | 
               | I'm trying to point out the irrationality of it - after
               | all, I don't think people desist from liquidating _only_
               | for tax /fee reasons. "I would sell everything today and
               | DCA back in over the next year if not for those pesky
               | taxes and fees! (shakes fist at sky)"
        
           | foobarian wrote:
           | Your comment makes me realize that in the medium term, after
           | most of the unlucky predictors drop off, you are
           | statistically likely to be left with a few really lucky ones
           | (i.e. if a thousand people are tossing coins, you're likely
           | to get one guy with a streak of 10 heads), and these
           | individuals are perfect to put on pedestals as rare and
           | brilliant talents.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | tchalla wrote:
             | Your comment reminds me of Buffet's 1984 article titled
             | "The super investors of Graham and Doddville". Here's the
             | relevant excerpt
             | 
             | > Before we begin this examination, I would like you to
             | imagine a national coin-flipping contest. Let's assume we
             | get 225 million Americans up tomorrow morning and we ask
             | them all to wager a dollar. They go out in the morning at
             | sunrise, and they all call the flip of a coin. If they call
             | correctly, they win a dollar from those who called wrong.
             | Each day the losers drop out, and on the subsequent day the
             | stakes build as all previous winnings are put on the line.
             | After ten flips on ten mornings, there will be
             | approximately 220,000 people in the United States who have
             | correctly called ten flips in a row. They each will have
             | won a little over $1,000. Now this group will probably
             | start getting a little puffed up about this, human nature
             | being what it is. They may try to be modest, but at
             | cocktail parties they will occasionally admit to attractive
             | members of the opposite sex what their technique is, and
             | what marvelous insights they bring to the field of
             | flipping. Assuming that the winners are getting the
             | appropriate rewards from the losers, in another ten days we
             | will have 215 people who have successfully called their
             | coin flips 20 times in a row and who, by this exercise,
             | each have turned one dollar into a little over $1 million.
             | $225 million would have been lost, $225 million would have
             | been won. By then, this group will really lose their heads.
             | They will probably write books on "How I turned a Dollar
             | into a Million in Twenty Days Working Thirty Seconds a
             | Morning." Worse yet, they'll probably start jetting around
             | the country attending seminars on efficient coin-flipping
             | and tackling skeptical professors with, "If it can't be
             | done, why are there 215 of us?" By then some business
             | school professor will probably be rude enough to bring up
             | the fact that if 225 million orangutans had engaged in a
             | similar exercise, the results would be much the same -- 215
             | egotistical orangutans with 20 straight winning flips. I
             | would argue, however, that there are some important
             | differences in the examples I am going to present. For one
             | thing, if (a) you had taken 225 million orangutans
             | distributed roughly as the U.S. population is; if (b) 215
             | winners were left after 20 days; and if (c) you found that
             | 40 came from a particular zoo in Omaha, you would be pretty
             | sure you were on to something. So you would probably go out
             | and ask the zookeeper about what he's feeding them, whether
             | they had special exercises, what books they read, and who
             | knows what else. That is, if you found any really
             | extraordinary concentrations of success, you might want to
             | see if you could identify concentrations of unusual
             | characteristics that might be causal factors. Scientific
             | inquiry naturally follows such a pattern. If you were
             | trying to analyze possible causes of a rare type of cancer
             | -- with, say, 1,500 cases a year in the United States --
             | and you found that 400 of them occurred in some little
             | mining town in Montana, you would get very interested in
             | the water there, or the occupation of those afflicted, or
             | other variables. You know it's not random chance that 400
             | come from a small area. You would not necessarily know the
             | causal factors, but you would know where to search. I
             | submit to you that there are ways of defining an origin
             | other than geography. In addition to geographical origins,
             | there can be what I call an intellectual origin. I think
             | you will find that a disproportionate number of successful
             | coin-flippers in the investment world came from a very
             | small intellectual village that could be called Graham-and-
             | Doddsville. A concentration of winners that simply cannot
             | be explained by chance can be traced to this particular
             | intellectual village.
             | 
             | https://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/articles/columbia-
             | business/sup...
        
