I know the “reasons” why — this is ‘MERICA, we must protect the stonks at all costs, but the pensioners!!!!!!!!!!!!!, how else can you measure dick size without busy busy busy business, etc. etc. — but seriously, I’m looking for an actual answer as to why they’re still trading.
The absolute best-case scenario: The market shows that it’s psychopathic and uncoupled from the wider economy by going up while millions are out of work and thousands are dying from a badly handled pandemic.
The more likely scenario: It drops, panicking the rich into hoarding more money cough I mean investing “conservatively” cough thereby harming the economy further when this hopefully passes in a few months.
So again, seriously, why are we continuing this stupid-ass Kabuki theater?
I mean, you’ve basically answered your own question. Beyond that, I’m sure Meg can provide a better answer but my understanding is that the market is still trading…because they can. Most trades are done electronically and via automation now. If we were still trading stocks a-la Trading Places, then sure, they MIGHT have shut it down.
Or, they’d just say Fuck It and come to work wearing SCUBA gear.
“Because they can” is as good an answer to this as any!
I’ve been saying this for weeks.
I imagine they’ve floated the idea past the orange one, but were shot down because the optics would be terrible and also how are his buddies supposed to profit from our collective misery?
Not for the first time, I’ll just note how dumb that is because all they’re going to do is lose money. (Of course, I think everyone here knows how dumb most of those people are already!)
I know traders are utterly immune to human decency and have learned to overlook small matters like, say, can companies actually turn a profit, but economic demand is waning right now and it’s going to hit a deeper bottom than we’ve seen in 80 years. At some point, that’s just not ignorable!
You’re forgetting about the commissions, my friend. The traders will always make money.
That’s true, but the people they’re making the trades for may stop if they keep getting hosed!
Even he entire army of fleece-vest wearing bros can’t match the power of one middle manager at Berkshire Hathaway saying “Maybe we should sit out for a week” to his boss.
I asked a trader how he was doing the other day and he couldn’t have been having more fun. [shrug emoji]
All fun and games til you’ve got Covid, I guess.
i dont know why the markets doing what its doing
but im beginning to think we’re going to need a new word for the coming recession
looks to me like recession is going to be just a little bit of an understatement
I was thinking about this the other day, and likely it’s a bit of paranoia combined with my ignorance about all things financial/stock related, but…
So, earlier, there were a bunch of idiots demanding we sacrifice workers for the sake of the stock market, and more reasonable type people were trying to point out that having a significant portion of the work force dead or hospitalized can’t be good for the economy…
I’m wondering if a lot of the rich folk were expecting the market to tank and then make a recovery in a couple weeks-months, and had arranged their accounts to profit from that (I don’t really know how (see above about my financial ignorance), maybe selling before the crash, and then buying everything up again before the market picks up again?).
But, this whole ‘flatten-the-curve’ process is drawing that out too long for them, and while they will still likely profit in the end, the extra time scale adds a bunch of uncertainty and maybe they won’t profit quite as much?
Anyways, fuck all those dickholes.
I imagine there are reasons why it wouldn’t work, and it’s far too complex or something, but I’d be all for a financial shut-down and debt holiday sorta thing. Rent, loan payments, debts, bills, etc., just all put on indefinite hold for as long as we need people to be self-isolating/shelter-in-place/social distancing/whatever.
two or three, or even six or nine months of no gains won’t actually harm the rich folk, they can ride it out with barely a hiccup, but it would be a literal lifesaver for so many poor and working folk.
IMO, you are exactly right. Were I running things, I would have declared a debt/loan/rent/interest jubilee for 3 months, started a short-term UBI, shut all the markets down, thrown money toward businesses that kept payroll on, basically hit the pause button on all economic activity that wasn’t food or health care. That is actually way less complicated than the dance we’re doing now.
And also, I don’t even think there’s a specific short-selling-type move they would have made to profit off this.
I think it’s literally just that what we’re doing means it will impact the economy for an extended period of time, but if 150 million people got infected and 3 million died in a month, it would be over a lot faster. Sleep tight, everyone who’s not a billionaire!
We’ve already seen a bunch of Republican members of Congress (and a few corporate Democrats) who have been caught dumping their portfolios before the news of the virus had become common knowledge, so I’m sure that there are at least a few out there who thought we were going into a v-shaped recession. Thing is, if they did cash out, it doesn’t matter to them how deep the recession goes because they already got their money.