Election week ahead: Bull vs Bear forces?

[murray t turtle]

Massive rally on Wednesday when Trump is relected in a landslide

%%
Most likely;
+ they are already front running your post/LOL
KC,The commercials don't think the vrius is much of a threat like the media promotes . How do i know that?
WMT+ TSC.......... stopped giving away ''free masks''; +took away thier red + green social distance guidlines. They do still ask anyone to still wear a mask
They promoted + jacked up Dow, but almost never in the long run does dow outperform spy/qqq as it is @noon cst ,today. Most likely see some good trades in sdow/dxd by NOV 16.
NOT a prediction/but huge voter turn out favors Trump/Pence + no telling when all the votes are counted

 

[ET180]

You may find a quick look at how much deficits have grown in the last 3 years compared to the 4 years before that to be instructive (the first year of a President's term is under their predecessor's budget). Certainly deficits may go up under Biden more than they would under Trump, but it seems a bit silly to state that like it's a foregone conclusion when they were actually lower when Biden was last in office than when Trump was with Republican control of both houses. Turns out huge tax cuts tend to balloon deficits just as much as increased spending, who knew? If anything, Democratic administrations since Clinton have all reduced deficits from what they inherited, so again while past performance is no guarantee of future results it does seem odd one would completely ignore it.
All that aside, the dollar's decline was supposedly both imminent and inevitable in 2008 with the same setup of a Democratic trifecta, or as you could call it, the last time Republicans cared about deficits, right? How did that work out for anyone who invested on that thesis from 2008 to 2016?

If you read my other posts on here, you'll see that I have been very critical about Trump's deficits as well. America has been living far beyond its means for a while, but that's what the people vote for. A lot of that debt under Trump was due to Covid and he had to go along with much of the spending otherwise the Dems would not agree to stimulus package. For example, Pelosi and the Dems are currently blocking the stimulus package by asking for hundreds of billions in bailouts for poorly run cities for debt that has been around a long time and had nothing to do with Covid (although yes, Covid made the problem worse). Biden's deficits will be squandered on Green New Deal crap and student debt forgiveness that won't improve productivity long-term or boost GDP long-term.

 

[Sig]

If you read my other posts on here, you'll see that I have been very critical about Trump's deficits as well. America has been living far beyond its means for a while, but that's what the people vote for. A lot of that debt under Trump was due to Covid and he had to go along with much of the spending otherwise the Dems would not agree to stimulus package. For example, Pelosi and the Dems are currently blocking the stimulus package by asking for hundreds of billions in bailouts for poorly run cities for debt that has been around a long time and had nothing to do with Covid (although yes, Covid made the problem worse). Biden's deficits will be squandered on Green New Deal crap and student debt forgiveness that won't improve productivity long-term or boost GDP long-term.

To be fair, the federal deficit ballooned from the tax cuts long before COVID hit. It was $585B (3.2% of GDP) in FY 2017 (year ending Sep, 2017, which was the prior congress and President's budget) and nearly doubled to $984B (4.7% of GDP) in just 2 years by FY 2019, which ended in Sep 2019, months before there were any COVID impacts on the economy. Obviously none one reasonable blames COVID related deficits on Trump, but take that out and there's still plenty of blame. Point being, there's nothing to indicate that aside from COVID Biden would do anything to increase deficits any more than Trump did, to the contrary he's very publicly backed eliminating the tax cuts that were the primary driver of the $400B Trump deficit increase.
It's also not clear to me why one would think tax cuts help the economy but clean energy and reduced student debt do not, especially given the proof we have from the deficit impacts of the Trump tax cuts. Air pollution alone costs the U.S. economy nearly $800B a year, most of that healthcare costs and is responsible for 4.8 million lost work days in the U.S. How is eliminating much of that not beneficial to the economy and productivity? Not to mention the fact that there are now twice as many people working in just solar and wind compared to fossil fuel extraction. Jobs are generally considered to have an economic benefit, no? Certainly intelligent well meaning people can disagree on the magnitude of those benefits, but to say that a shift to cleaner energy "won't improve productivity long-term or boost GDP long-term" simply isn't a true statement.
As far as paying off student debt, while I'm not necessarily a fan of it, the productivity and GDP impacts of paying off $100 of someones student debt is exactly the same as the productivity and GDP impacts of cutting their taxes by $100. So if you're going to claim that paying off student debt "won't improve productivity long-term or boost GDP long-term" then you're saying the same about cutting taxes. From which I can only conclude that you agree we should repeal the Trump tax cuts, and maybe the Bush cuts as well? At least the one's that put money in the pocket of middle and lower class people, since they're the same ones who would benefit in exactly the same manner from paying off student debt?

 

[TimtheEnchanter]

I had 4 Jan spy puts (spreads), and they faked me out, so I am flat; I don't even care - I am bitter about the markets, yesterday I was long on ES last huge bar, today I was short right before the last huge bear bar, but they ran my stop. I lost a little instead of making a nice change. Monetarily today was ok, I was in the money on ES, and my investments are happy, but these stops are killing me. I do not make them wide enough. I am not so bearish tomorrow; otherwise, I would have kept some of my Jan puts. I am flat! If Trump wins and the market rally and commie bastards riot, I'll short again...