               | danielmarkbruce wrote:
               | The funny thing about these people is that they did
               | really well for a few decades. And then it dried up.
               | Computers, the internet, software - it changed the world
               | so much in the last 20 years that many things which
               | looked like "deep value" just went belly up.
               | 
               | Eddie Lampert is a great example of a (brilliant) graham
               | and doddsville guy who basically got squashed by not
               | understanding the world had changed.
               | 
               | Over the past 20 years the tech "intellectual village"
               | has been the smart money. They'll probably be for another
               | 20 years. And then someone will point to it with a
               | similar explanation that Buffett had. And then they'll
               | get crushed by whatever multi-decade driving force comes
               | next.
        
             | twawaaay wrote:
             | What you do is look at the rationale that was given
             | _before_ it happened. You look at their reasoning and
             | figure out if it was actually what happened in reality.
             | Just make sure you are not picking up on their
             | rationalisation _after_ the fact.
        
               | danielmarkbruce wrote:
               | The rationalizations before they happened are always very
               | intelligent sounding, even in retrospect. If you have 100
               | intelligent sounding speculators lay out their reasoning
               | and one hits the jackpot, it doesn't mean much.
               | 
               | The general problem is each has a mental (or computer)
               | model of the world that is a vast simplification of the
               | world. When they get it right it sounds like they
               | understood and accounted for all the variables. They
               | never did.
        
               | twawaaay wrote:
               | You are not looking if they "sounded" intelligent. You
               | are looking if they were true.
        
               | danielmarkbruce wrote:
               | If I flip a coin and someone has an intelligent sounding
               | reason for it to come up heads... and then it does... it
               | means practically zero.
               | 
               | Being right means little when there are 100s of folks
               | with predictions and reasons.
        
               | xdavidliu wrote:
               | if someone made a correct prediction on a coinflip,
               | you're more likely to believe they knew what they were
               | doing (rather than just get lucky) if they sound
               | intelligent
        
               | KptMarchewa wrote:
               | The fact that they had good reasoning in the past does
               | not guarantee they will continue in the future.
        
               | twawaaay wrote:
               | You are right, but it is not very useful way of looking
               | at the world.
               | 
               | Sometimes you just need to trust people on certain things
               | to be able to make useful decisions having very little or
               | no knowledge in the subject.
               | 
               | One useful way of dealing with this is to look at the
               | past performance of the person.
               | 
               | Assuming you have no other information about the market,
               | if you see a person having track record of well-reasoned,
               | accurate market predictions it is probably as good signal
               | as it gets that you should trust their predictions.
               | 
               | Ideally you would want to check this with other people
               | having knowledge in the topic (and also good track
               | record), check that their knowledge is still applicable
               | to circumstances (if they were able to give good
               | predictions in peace maybe they are not suited to doing
               | this in the time of war) and hopefully also educate
               | yourself just a bit to be able to ask clarifying
               | questions and spot obvious problems.
        
               | thingification wrote:
               | So who has done well on this score in your book? :-)
        
               | xdavidliu wrote:
               | "well reasoned" is often easily faked, and often confused
               | with "articulate"
        
             | ericbarrett wrote:
             | The inverse of this is an old, old scam:
             | 
             | 1) Send out a bunch of letters predicting moves on
             | (usually) penny stocks; a different set of stocks is used
             | for each letter
             | 
             | 2) A few days later, cull the recipients whose predictions
             | didn't work out. Send another batch of predictions, again
             | individually varied, to the remainder
             | 
             | 3) Repeat once or twice more and you've got a small list of
             | people who've received three or four correct predictions in
             | a row. Hammer them with solicitations to invest in your
             | "foolproof" scheme
             | 
             | 4) Collect (via a pump-and-dump, or just solicit the money
             | directly and run)
             | 
             | Nowadays it's probably happening in Telegram groups or some
             | such. Or you could do this on Reddit et al. using different
             | usernames, and only keep the accounts that were right.
        
             | sorokod wrote:
             | Pretty much like the brilliant founders of successful
             | startups.
        
           | babyshake wrote:
           | > Every time those people who got lucky will appear in some
           | future ad or article making a new prediction, and generally
           | fewer will be lucky twice.
           | 
           | Survivorship bias, survival bias or immortal time bias is the
           | logical error of concentrating on the people or things that
           | made it past some selection process and overlooking those
           | that did not, typically because of their lack of visibility.
        
