It always amuses me to read these threads. Half the people are talking about the economy, the other half the markets. Then, people cherry pick time frames on which to base their arguments on.
There are three things that people should use as a metric:
1) How well are you doing in your own trading. This has nothing to do with the health of the economy or lack thereof. To speak in these terms is to choose a small time frame (less than five years) and say, see?
2) How well do you do in any given decade as an investor. This is closer to what the economy is doing, but still cannot be used to measure whether the strategies and tactics being used by governments are correct or not.
3) Is the average child as he grows up better or worse off in any rolling twenty year period ? On these time frames is how we should measure the strategies and tactics of governments. It is usually measured in lifetimes. For example, unless you go back to before and after the gold standard, you can't see trends here because if all you use is the price of the SPX, you will be fooled by inflation and the natural trend in markets higher and other things like survival bias. I claim that on this time frame, this country is worse off since about 1990, where the disparity between the poor and rich is horrendous, and markets adjusted for inflation are much much lower than the absolute price represents. Things have improved markedly, but only if you can afford them. Hence the polarization of the USA into reps/dems, classes, etc. Even people that have jobs may be worse off. They have to work harder just to stay in the same place than even a decade ago, and they are asked to save and spend more at the same time!!. Quality of life is hard to measure...
Seriously, state your time frames when debating. Otherwise you are all wasting your time talking about completely different things.
There are three things that people should use as a metric:
1) How well are you doing in your own trading. This has nothing to do with the health of the economy or lack thereof. To speak in these terms is to choose a small time frame (less than five years) and say, see?
2) How well do you do in any given decade as an investor. This is closer to what the economy is doing, but still cannot be used to measure whether the strategies and tactics being used by governments are correct or not.
3) Is the average child as he grows up better or worse off in any rolling twenty year period ? On these time frames is how we should measure the strategies and tactics of governments. It is usually measured in lifetimes. For example, unless you go back to before and after the gold standard, you can't see trends here because if all you use is the price of the SPX, you will be fooled by inflation and the natural trend in markets higher and other things like survival bias. I claim that on this time frame, this country is worse off since about 1990, where the disparity between the poor and rich is horrendous, and markets adjusted for inflation are much much lower than the absolute price represents. Things have improved markedly, but only if you can afford them. Hence the polarization of the USA into reps/dems, classes, etc. Even people that have jobs may be worse off. They have to work harder just to stay in the same place than even a decade ago, and they are asked to save and spend more at the same time!!. Quality of life is hard to measure...
Seriously, state your time frames when debating. Otherwise you are all wasting your time talking about completely different things.