 

[ET180]

As I said, I have been critical of the deficit increase under Trump. What should have happened was tax cuts for the middle and lower class + reduced government spending to offset the tax cuts. But although they increased the deficit, at least we got something for them. Here are a few benefits:

1. Significantly higher median household income compared to the Obama years. Inflation-adjusted household income was $59,404.02 in 2009, was $60,138.72 in 2016. Compared to $68,400.00 in 2020 (probably skewed a bit by Covid benefits). Still, flat over 8 years compared to a significant increase in under 4. That's a direct result of tax cuts -- people keep more of their money. Corporate tax cuts allow companies to keep more of the money they earn to hire people. https://dqydj.com/household-income-by-year/

2. Higher labor participation rate, especially among blacks and Hispanics. https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm

3. Higher GDP growth. The 3.18% GDP growth in 2018 was higher than at any point of the Obama years particularly years 2010 and 2011 which should have been growing at about double the actual rate given GDP had fallen so much the prior years. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/gdp-growth-rate

Although, honestly, I think some of those benefits were also due to the perception of having a business-friendly President and deregulation.

Disagree that all spending is the same. When you pay off student loans, you are telling people that they will not be held responsible for their financial decisions. The $100 wasted on a degree ending in "studies" could have been put to better use. Here's some examples:

A lot of people end up with worthless degrees and end up taking a job that doesn't even require the degree. That's a sad waste of money and time (resources). Government should simply stop funding worthless degrees and only fund degrees that will directly lead to good jobs (STEM + business + useful trades). Or better, get completely out of the loan business and instead provide tax credits to offset the interest on student loans or perhaps even the tuition. The tuition was an expense necessary to produce the income so should be deductible.

As far as the $800 billion per year for air pollution and $4.8M lost work days, can you send me a source on that one? How does that compare to the amount of money spent on obesity-related disease? Doesn't cost any money to fix that problem. I'm very skeptical of that statistic given that the air quality here in the US is much better than China or India and the air pollution there doesn't seem to be slowing down their economic growth. The only time I have noticed bad air quality here in the PNW was during a wild fire last summer where the smoke was so thick, people couldn't go outside for a couple of weeks. And that was due to human error combined with poor forest management.

Honestly though, the biggest problem the US faces which is related to debt is this:

http://content.time.com/time/interactive/0,31813,2043378,00.html

That's cultural though and something politics can't fix.

 

[Sig]

As I said, I have been critical of the deficit increase under Trump. What should have happened was tax cuts for the middle and lower class + reduced government spending to offset the tax cuts. But although they increased the deficit, at least we got something for them. Here are a few benefits:

1. Significantly higher median household income compared to the Obama years. Inflation-adjusted household income was $59,404.02 in 2009, was $60,138.72 in 2016. Compared to $68,400.00 in 2020 (probably skewed a bit by Covid benefits). Still, flat over 8 years compared to a significant increase in under 4. That's a direct result of tax cuts -- people keep more of their money. Corporate tax cuts allow companies to keep more of the money they earn to hire people. https://dqydj.com/household-income-by-year/

2. Higher labor participation rate, especially among blacks and Hispanics. https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm

3. Higher GDP growth. The 3.18% GDP growth in 2018 was higher than at any point of the Obama years particularly years 2010 and 2011 which should have been growing at about double the actual rate given GDP had fallen so much the prior years. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/gdp-growth-rate

Although, honestly, I think some of those benefits were also due to the perception of having a business-friendly President and deregulation.

Disagree that all spending is the same. When you pay off student loans, you are telling people that they will not be held responsible for their financial decisions. The $100 wasted on a degree ending in "studies" could have been put to better use. Here's some examples:

A lot of people end up with worthless degrees and end up taking a job that doesn't even require the degree. That's a sad waste of money and time (resources). Government should simply stop funding worthless degrees and only fund degrees that will directly lead to good jobs (STEM + business + useful trades). Or better, get completely out of the loan business and instead provide tax credits to offset the interest on student loans or perhaps even the tuition. The tuition was an expense necessary to produce the income so should be deductible.

As far as the $800 billion per year for air pollution and $4.8M lost work days, can you send me a source on that one? How does that compare to the amount of money spent on obesity-related disease? Doesn't cost any money to fix that problem. I'm very skeptical of that statistic given that the air quality here in the US is much better than China or India and the air pollution there doesn't seem to be slowing down their economic growth. The only time I have noticed bad air quality here in the PNW was during a wild fire last summer where the smoke was so thick, people couldn't go outside for a couple of weeks. And that was due to human error combined with poor forest management.

Honestly though, the biggest problem the US faces which is related to debt is this:

http://content.time.com/time/interactive/0,31813,2043378,00.html

That's cultural though and something politics can't fix.