         | daniel-cussen wrote:
         | You shouldn't read those headlines. Both the ones walking you
         | off a cliff in increasingly devious ways the interviews with
         | Warren Buffett saying buy and hold which is a pessimal
         | strategy, and the headlines announcing x happened because y as
         | if you should think y leads x. It did not, they don't know
         | that, news blogs get a pass in telling people false causes
         | after the fact, dude it's purely made up and it's a guessing
         | game to train you to guess as it suits them. Plato's Cave.
        
           | lexapro wrote:
           | Why is buy and hold a "pessimal strategy"?
        
             | daniel-cussen wrote:
             | [I talk about predicting the future in this essay. I
             | mention that up front because maybe then you can take on
             | the walls of text.]
             | 
             | Companies always go to shit eventually and you're left
             | holding the bag. Spesh because there's no dividends and
             | companies never wind down, they just do gambits with
             | borrowed money. That's the Way of the American CEO. Dude
             | these dumbasses even publish books about that being the
             | way, like Jack Welch's suckafucking book _Straight from the
             | Gut_ yeah spilled his guts alright.
             | 
             | That means that when they can't pay that debt, the
             | creditors have priority, shares get no part of any of the
             | money. So CEOs can't own debt on their own company (I
             | _think_ , there's rules, like they all get broken but
             | there's still rules and breaking them has a cost like in
             | slaps on the wrist, like it has to be very intermediated,
             | because otherwise duh first thing everybody would do is
             | short the company they run and fly it into a mountain). So
             | it looks very smooth, very well thought-out, high-
             | integrity, the American tax system is like that too, looks
             | air tight on form 1040, and if you dig it looks more and
             | more airtight until--whoosh cracked window on an airplane
             | everything flying out. Nah.
             | 
             | Dude get in and get the fuck out. Know when to sell. Bill
             | Browder, whom I don't think much of in most regards and
             | have ripped on here explained why he's a nomad. But having
             | talked him down, he does say smart dead-on-the-money intel.
             | You gotta know first off when to get in. Under the thesis
             | that it's exponential (it's impossible to respect that
             | thesis, cubic at best, cubic is short and sweet, "ex-po-
             | nen-tial" is a mouthful) so you can get in whenever it
             | makes no difference. There's no sexy part of the
             | exponential, every part of the exponential is sexy. Like I
             | don't know I got advice like get out right when it's taking
             | off--it never takes off. It's identical to its derivative,
             | no inflection points, no maxima, no minima, it's the
             | comparable in its uniformity to a flatline. In a sense it
             | is a flatline because of inflation, that connects both
             | curves, e^x - e^x = 0, f(x)=0 is the flatline. Alternately,
             | e^x / e^x = 1, f(x)=1, though that's a totally different
             | flatline.
             | 
             | So there is a moment to get in and that's when there's a
             | _genuine_ crash that _nobody_ saw coming, that later is
             | said to be impossible to predict--dude that 's when. But to
             | get in at that point you need to have gotten out before
             | then, ideally at the peak. So because of relativity you
             | can't react to the peak, see oh it just peaked time to sell
             | --no there's a delay, like coupla hours for a customer to
             | talk to his broker, so gotta preempt the peak by a coupla
             | hours, that means gotta give the sell order pre-peak--
             | meaning while it's still going up according to some smooth
             | description of the Brownian curve (you never see it in the
             | full grain, that information costs money an hn user doesn't
             | pay). So it's critical your broker try to talk you out of
             | it--that's a very good sign, just convince him you're
             | stupid and he'll say "eh, masochist"--that's exactly what
             | you want to hear. Because if you do depart the cyclical
             | assets at the peak of the cycle and transfer it to
             | countercyclical assets, then you get a bonus from them (not
             | much, gold is politically oppressed by practically all
             | empires, only one exception) so like gold won't double, but
             | in my analysis that's because it's too feared so instead
             | Bitcoin would jump, and I bet on it on margin almost at the
             | trough, and I got 90% of the appreciation in Oct-Nov last
             | year.
             | 
             | So that's the thing, selling near the top. So it's a
             | totally political move, just like predicting the peak on
             | Sep 27 (when the Fed announced the rate hikes, charts lie
             | inflation lies that was the peak that was when the shit got
             | really sticky and the pipes backed up) 30 days before. So
             | for my personal protection, in order not to be subjected to
             | additional psychiatric malpractice and experiments and all
             | that shit, instead of saying my spine gave me a trillion-
             | dollar twitch, I will play the fool card and say it was a
             | quadrillion dollar twitch. What's the difference? For me
             | both are infinite resources, even a million dollars is
             | infinite resources. The difference--even if I say this
             | explicitly--is when I say quadrillion shrinks say I'm
             | crazy, which is good that's what I want. Chose which ward I
             | end up in carefully. Dude no spinal taps.
        
             | matt_s wrote:
             | For example, say you left a company and transferred a 401k
             | balance into Vanguard and put it into VTSAX (total stock
             | market ETF) with no ongoing deposits. Lets say you thought
             | the market was going to go down and on Jan 3rd 2022 you
             | yoinked out your entire balance which for the sake of easy
             | math was exactly $100k (not take a withdrawal, just pull it
             | from the ETF). Today you would still have $100k sitting
             | there in a placeholder account earning $0 (its like a no-
             | mans-land account for moving money in between funds, or if
             | you were prepping an actual withdrawal).
             | 
             | If you let that $100k balance stay in VTSAX on Jan 3rd, you
             | would be -19.15% and have $80,850 sitting there today.
             | Granted in this example there aren't regular deposits going
             | in so it really is just money parked there. If you are
             | continually contributing money into a 401k or other tax
             | deferred account, contributing as the market goes down is
             | fine because you're averaging down with the market. Or
             | maybe its not fine depending on your personal circumstances
             | (i.e. going to retire soon or something like that).
        
               | NegativeK wrote:
               | I've always interpreted Buffet's advice as aimed at time
               | periods way longer than one year.
        
               | daniel-cussen wrote:
               | Not like he has a fucking Bloomberg terminal with no
               | latency or anything. Like he can't spell out FPGA's but
               | he delegates. Not half as senile as he makes himself
               | look, not a shit mathematician at all, not a folklore-
               | driven dude that anybody can imitate (counterfactual,
               | that's part of the business), publishes information on
               | his colon biopsies for a reason, he is rich because _he
               | wants to be rich_ , he likes money. Plus he's the
               | designated "Richest Man in the World" trading off with
               | Bill Gates like they're a wrestling team. Makes no
               | fucking sense, wealth has been aggregating incredibly for
               | thirty years, rich getting richer, more stratified, more
               | clustered, according to literally everyone even USG
               | census, everyone. _But_ the richest man in the world has
               | had 60 billion dollars on the nose since 2000? What the
               | fuck? Apparently now it 's a little higher, Jeff Bezos
               | and Elon Musk, at like $160 or some billion...like no
               | it's not. Diminished variance stedda amplified variance.
               | Silva Paradox, http://fgemm.com. An actual valuation of
               | their wealth would significantly diminish it, and inform
               | others of it, they don't know really. Only a hobo can
               | look in his pocket and say "I have 550 pesos" a rich man
               | it's like either his company has a fluctuating market cap
               | or he needs armies of accountants and lawyers and like
               | occasionally vudu priests literally "Vudunomics" like
               | they believe in magic. Why not? There can be a physics
               | explanation behind it that will not be understood for
               | hundreds of years, if it works hell. Yeah. If it works
               | Hell.
               | 
               | White magic or black magic? Well preferably white but
               | when told that requires giving all wealth away to the
               | poor as the first step, they like say...uh...what's the
               | other one? Be richer and richer, always, black magic. OK
               | that works better. And the richest men wrestling team
               | agreed to give half their wealth away, which is OK that's
               | cool in principle, I don't have a read on that. What I
               | can say is white magic simply is hard, you can't
               | successfully give away all your money, you end up with
               | more even more money, and then you give that away and you
               | get it all back, give all all of it away get down to a
               | penny. Apologize to a beggar when you give it to him
               | (it's considered insulting) dude riches leak into your
               | ascetic life, from every nook and cranny, out of nowhere
               | like not quite to the point of finding cash on the
               | sidewalk (who knows, any day now, it's becoming a sick
               | game). Spesh when you have faith, a mustard seed, thing
               | is a mustard seed is a huge amount of neurons, that's a
               | subsection of your brain that needs to germinate from
               | somewhere, very tricky very tricky, and it doesn't work
               | at all half-way. It's all or nothing. Saying more would
               | make it impossible for you to develop it. Matthew 17:20,
               | that's all I got, that's all you need.
               | 
               | Whereas if Warren Buffett asks me, I'd say "you're rich."
               | Simple as that, and that's the actual question, it's in
               | practice binary, does he have to worry about money or
               | not? No because he's rich.
               | 
               | No, Buffett has no bloomberg terminals, no technology he
               | does understand (he gets for instance stock tickers, gets
               | a ton of things, plays dumb, and some stuff he does in
               | fact not get and is truthful about it, like investing in
               | Apple, he doesn't get that). Yeah bajillion dollars and
               | gets his information for free on yahoo finance like you
               | or me.
        