Sounds like we broadly agree on the types of tax cuts. I would say comparing median income numbers from 2008 (which reflected the high water mark right before the crash) to 2012 is a bit disingenuous. A more accurate comparison would be, say 2013 ($52,250) to 2016 ($57,616) which is the 3 years prior to Trump versus 2016-2019 ($65,712) for the next 3 years under Trump ((https://data.census.gov/cedsci/table?q=median household income by year&tid=ACSST1Y2016.S1903&hidePreview=false). Doesn't tell nearly the same story; I'm not sure that deficit really bought us much compared to the price and the steady state of the 3 prior years and in fact that the curve had been steadily bending up ever since we pulled out of the Bush recession so really all three of the numbers you cite were just extrapolations of what was already happening. Also, I'm not sure where your GDP growth number come from, 2018 U.S. GDP growth was 2.9% by every source I could find which merely equaled Obama's 2015 numbers. (https://www.statista.com/statistics/188165/annual-gdp-growth-of-the-united-states-since-1990/). Best I can tell you're cherry picking a single quarter number, which for a variety of reasons isn't a valid judge of a big policy change like the tax cuts and again is somewhat disingenuous.


Should have provided references inline, sorry. The cost numbers come from https://earth.stanford.edu/news/how-much-does-air-pollution-cost-us#gs.kg98f7 just because I have an affiliation there. Lot's of others out there that vary slightly but order of magnitude are all right in the same area. I admit the lost work days number I quoted wasn't accurate, I was remembering the number of lost work days the Trump Clean Air Act rollback will cause (disingenuous on my part, sorry). The estimated lost work days from power plants specifically, which is probably the more intellectually honest number to use for purposes of this discussion is about 1.6M per year (http://www.catf.us/resources/publications/files/The_Toll_from_Coal.pdf) Keep in mind that you and I are lucky that we don't suffer from asthma or other respiratory issues that are sensitive to pollution. What can be an almost unnoticeable amount of pollution for us can cause a debilitating asthma attack in one of the 1 in 13 adults in the U.S. living with asthma(https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/asthma.htm), so our anecdotal experience of what we've noticed isn't really relevant in calculating cost to our economy. Regardless, there is a real GDP and productivity gain from replacing polluting power with clean power; you claimed there wasn't and that's simply not true. You can certainly argue that compelling weight loss in obese people is a better use of our money, that's a completely different discussion though that really has nothing to do with if your claim was true or not.

As far as the student loan forgiveness, it is important I think to be on the same page on basic math. If you give a person $100 for any reason, no matter if it's a good, bad, or indifferent reason, it has exactly the same economic impact of if you cut their taxes by $100. Money's fungible, so any time you save someone $100 somewhere they have an extra $100 to spend on anything else. Do we disagree on that?

I get it, you don't think they should have spent the money on education, but that's your value judgment and doesn't provide any information on if helps GDP or productivity. It's interesting that you don't judge the economic impact of what the person who got the exact same $100 from a tax cut spends their money one. Which could just as easily be on education, or they could have stuffed it under their mattress or most likely they spent it all on Chinese products which definitely doesn't help U.S. GDP or productivity more than spending it on a service provided in the U.S., like education. Again, you're claiming that forgiving student loans doesn't help GDP or productivity and that is simply false. The relative merits of education or useless degrees is just as irrelevant as obesity is to a discussion on pollution impacts to determining if your claim is true or not.

 

[realtrades]

I need the market to go down, so it won't, you're welcome if you're on the long side.

Never fails.

 

[murray t turtle]

Never fails.

%%
NEED,or panic selling tends to goof to much
planned selling or buying may work better.Plans + preferences may work better...…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….[Edit limited gov tends to work much better/tax cuts+ thats why so many voted with thier feet + moved to no tax sunshine state FLA]
Solar can work fine in the private sector I have a solar light/sure not gov control or a free gov trainWreck/shower/ free gov gas...………………………………………]

 

[Option_Attack]

Never fails.

Thanks! Really appreciate it.

Yeah these dayz...uncertainty over election, market goes up. Covid 19 rampant, market goes up. Biden wins, market goes up. Trump wins, market goes up. As long as interest rates are so low best place for investment is the markets. Govmnts have printed soooo much money...

 

[bone]

Just my own two cents: Wall Street loves gridlock. And that's what we have. No sweeping popular mandate for Joe. No broad blue wave of gains that's for sure - just the opposite, there's now a pretty healthy Republican minority in Congress and it looks like McConnell holds the Senate. No Supreme Court majority to lean on.

If Biden pulls this out there's no way he'll get any legislation done without Republican support - in fact, he's kinda screwed.

Joe has zero chance to raise corporate taxes, raise capital gains, pack the Supreme Court, and blow up the filibuster. Not gonna happen now.

It wasn't supposed to be this close.

Thanks! Really appreciate it.

Yeah these dayz...uncertainty over election, market goes up. Covid 19 rampant, market goes up. Biden wins, market goes up. Trump wins, market goes up. As long as interest rates are so low best place for investment is the markets. Govmnts have printed soooo much money...