               | llampx wrote:
               | The best application of GPT-3 I've seen.
        
               | daniel-cussen wrote:
               | The best application of GPT-3 I've seen.
        
             | 01100011 wrote:
             | IDK what OP believes, but to me, the "Boglehead" strategy
             | is great, with giant caveats.
             | 
             | Most devotees I talk to get visibly frustrated when I
             | suggest that you can look at larger macroeconomic forces,
             | like COVID, supply chain issues, Fed manipulations(both
             | positive and negative) and make educated predictions on the
             | direction of stocks. My guess is that these are folks who
             | just don't want the frustration of learning about these
             | things, and I get that. It is a significant cognitive load
             | to maintain an understanding and awareness of market
             | influencing factors.
             | 
             | I use a family member as an example who was told by their
             | money manager to move to cash at the beginning of the year.
             | That wasn't just dumb luck. Was it a sure bet? Nothing is
             | in this world. Do you bring a winter coat to a July outdoor
             | event in Phoenix? I mean, it _could_ be cold, right? But
             | yet the writing was on the wall for the direction equities
             | and bonds would take this year.
             | 
             | Can you perfectly time the bottom? No. It's also important
             | not to be too conservative. The majority of gains in a
             | stock market cycle are made in the first sprint out of the
             | gate when everyone is still fearful. But you can know when
             | things are peaking and GTFO before the slide. You don't
             | need to be Michael Burry to spot these things either. You
             | just need to not watch CNBC and Cramer or any of the other
             | paid shills.
        
         | mccorrinall wrote:
         | And every time Burry shorted the top. Looks like this time he
         | actually hit the long term reversal instead of local high.
         | 
         | So, he was always waiting for this and this time he gets green
         | numbers big time.
        
         | melling wrote:
         | How about the Biggest Bear of them all.
         | 
         | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/super-bubble-yet-burst-jeremy...
        
         | behaveEc0n00 wrote:
         | Chomsky has been calling out their effort to get you to take
         | actions that benefit "them" for decades:
         | https://youtu.be/N11tcnPBwf4
         | 
         | Jim Cramer said the quiet bits out loud:
         | https://youtu.be/gyaPf6qXLa8
         | 
         | https://youtu.be/r07Gg92YjOI
         | 
         | US military industrial complex donated propaganda research to
         | unis after Korea and it made its way to journalism, behavioral
         | economics, advertising, and marketing programs.
         | 
         | "Stimulate as best as possible an emotional mood, insert
         | talking point so next time that mood bubbles up the message
         | comes to mind."
        
         | spaceman_2020 wrote:
         | > And there were US Senators that also did possibly illegal
         | things to pull money out of the market before the public knew
         | about the pandemic
         | 
         | I just found out that there's a new ETF being filed that tracks
         | trades by democrats and republicans.
         | 
         | Probably beat the market easily
        
           | Aaronstotle wrote:
           | What's the name for it?
        
           | gumby wrote:
           | Does one group do better than the other?
        
           | triceratops wrote:
           | They disclose their trades a month or two afterward. If
           | there's any confidential info embedded in those trades its
           | value is probably gone by the time we find out about them.
        
         | fullshark wrote:
         | My knee jerk reaction was yours, but he does flesh out his
         | argument in the piece, and it makes sense...
        
         | sb057 wrote:
         | >So all players in the market are just selling everything
         | across the market to the tune of -1.4% because FedEx is having
         | issues?
         | 
         | FedEx's issues is that their volume is down massively. High
         | (nay, accelerating) rates of trade are the foundation of the
         | modern economy. If trade starts to slow down, or, Lord forbid,
         | _decline_ , then yes that can have massive negative
         | repercussions.
        
           | foobarian wrote:
           | Based on the last few years of my (and a relatively wide
           | friend circle) experiences with FedEx I wouldn't be surprised
           | if they are just suffering from getting outcompeted by Amazon
           | and others. If their internal logistics are as bad as what
           | the customer-facing experience would lead me to believe, I
           | worry for their future.
           | 
           | Edit: completely subjective and armchair-quarterback-like
           | opinion, of course.
        
             | prottog wrote:
             | For what it's worth, I always have issues with UPS and
             | never with FedEx. It could very well be a local thing.
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | kevin_thibedeau wrote:
         | The only thing better than seeking alpha is creating alpha.
        
         | mmastrac wrote:
         | As the old joke goes: Burry predicted 20 of the last two
         | crashes.
        
           | twawaaay wrote:
           | Burry is doing a lot of pretty short term speculation,
           | according to his filings. What is a crash for a short term
           | investor might be a bump for a long term one.
        
         | JKCalhoun wrote:
         | Yeah, but someday they'll be right.
        
           | danjoredd wrote:
           | Yeah but just because a broken clock is right twice a day
           | doesn't mean you will keep looking at that clock
        
       | seydor wrote:
       | I predict it will go up, it will go down. On average it will be
       | flat
        
       | papichulo4 wrote:
       | Does anyone understand the "They're like reformed smokers"
       | comment?
       | 
       | > "They've gone from printing a bunch of money, like driving a
       | Porsche at 200 miles an hour, to not only taking the foot off the
       | gas, but just slamming the brakes on."
       | 
       | I understand the Porsche example, but I don't understand the
       | smoker reference.
        
       | mountainriver wrote:
       | I have a very different position on this. I think we will see the
       | most growth we've ever seen in the next decade and it will be
       | powered by AI.
       | 
       | I think most of these investors don't really understand how close
       | we are to have very useful AI and what it's impact will be. We
       | are roughly on the verge of another industrial revolution
        
         | CSMastermind wrote:
         | > I think most of these investors don't really understand how
         | close we are to have very useful AI and what it's impact will
         | be. We are roughly on the verge of another industrial
         | revolution
         | 
         | Tell me more. I'm willing to be persuaded by this position but
         | I'm skeptical.
         | 
         | What specific AI breakthroughs do you think will happen on what
         | timelines?
        
           | mountainriver wrote:
           | Just take AI assisted programming, if it makes devs twice as
           | effective at their jobs then its massively increased the
           | output of our most profitable industry.
           | 
           | This is just one field, AI will impact the output of most
           | fields
        
         | jdhn wrote:
         | >We are roughly on the verge of another industrial revolution
         | 
         | I was told that the "internet of things" would bring about
         | unparalleled gains in manufacturing, and then that very quietly
         | went away. I'm not holding my breath for AI to deliver on what
         | IoT was supposed to do.
        
           | mountainriver wrote:
           | AI isn't IOT, its the greatest invention we will have ever
           | created
        
         | jawns wrote:
         | AI will only be a positive revolution if it's not putting a
         | large number of people out of jobs, but merely increasing their
         | productivity.
         | 
         | Or, if it DOES put a lot of people out of jobs, it would be
         | good for them to have some ownership over the AI, so that it's
         | the labor force who reaps the benefits, not just the
         | corporations. The bad scenario is mega-corps replace lots of
         | humans with a fleet of machines owned by the mega-corp. The
         | better scenario is we see widespread ownership of AI-powered
         | productive property (that is, distributism), such that mega-
         | corps contract out jobs to humans who own that property, and
         | the property allows those humans to provide better service than
         | before.
        
           | mountainriver wrote:
           | Yeah its a concern there may be a transition period. I have
           | the take that it will just make everyone way more capable and
           | we can up our dreams
        
         | kory wrote:
         | I think the economy is hitting real, hard barriers in resource
         | extraction, energy usage, and number of people that buy and
         | sell. That's where stagnation comes from.
         | 
         | The real economy will stagnate. AI can automate some work and
         | intensify future technological discoveries, but that won't make
         | energy any cheaper, clean our environment, create more humans,
         | or make resources as easily extractable as they were 100 years
         | ago.
         | 
         | The real economy can't grow too much more than it's current
         | size, at least in the physical world.
        
           | mountainriver wrote:
           | Yeah there are hard limits but I think AI will help us be way
           | more efficient and probably optimize reusability.
        
         | vsareto wrote:
         | None of the AI stuff really solves things like affordable
         | housing or keeping wages up with inflation (or addressing
         | inflation). It's not going to magically give us more energy
         | without environmental impacts, or settle conflicts between
         | countries.
         | 
         | Building another AI-marketed SaaS only benefits people who
         | don't need those benefits. In all likelihood, it'll just give
         | us more bullshit jobs.
        
           | mountainriver wrote:
           | It might, you can't possibly know that. If the coming AIs
           | make humans twice as productive, then we've boosted our
           | output tremendously.
        
           | zikduruqe wrote:
           | https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-
           | bullsh...
           | 
           | I just heard of this the other day and it is in my queue.
        
       | jsight wrote:
       | When people start making these predictions, its often a good time
       | to buy.
        
         | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
         | It's always a good time to buy. Stay the course.
        
         | baq wrote:
         | this is not 'people', this is the druck. pay attention...
        
         | ethanbond wrote:
         | But in turn when people make _these_ predictions, it's often a
         | good time to sell...
        
           | Arubis wrote:
           | It's almost as if anyone with the actual ability to predict a
           | market movement has a disincentive to talk about it in
           | public.
        
             | weego wrote:
             | You're flying dangerously close to buying into the idea
             | that anyone working in markets actually has any meaningful
             | ability to predict, and isn't just semi-gambling in a semi-
             | rigged environment.
        
               | Arubis wrote:
               | I don't especially mind brushing up against that idea so
               | long as my feet are firmly planted in "...and _that
               | person is not me_" firmament.
        
           | foobarian wrote:
           | ^ market forces at work
        
       | fullshark wrote:
       | If interest rates get high enough, putting money in bonds or even
       | CDs will start to get appealing for sure. That used to be the
       | primarily saving mechanism for consumers before policy required
       | us all to speculate on stocks.
        
       | seshagiric wrote:
       | When drive into my neighborhood downtown areas, I still see
       | 'hiring' boards at lot of places with a healthy % advertising
       | higher than minimum pay hourly rate. At the same time I also over
       | heard complaints at grocery & super markets on how things are
       | getting costlier. An elderly gentlemen was complaining how he
       | used to get 3 items but now gets only 2 for the same price. Even
       | as a layman, I think the high employment rates and healthy
       | housing/stock markets mean there is lot of money in the market
       | which is driving demand which in turn driving inflation. With Fed
       | tightening up interest rates, money may stop flowing into the
       | market yet and hence ease the demand eventually inflation. A
       | likely side effect is companies have no money to fund growth and
       | hence recession (and job cuts etc.). Next one year is going to be
       | tight.
       | 
       | However, its still a stretch to say the stock market will crash,
       | stay flat etc. etc. I think these predictions are more media
       | created (they are excellent click bait) than actual warnings from
       | genius investors. For example, if you follow Michael Burry's
       | tweet it's more of a rant or running commentary (combined with
       | partisan view point) than doomsday predictions.
       | 
       | The bigger problem in my opinion is partisan politics is stealing
       | attention from more important problems. Dems are wrong with the
       | number of freebies being thrown in but Reps are also wrong
       | ignoring climate change (or kicking up the abortion repertoire).
       | The checks and balances thing is not working currently.
        
       | smm11 wrote:
       | Not at all the same thing, but Gartner Research tore OS X apart
       | in the late 90s, and said Apple was dead and walking.
        
       | bigmattystyles wrote:
       | Once you learn about Paul the octopus, it puts all off these
       | predictions into perspective. Predictions have low reputations
       | costs when wrong because the public will just forget about it. If
       | he's right, he'll remind us at every chance he gets.
       | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_the_Octopus
        
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